A passion for defiance

By now anyone who reads this blog is well aware that I have returned from a wet tour of Scotland to a Queensland that is drier than ever before. To say that we need a flood would be understating the situation by several orders of magnitude. The water restrictions are so harsh that virtually any outdoor water use is banned. I'm picking and choosing my rides on the basis of "where the bushfires aren't" -- and had to cancel a ride early this morning because of one. This will probably mean more rides on the NSW side where there seems to be a slightly smaller number of brainless f*ckwits with nothing better to do than light fires.

It would therefore seem like a bad time to plant a passionfruit vine and actually expect to get anything from it, but this requires some awareness of some other factors. First of all, I've had some success in cultivating this particular fruit before. Secondly, I have a means of dealing with the water restrictions, and no, it doesn't involve shelling out $1,000 for a water tank (not that I'd have anything to fill it with anyway). I was using recycled shower water for watering even before the drought began, so those won't offer a problem.

However, the thing that most fills me with optimism comes from a quick 50km ride I took late this afternoon to Austinville in the hinterland. While many of the surrounding areas are barren and tinderbox dry, and this is exacerbated by property owners in the area trying to remove anything that might feed a bushfire. One can almost liken this to the Russians of the 1940's burning all their stored grain to stop the Nazi invasion (albeit on a different scale), these people will really miss the shade when the summer heat kicks in. Yet despite all this, there are small patches of rainforest that survive, totally defying the conditions, and thriving regardless. If they can defy the drought, so can I, and so can my passionfruit.