IT WAS a dark and stormy night!

You aren't supposed to start a piece with that particular clanger, but on this occasion a few days ago, there was no way around the fact.

My young Welsh carpenter and I had put in the long, damp hours clambering around in the rigging of the house-frame that has risen like a big, square skeleton staggering slowly to its feet from the concrete slab.

The laddie has insisted on fronting for work in shorts each day, despite the conditions, as if someone told him that Australia can't get cold.

We have been staying on the building block each night, he in the relative luxury of a battered van and I under a sheet of black plastic on a bed I found on the nature strip.

Each night we have lit a fire with an armload of pine offcuts and the aid of the Taffy's cordless leaf-blower that can have our pile of wet wood blazing fit to smelt steel in a matter of two minutes.

And so it was the other night with us huddled around the fire on the lee side of his van with two plastic cups of Chateau Cardboard and the boy's music box playing his Welsh rap-music that we spent the last hour before bed.

Surprise hardly describes the feeling when we looked up to see four fully-clad firemen standing in the smoke and glow of our little fire.

"Hello boys," I said, "what's happening?"

"Umm," began one young bloke, "we've had a call in about an illegal burn-off and, well, there's actually still fire restrictions."

"We have to put this out?" I asked.

"Well no, if we could have 10 litres of water handy and clear a metre around it, that would be good."

"I see. I trust we haven't dragged you blokes away from your nice warm living rooms to do this?" I asked.

They shuffled their feet a bit. Taffy wandered into the dark with our water joey to find a tank and I fiddled around with a shovel and a heap of sand to make a fire-break while the rather embarrassed firey held a torch for me.

A minute or two later we shook hands and our brave lads headed back into the darkness.

As we settled in again, it was only the thin ring of sand that now circled the fire that proved we hadn't imagined the whole surreal thing.

Almost immediately it began to snow.