Kalgoorlie, Western Australia: Where there’s smoke

We were having a lovely lunch with our Kalgoorlie friends — Tina, Wendy, and Tiny — when Tiny’s boss called. Tiny’s the Kalgoorlie city engineer but seems to have a lot of additional responsibilities that have nothing to do with engineering. One of those extra duties is assembling whatever resources are necessary to fight bush fires anywhere in the region.

The boss had been notified that a bush fire had broken out and asked if Tiny could find out exactly where the fire was raging and to make sure the fire department was on top of it.

He hung up the phone, looked around the table, and said, “Want to see a bush fire up close?”

Hell, yes.

So Wendy, Tina, Jamie and I piled into Tiny’s big ol’ SUV and we all headed in the direction of the smoke. Didn’t take long for Tiny to find its source, an open field not far from the airport.

By the time we got there, earthmovers had already gone into action, pushing dirt onto the flames. Within an hour or two they had reduced it to a few smoldering hot spots. Tiny said they got lucky this time because the same land had burned not too long ago which means that this fire was left with less fuel to consume.

Tiny and his people even made the front page of the Kalgoorlie Miner newspaper the next day.

Yea, Tiny!