Without Warning

by Jane O'Connor

  Brad called to say they were just getting their flights home. He was distressed and very restless: they hadn’t been able to settle in Melbourne—everything around them seemed irrelevant. In the rush to get them to safety, I’d overlooked their trauma and pain. They’d lived through that hellish event too, and then been left to their own devices; they didn’t have on-tap counsellors, they’d had to help each other through. I felt guilty and remiss that I hadn’t connected them to some of the services available.

  The second drive to Whittlesea was even starker. What we’d missed on the first trip came into sharp focus on the second. The crèche and pre-school, and one of the primary schools, were gone; the names of insurance companies had been sprayed on ruined cars as a mark of ownership. A line of vehicles were again trying to get through the roadblocks, but being turned back. It was a relief when that trip ended.

  At the material-aid centre, we discovered that a truckload of heavy workwear and boots had arrived. A practical gift, and they’d even supplied staff to fit it properly. Kitted out with overalls, work gloves, safety glasses and gear that could take some punishment meant we could go back onto the property and avoid injuries. Sean was still pursuing his replacement driver’s licence.

  As we walked out of the centre, running towards us was Kane Smith from next door. The thirteen-year-old was up for a big hug, then he looked at Sean and the shoulders slumped. ‘Sorry, I let your drum kit burn,’ he said. Sean had lent him a practice kit when he showed an interest. ‘No, you didn’t, mate. There was nothing you could have done about that,’ Sean replied. In racing to catch us, Kane had pulled himself away from something far more exciting to a sports-mad teenager—some Australian Rules footballers and members of the Australian cricket team had arrived at the relief area. For Kane the thought of meeting, let alone getting a few bowling tips from, Shane Warne was enough to wipe out traumatic recent memories for the moment; it was pure gold to see him so excited. You couldn’t have put a price on the presence of those sporting stars, particularly for kids who had lost homes, schools, friends or a close relative.

  I had no desire to look for more general clothing at this point. Our friend Gretha Edwards had called from Steels Creek to say she’d cleaned out her wardrobe and had a suitcase full of clothes for me. She and husband Tim had fought to an exhausted standstill to save their luxury bed-and-breakfast property, with guests sheltering inside, when the fire swept down the national park that forms their rear boundary. They’d lost all Tim’s building-business equipment, their sheds, cars and tanks; they’d also lost neighbours. But Gretha had taken the time to put together enough clothes for a core work wardrobe. ‘We’re about the same height and colouring,’ she offered in a matter-of-fact way. She was right: everything fitted like a glove and gave me the confidence to step back out into the world without having to make any purchasing decisions or sort through donated goods.

  On the Sunday, we made the decision to stay with Tania for a few days. The logistics of getting to work in a borrowed car appeared easier from somewhere closer. It was also an opportunity to try to regroup, to give Carissa some support and to examine our options. John and Julie also needed some thinking space, and rest. I was adamant about going back to work the next day, despite a raft of advice to the contrary. Many people felt it would prove too big an assault on my psyche while so many other decisions were required. As far as I was concerned, though, it would somehow be less stressful if I could feel I had things under control on that front, and it represented a return to something normal and routine. A bit like falling off the proverbial horse: the longer you wait to climb back in the saddle, the harder it becomes to do so.

  PART II

  The long haul

  6

  A temporary

  dwelling

  JUST over a week after the fires, it seemed as if our feet hadn’t touched the ground. Here we were, middle-aged, homeless, owning only what we stood up in, driving a borrowed car, and with a small menagerie to take care of.

  Survivors of Black Saturday had limited accommodation choices in the short term: stay with family or friends, find something to rent in an already tight housing market, try an army tent in the initial emergency ‘refugee’ camp, stay in a motel, or borrow a caravan. The temporary accommodation provided by government and welfare authorities did not eventuate until months later, when they’d had time to assess the needs of the occupants of the 2200 homes that had been destroyed across the state.

  John and Julie did not waver in their insistence that we stay with them for however long it took, declaring that this was the most logical solution. But our early decision to stay with Tania, at least as a first move, seemed more practical. However, by day three in Eltham not only were the sounds of the suburbs driving us crazy—the crashing rubbish truck, kids on their way to school, all-night traffic, slamming gates—but we felt as if some part of us had been amputated. Being away from our known, albeit dramatically altered, environment was a stressful wrench. We were also anxious about John and Julie being the only remaining residents at the lower end of Deviation Road, isolated and vulnerable. Sean and I agreed that we needed to be near Number 59 too, for the sake of the horses and to keep the property safe from marauders. So, by 21 February, two weeks after Black Saturday, we’d asked John and Julie if we could take up their offer and return to the mountain.

  So, that weekend we ignored the skeptics and doomsayers, and four strong-minded, independent, self-sufficient and opinionated adults prepared to share a house. There were plenty of critics offering sage advice: we’d drive each other crazy; these sorts of arrangements never work; there’d be two women in one kitchen and two men with opposing views on how to do things; we’d have no personal space; John and Julie would want to sleep in, as they’d retired, whereas Sean and I would be up crashing about early in order to go to work. And what if the O’Connors were still there in a year’s time and wouldn’t budge? We heard it all, one way or another.

