Chapter 22

Where there’s Smoke...

I really love the onset of Winter here in Queensland.  We have nothing much to complain about because the days are still so beautiful, temperate and sunny, and the nights though colder are just cold enough to be an excuse for ugg boots, fleecy jackets and an open fire.    Just outside the overhang of the roof line of the performance stage/deck, we have a patch of dead grass, which over Summer months greens over just in time for Winter to hit again and then become singed with the heat of the open fire pit. The part of winter that no one looks forward to more than my husband is making an open fire. A boy scout at heart if not in reality he loves nothing more than to scrunch up the newspaper into tennis ball sized clumps and neatly, nay symmetrically construct a kindling tower that any Jenga player would be most proud of.  It’s a point of consternation with Brent when I out of necessity am given the opportunity to construct the fire.  In my typical haphazard fashion the kindling is placed indelicately in a kind of teepee construction into the drum, in no way akin to the symmetry of its usual design.  Still works though doesnt it!    

But there is a bit of a problem this Winter.  After being here for almost three years now, if you look around our two acres you would be hard pressed to find another dead tree.  Benny has systematically chainsawed every last one of them into manageable sized logs and further chopped many into rough hewn kindling.   There is one tree that still stands proud if presumably hollow, but its very size is daunting and he hasn’t yet summoned the courage or planned an adequate escape path, should the whole thing not go the right way when the first cut is made.  Who knows, maybe this will be the Winter that the tree comes down.  In the meantime he has hopped the fence (only a metre or so) and taken down a couple of trees in the back acre of our neighbours rental property.  Lets just call it mitigating our fire risk.  

Then, as if on cue a second problem arose, because one problem is never enough, the trailer trash half forty-four gallon drum on study welded legs, collapsed and folded right in half.  So another fire pit had to be sourced post haste as the cold winter nights were coming on thick and fast.

In our household whenever there is a purchase to be made of any significance for the home we tend to email each other, not really to ask permission but rather a “two heads are better than one” scenario.  This day Benny who had obviously been hard at work (not) sent me a picture of a fire pit he had found on the net that he thought would do the trick, for my approval and whats more it could be here in just a couple of days!  You know how we have grown up with the saying “You get what you pay for”, well for $125 plus delivery I looked at this little decorative fire pit and commented that I really didnt think it would be big enough for the size and intensity of fire Benny loved to build.  But of course if he thought it would be adequate then go right ahead and order it in.

Before that weekend it arrived at Australia Post and I went to collect it.  I was able to pick up all 18kgs of it and pack it into the back of our little four cylinder sedan, giving me some kind of clue as the the sturdiness and strength (or lack thereof) of the pit, therefore justifying in my mind that perhaps I may well have been correct.  That evening (being a Friday) Benny put the erector set together and stood back looking admiringly at the somewhat attractive stand and tray.  He stacked it gently adding his usual ten to twenty kilos of fire wood and although it overhung the tray a bit it seemed that the pit might just do the trick.  We called Lawson to come outside and admire the new fire pit and after much coaxing he inevitably pried himself away from the internet and opened the back door.  Just then an almighty crash and a shower of sparks went up as the bottom tray and fire fell straight onto the ground to a chorus of uproarious laughter all round. “Great Fire Pit Dad!” said Lawson jokingly as he turned on his heel and walked back into the house.

Well, two weeks later we are still using the frame to contain the wood akin to a brazier, and the tray remains on the ground to collect the ashes.  A new fourty-four gallon drum is yet to be procured but we think that this is quite possibly the best way to go.  After all, the since deceased one lasted us for two whole years and the weight of countless dead trees.  It was one that our mate who was restoring his boat had used to hold up the hull while he worked underneath it.  A drum that had once contained thinners, when Benny went to cut it in half with the grinder he told everyone to stand well back.  Just another occasion when I have been glad we have him covered by adequate life insurance!  Now bring on the dead tree I say!