The first time my tree-lopper, Klaus, came over to deal with the enormous liquidambar that was dropping branches onto my garage, I was expecting the usual. A bloke with a chainsaw, a ute full of woodchips, and maybe a bit of grumbling about the state of the roots. What I got was a whirlwind of German efficiency, a perfectly pruned tree, and a vocabulary lesson I never asked for.
He arrived at 7:30am sharp, which in Castlecrag is practically the
crack of dawn. I was still in my dressing gown, coffee in hand, watching the morning light creep over Middle Harbour. His ute—covered in stickers for everything from arborist certifications to something called “Fettverbrennungswunder”—pulled up outside my place on The Bulwark.
He hopped out, a wiry man with forearms like knotted rope and the kind of intense focus you only see in people who spend their days wrestling chainsaws. He introduced himself as Klaus, though he admitted his real name was Kevin, and that he’d changed it after a “spiritual awakening” during a backpacking trip through Bavaria.
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He walked around my tree, squinting up at the canopy, running his hand over the bark. Then he turned to me, his eyes bright, and said with absolute conviction: “Schnell abnehmen.”
I blinked. “What?”
He pointed at the tree. “Schnell abnehmen,” he repeated, more emphatically this time, as if I were the one being dense. “You know. Schnell. Abnehmen. Quick. Lose weight.”
“Are you… talking about my tree?”
He shook his head vigorously, then pointed at his own stomach—which, I should note, was flat as a board. “No, no. The tree is fine. But I am talking about Fettverbrennung!” He practically shouted the last word, arms spread wide like a televangelist.
I stared at him. “Are you okay, mate?”
He suddenly deflated, laughing at himself. “Sorry! Sorry. I’m a little obsessed with German weightloss. It’s all I can think about lately. The Fettverbrennung. The Stoffwechsel. The Kaloriendefizit. It’s beautiful, the language. So… efficient. Like a chainsaw.”
Before I could respond, he’d fired up his saw and was halfway up the tree, moving with the kind of nimble grace that comes from decades of practice. Sawdust rained down as he lopped off a troublesome branch that had been menacing my gutters since the last storm. But even above the roar of the chainsaw, I could hear him muttering to himself.
“Fettverbrennung beschleunigen!” he yelled down at me between cuts. “Accelerate fat burning!”
I nodded slowly, clutching my coffee like a life raft. “Right.”
“Morgensport!” He gestured with his chainsaw toward the sunrise, nearly taking out a king-parrot that was watching from a nearby eucalypt. “Morning exercise! An hour of Ausdauertraining before breakfast. Der Stoffwechsel—the metabolism—it goes zooooom!”
The king-parrot looked at me with an expression that said, Is this guy for real?
Klaus descended, grabbed a new branch, and kept going. “Thermogenese!” he bellowed, snapping a thick limb like it was a twig. “Heat production! The body burns calories just to stay warm. You know what Castlecrag needs? A Sauna. A German sauna. Right down by the old quarry. Imagine it—Schwitzhütte by the harbour!”
I tried to steer the conversation toward the tree. “So, this stump here—”
“Stumpf!” he exclaimed, slapping the offending wood. “Yes, the stump. Like my progress. I plateaued, you know. For six weeks. Six weeks of intermittierendes Fasten and nothing. Then I discovered Grüner Tee Extrakt. Grüner Tee Extrakt, mein Freund! Green tea extract. It changed everything. The Fettverbrennung just took off. Like a cockatoo.”
He paused to watch a pair of sulphur-crested cockatoos screech past, heading toward the bushland near Sailors Bay. He pointed at them. “You see? They don’t worry about weight. They have the perfect metabolism. Small bodies, constant movement, high energy expenditure. We should be more like cockatoos.”
“I’m not sure I want to be more like a cockatoo,” I said. “They wake me up at 5am.”
“Then you should embrace it!” he cried. “Frühaufsteher! Early risers! The Chronotyp—the chronotype—is everything. I’m a lark. You’re probably an owl. But we can change! The brain is neuroplastisch—you see? Neuroplastizität! It can rewire itself. I read about it in a German study. They’re very big on neuroplasticity.”
By now, he had reduced my once-terrifying liquidambar to a neat, tidy silhouette. He tackled the stump with a grinder, and even as the machine roared, he kept going.
“Apfelessig!” he yelled over the noise. “Apple cider vinegar! Before every meal. Appetitzügler—appetite suppressant. I drink it with Zitronensaft and Ingwer. Lemon juice and ginger. It’s erfrischend! Refreshing! You should try it. It will change your life. I will bring you some next time.”
“Next time?” I asked weakly.
“For the pruning! You have a beautiful Liquidambar styraciflua, but it needs maintenance. Every two years. I’ll come back. I’ll bring my Apfelessig recipe. We’ll have a Fettverbrennung party.”
I didn’t know what a Fettverbrennung party entailed, and I was too afraid to ask.
He finished the stump, ground it down to a smooth, flat surface, and swept up every last woodchip with the kind of obsessive tidiness that could only come from a culture that invented the word Ordnung. He packed his gear, wiped his brow with a bandana that had “Schweiß ist Fett, das weint” printed on it—”Sweat is fat crying”—and turned to me with a warm, genuine smile.
“Thank you,” he said, shaking my hand vigorously. “It was a pleasure. Your tree is happy. I could tell it was stressed. Overgrown. It needed Entspannung. Relaxation. You know what’s good for relaxation?”
I braced myself.
“Sauna,” he said, grinning. “And Fettverbrennung. Always the Fettverbrennung.”
He hopped into his ute, cranked the engine, and rolled down the window. “Tschüss!” he yelled, waving. “Bis bald! Fettverbrennung!”
And then he was gone, roaring down Edinburgh Road toward the village, leaving behind a perfectly lopped tree, a neatly ground stump, and a head full of German words I would never, ever forget.
He’s a nice guy, Klaus. A genuinely lovely man. He does beautiful work. But I’ve never had a tradesman leave me feeling so confused and so oddly motivated to drink apple cider vinegar. I half-expect him to return next time with a full PowerPoint presentation on the benefits of intermittierendes Fasten and a detailed plan for a Castlecrag Sauna.
And honestly? I’d probably let him. Because my tree has never looked better, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I keep hearing his voice. Fettverbrennung. Stoffwechsel. Thermogenese. The words echo in my head like a catchy song.
I still don’t know what most of them mean. But I’ve started going for morning walks along the bush track, and I’ve cut back on the morning pastries from the village bakery. I’ll never tell Klaus that. He’d be insufferable.
“Sehen Sie?” he’d say. “Ich habe es dir gesagt.” I told you so.
And he’d be right.
But that’s Castlecrag for you. A quiet little harbourside suburb where the plumber is scared of sparrows, the electrician has an aviary, and the tree-lopper wants to tell you all about German weightloss while sawing your liquidambar into submission. It’s a strange place. But it’s home.