  Amongst other things, though, the way John and Julie’s house is configured meant we had a bedroom and dedicated bathroom in one section, divided from their sleeping quarters by a family room and kitchen, and we could use separate exits if necessary. One saving grace was that at this stage the moving process was easy: two carry bags did the job! When we arrived back at Number 48, a wardrobe and bedroom storage had already been cleared out to accommodate our needs. And John had not only organised space for our personal items but also set aside a corner of a shed for goods we would inevitably acquire along the way.

  That corner became what will remain a lifelong joke between us. Sean decided to remain off work for several weeks in order to deal with a raft of practical issues, such as tending to goats and horses, organising replacement cars, putting together some basic items we’d need and keeping up surveillance on Number 59. In sifting the rubble one day, he’d come across the remains of his .22 rifle. Although the gun was housed in the mandatory lockable steel cabinet, the barrel had, he told us, ‘bent like a banana’ in the fire. Whether bullets had been set off by the heat, we dreaded to think. ‘It could have been like the gunfight at the O.K. Corral over there,’ he mused.

  ‘I’ll ring the police tomorrow and ask them what the procedure is for guns,’ John offered. He and Julie had quickly started chasing up a variety of issues for us, to leave us free to concentrate on work, whereas they had time available during business hours. John later told us that he’d asked about the gun, but didn’t want to reveal its whereabouts for fear of creating an unnecessary hassle. ‘When they asked for a name, all I could think of was O’Brien. Well, it’s Irish!’ he said. From then on, our goods and chattels were stashed in ‘the O’Brien corner’.

  The first major item for diplomatic negotiation was the fact that we had the two dogs, Meg and Jazz, and John and Julie had Bertie the black cat. (Harley was staying on with Tania for further vet treatment and until we had our own place for him to come back to.) Meg and Jazz were used to being inside, but they’d never been exp
osed to cats, except the Smiths’ bossy Bonnie, who could bluff them both. Give them a cornered Bertie, though, and we had the potential for a major incident. While it may seem odd for us to have felt the need to devise a coexistence strategy for the animals in the midst of more pressing concerns, the reality is that even close friends have fallen out over lesser matters. We determined to solve these sorts of issues, or at least attempt to, before they caused domestic strife. Given that Bertie was prone to doing what cats do best—sleeping for most of the day—it was agreed that the dogs would have the run of the enclosed house and garden area during daylight hours and then, once they’d been fed, they’d be confined to the large laundry while Bertie had a nocturnal ramble. For the most part, there was animal peace.

  The relationship evolved day by day; there was no big official pow-wow about the rules of the house. John made it clear from day one that he wouldn’t discuss money in any formal way either: it was, as far as he was concerned, the last thing to get stressed about. (Mind you, John is the sort of person who turns hostile if you try to buy him a cup of coffee while out and about.) Instead, we agreed we’d share food shopping and play the rest by ear as we went along. Sean and I were confident we’d find ways to share the load.

  There was an unspoken assumption, mainly on our part, that we’d be there for a few months at most—after all, we’d be getting on with things pretty quickly now. But what we’d come to know and love over years of interaction as ‘John being Greek’ now manifested itself in adamant statements such as: ‘These things always take much longer than we expect, so just get used to it and relax’ and ‘Never offer to do something for somebody unless you are prepared to do it no matter how long it takes. Even if you don’t like that person, once the offer is made it must be fulfilled’. These opinions were peppered with some philosophical musings about the possible role of Nemesis and other ancient Greek deities in the outcome. The bottom line was that he meant it—we were in his charge, under his care, and there was no other consideration.

  Right from the start, the two-women-in-a-kitchen thing simply wasn’t an issue. None of us is fussy when it comes to food and, besides, both John and Sean are perfectly capable at the stove. Sean became the chief barbecuer, Julie and I would share whatever cooking indoors was needed, and John was the pasta king. Our mealtimes were sociable, full of laughter and conversation, and afterwards we rarely felt the need for television or any other entertainment. John, though, is a self-confessed television addict and has different sleeping patterns to the rest of the world, so Julie would record programs for him and he’d happily watch reruns of Zulu or whatever else took his fancy at 3 a.m.

  The conversations we shared endlessly became a valuable tool for moving forward. To twist a cliché, four heads were better than two when it came to sifting through options, making plans or simply trying to fathom what we’d all been through. It even eased the process of Sean and I arranging temporary accommodation at Number 59 while we built a new house, something we decided on within a few weeks of the fires. We didn’t want to be rushed into rebuilding, and the decision to first put up a barn came effortlessly. We’d been contemplating this in recent times anyway, as a value-adding replacement for the old sheds, and part of it could easily be fitted out for living in.

  John is one of those people who shops around, and he’d already done the homework when it came to sheds and barns. There wasn’t much he didn’t know about sheds of every shape and size, and he still had the contacts from his own construction efforts, which meant that getting quotes and briefing the builders happened quickly.

