Magpie Hill

My folks moved when they retired, swapped a life time of city living for a rural existence in another state. Even with his Superannuation, the old man did not command enough lolly to have the shack of his dreams built & keep his Sydney abode at the same time. So he built a shed instead, then sold the house then moved into the shed then started on the new house. During this phase of the big relocation we called the new domicile the 'Shed Sheraton', since this was no temporary dwelling. Fully lined with kitchenette, double bed, fridge, hot & cold running water & pot belly stove, life in the shed was comfortable to say the least. I even suggested that this state of affairs would do a retired couple permanently and that they could split the Super between my sibling and myself if they liked, but the idea never caught on for some reason. The 'Shed Sheraton' was nice enough but Gwinganna it wasn't.

When the house become habitable the 'Shed Sheraton' logo sort of lapsed and the Mk II place-of-residence came to be known as the 'Stanley Hilton'. Since this was altogether a more prestigious structure and Stanley was were it was at.

Once they got settled the olds established a garden, adopted the neighbour's dog and befriended a troop of magpies in rapid succession. At about this time I grew fond of referring to the place as 'Magpie Hill' since feeding biscuits to magpies became a great hit with the kids. Magpies are the P51s of the bird world, superb low level pilots they will down anything from a sparrow hawk to a Kookaburra, should it have the temerity to wander into their domain.

It was around this time that I started to take helicopter flying lessons. I remember stooging around in a paddock with an instructor doing slope landings & stuff & getting the surprise of my life on departure when I found we shared the field with a wire. Strung along two poles to a pump it was dead easy to spot once you knew what you were looking for.

Wires continued to haunt me in one way or another for some time. I got so many wire warnings from instructors on my first trip away with a pax (took the wife to a restaurant) that I over pitched on take off over the bloody cables & brought the low rotor warning on.

When the day for a long trip to Stanley eventually came round I was positively paranoid because Magpie Hill was, I knew, surrounded by wires on three of its four sides. As it turned out the cables proved readily negotiable and a terror of wires dwindled to fear only and finally shrank to a healthy respect for & careful avoidance of as my chopper hours accumulated. This apathy towards cables hit home the other day when I wandered up the path on Magpie Hill to see one of this years fledglings dead as a door nail on the high tension line. My brother the sparx figured out the sequence of events. Bird lands on wire, bird spots spider on other side of insulator, bird makes a grab with beak, bird gets eleven thousand volts up the pecker. Altogether an unfortunate encounter with a "three phase helicopter arrester". "Big trouble on Magpie Hill," said the bros eyeing the macabre scene, "Helicopter pilots aren't the only ones" I replied.