Jobs Writers Do When They're Not Writing: Mulching an Airport

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an airport not yet mulched is in need of a good mulching. It is a lesser known truth that some poor bastard has to spread said mulch along the highways and byways that lead into the airport.

And so it was that I stood on the side of Horrie Miller Drive at 6.45am, in an ill-fitting They Might Be Giants t-shirt and cargo shorts, waiting for the arrival of what we in the mulch industry would call 'too much mulch for anyone to feasibly spread, ever.' 

They had given us a leaf rake, which I used to do pretend martial arts moves while I was waiting. I was waiting because

• The mulch had not yet arrived
• Of the five people who had shown up to mulch the airport, three had already got straight into their cars and drove home, once they saw the scope of the job

And yet, just as I had performed a flawless pirouette stab on an unsuspecting ninja, a roar was cast across the landscape. The beeping of a trade truck as it backed along a row of grass trees. The rearing of its hind legs, so that it could squat, and let loose a steaming pile of number mulch as if to say, 'You clean this up.'

So how do you mulch an airport? It turns out there's a right way to mulch an airport and a wrong way, and I know this because, while 'cleaning this up,' some goateed mungbean rocked up in a ute. 'You're doing it wrong!' he said, like it mattered to the mulch that I was not caressing its many roots, clumps, and native species of worms, aphids, and bacteria.

He grabbed my ninja staff/rake and proceeded to forehand, backhand, back and forth, like Lleyton Hewitt on too much red cordial. 'This is how you do it!' he said. 'Like this! You SMOOTH it!'

It looked exactly the same as when I had done it.

By 7.21 I wanted to go home. By 7.22 I was imagining zombies coming up from the mulch and attacking me...and I'm sad to say it felt more fantasy and nightmare.

And on that mulch: I've seen good mulch. I've travelled the heady heights of fine, high-quality silts and soils that make Nedlands Dads swoon as they pat it into their garden beds. I've seen OK mulch that I've bought because I need a better hobby, and have shuffled uncomfortably around my geraniums.

This mulch was not good mulch. Good mulch does not have straps, parts of boots, and, I'm pretty sure, a wristwatch in it. 

But I mulched the airport for two weeks because when you're a writer you find other ways to get money, and, at the time, I was going through an independent phase, living on my own, and going out with a girl with a big heart and the loudest voice in the world. I even tried drinking beer for a bit to get into the mulch spirit after work days, but all it really did was have me looking 'tradie.' 

To the tradies, gardeners, and buliders of the world, I take my hat off to you. You're fucking lunatics but still, I take my hat off to you. Because, like writers, these brave men and women have gone, 'This is a bit rough,' and still, they get the job done.