  ‘We could have an Amish barn-raising,’ John joked. Sean and I had spent some time in Amish country in Pennsylvania and were amazed by how these technology-shy communities could erect a massive barn in two days with sheer people-power and not a modern tool in sight. Ours would be more reliant on a rigging crew and scaffolding. But ‘Project Barn’ became a focus for all of us—a light at the end of the tunnel, a plan for the future, no matter how basic at this stage.

  As the weeks went by, one of the greatest challenges was to remain alert to psychological and physical events that might make or break how we reshaped our futures. There was no daily diagnosis of where our heads were at: instead, the newly constituted household adopted a ‘We’re all right’ attitude and soldiered on. But when least expected, routine and mundane tasks turned into mental mountains that threatened to sideswipe us without warning. And John and Julie were living with our loss and pain as well as trying to analyse their own monumental experience.

  One habit we continued was to make sure that all four of us were never away from the property at the same time: fears of being burgled, or invaded in some way, remained too strong. We were becoming insular, working in unison and not looking to anyone outside for help. We endlessly raked over the events of 7 February—how in the space of a few hours we’d gone from lightheartedly planning dinner to living through unbelievable destruction—comparing times, the warning signs, sights, sounds, smells, thoughts and feelings. It was as though we were making sure it wasn’t all a dream, that the complete story was downloaded.

  As we went through the motions of doing whatever it took to keep everything on some sort of even keel, it came as something of a surprise to realise we’d been with John and Julie for several weeks already. We’d discussed in great detail the options for getting our property cleaned up and the likely timelines we faced before we could reasonably expect to start even the temporary rebuilding process. Trying to think beyond that was impossible.

  ‘Just relax,’ John would say, in his philosophical way. ‘Think of a figure and double it and, in the meantime, just relax. We’ll work through it.’ It was to become something of a household maxim.

  7

  Rebuilding a life

  ABOUT a month after the fires, Sean and I hauled two wheelbarrows across the road to Number 59 to salvage what we could. There was nothing of any material value, but it was all that remained of our goods and chattels. The cars had been removed by insurers, only the melted Land Rover remaining—it was too dangerous to get at under the collapsed shed roof.

  Sifting through the rubble was soul destroying, more an exercise in letting go than an attempt to find precious things. But retrieving some outdoor items filled a sentimental need. A cracked terracotta birdbath, which had provided us with hours of feathered fun watching from the deck, went into the wheelbarrow first. Remnants of a Columbian windchime off the side verandah joined it; the lovely little terracotta pots, strung together, had always appealed to me. There was also a bird feeder, a small plastic greenhouse, two horse-feeding troughs and a smiling plaster Buddha that had kept watch over the backyard for years. A French oak wine barrel had survived the flames, but it stayed in the backyard because it was too heavy for the two of us to carry.

  We pulled our stash back to John and Julie’s and stored it in ‘the O’Brien corner’ of their shed. Around this time the state government announced it was funding the clean-up of destroyed properties and we registered early for that process. Initially we had assumed that this work would have to come out of insurance payouts, and we had two properties in need. Insurance assessors warned that the clean-up bill could be as high as $20 000 if asbestos was found on a property, the chances of which were extremely high in older sheds and dwellings. For the uninsured, such a cost could have extinguished their chances of starting again.

  At this point we had no clear idea of the next steps in a rebuilding process—just the clean-up seemed utterly daunting, not least the fallen and burnt trees littering every property. The local shire had already issued ‘Dangerous Property’ orders where chimneys were still standing and had given owners seven days to clean them up, which was more about highlighting legal liability than a realistic expectation of the work being achieved before the government-sponsored clean-up. But receiving such notices felt to us like an unreasonable, additional assault.

  While our decision to stay and rebuild was made early on, it was a d
istant proposition. The period between dealing with the initial loss and reaching a point where you are capable of deciding how to replace the roof over your head is one of the toughest phases of the recovery process. And even once the decision is made, it isn’t just a case of collecting the insurance money, planning your dream house and whistling up the builder, then throwing the housewarming party a few months later. Every step of the journey is littered with major emotional hurdles, traps for the unwary, rushed and perhaps regretted decisions, bureaucratic procedures, and more than a sprinkling of gratuitous advice. It confronts you with the very best of human nature and generosity, but also the very worst—opportunists and shysters who will steal, do a shoddy job or try the hard-sell.

  We’d never before built a house from scratch and it was a very steep learning curve as we negotiated potentially costly pitfalls. When you add to the mix the emotional roller-coaster we were already on, which clouded sensible decision-making processes and would side-track us unexpectedly, it’s no wonder that we felt we’d been smacked in the face when the enormity of the project inevitably hit. Building a house under normal conditions is a time-consuming process, from the planning to the supervision stages. We were also facing the prospect of re-establishing a garden from scratch—in itself a daunting proposition. We wondered if we had the energy to take it all on, or if it would be easier to simply buy something already established. And what was the best course in economic terms? That was the million-dollar question (so to speak!). What could we actually afford? Restoring value in a destroyed property is one thing; over-capitalising and becoming saddled with debt is quite another. We were very aware of the broader situation too—the nation was in the grip of a worldwide economic downturn, with no guarantees of ongoing employment or sympathetic banks awash with credit.