Without Warning

by Jane O'Connor

  Once we decided what we could afford, then came the next raft of decisions. Where will we site the house? Should we build over the existing site, which already had plumbing and power, or build on another part of the property, which would mean having to construct even those basic services? It was overwhelming. Trying to envisage the entire project from beginning to end, in one go, was mentally paralysing. We realised we had to break it down into logical steps, and even then accept that our plans would need to be adaptable.

  Our first step was having to come to terms with the physical destruction wrought by the fires. There is no prescriptive time-scale for this journey and each individual deals with it differently. For both Sean and me, gathering up anything salvageable was part of the weaning process. Strangely, each visit to Number 59 caused a graphic replaying in my head of what was lying under the rubble— my brain was archiving the colours, shapes and exact locations of contents. I felt no overwhelming grief for the loss of material things: compared to lives spared and lives lost, they were of little importance. Rather, my visual itemising, often room by room, cupboard by cupboard and drawer by drawer, was involuntary. Sean, for his part, felt driven to try to find precious items that might have been spared; it was his way of still fighting the destructive monster.

  Then, when sleep was elusive or while I was stuck in peakhour traffic on the way to or from work, my brain would suddenly regurgitate the contents of the house. Quite ridiculous things: the bills stuck under a magnet on the fridge door and whether I’d thought to pay them; what was in the pantry, fridge and freezer; the china stored in boxes in the shed, which hadn’t seen the light of day for years; the green suede shoes I’d bought in New York. I remember those shoes. They’d jumped out at me in a shop on Fifth Avenue: they were different to anything on offer back home and always drew lots of compliments. They were funky but flat and comfortable—a perfect case of fashion meeting functionality—and I still miss them. This constant rehearsal of our house contents had an unforeseen, helpful result, eventually leading to several logical lists. One was of goods and chattels that we had used constantly, another of things that rarely made an appearance. Sentimental items, family heirlooms, photographs and works of art fell into their own category.

  Accepting that no amount of contents insurance could replace the irreplaceable was the second step in the recovery process. Your mother’s jewellery, or a granddaughter’s primary-school paintings, can never be replicated. Our books, amassed over years, Sean’s extensive CD and vinyl record collections, his precious piano and drum kit—gone forever. We also found ourselves acknowledging that a fair proportion of our general household goods had been surplus to requirements—it is staggering how much ‘stuff ’ we human beings can amass. ‘Look at it as the ultimate decluttering exercise!’ one friend offered. And she was right. Who needed six salad bowls, horrible mugs that we’d replaced ages ago, or hoarded worn-out linen items that never saw the light of day? Their ghosts could be, and were, jettisoned painlessly, wiped off the list of things to occupy the brain. Bit by bit, it became a cathartic mental dumping exercise, a way of accepting what had gone and either giving it a decent, rueful send-off or putting it in the ‘Good riddance!’ basket.

  It was important to deal with our finances in the same way. Trying to handle money issues when the brain still isn’t functioning normally is a big ask. In this we were lucky to get wonderful counsel from people who went out of their way to share their own post-disaster experiences—how they had, for example, felt the need to spend money replacing things before they’d determined what they truly needed. One letter I received from an elderly woman urged me not to make the same mistake she had, racing out and buying everything new. While it felt good at the time, she said, a few years later she was faced with the expense of having to replace it all again at the same time. Staggering the buying process made sense. Others urged us to make do with as little as possible until the mental fog started to lift and our housing options become a lot clearer. We’d already determined to furnish any temporary accommodation with the donated goods we had stored, but the advice was encouraging and reinforcing.

  Next we had to come to terms with the clean-up, which was scheduled for April. Many survivors found themselves clinging to their personal dust and rubble—macabre perhaps, but it was like honouring the dead. Whenever there was evidence that our ruins had been rifled by strangers, which happened on several occasions, we felt physically ill and uncontrollably angry. Once Sean came across some metal storage boxes which, having fused shut in the heat of the fires, had been jemmied open while we weren’t around. He also found the charred contents of our shed scattered in all directions, and sheets of roofing iron dragged off to the side (clearly this had not been done by forensics people, who did you the courtesy of leaving an indicator when they visited). There were the children, aged only around ten, who John had chased off the site, only to cop a string of foul abuse. After the roadblocks were lifted, late in March, we saw people with metal detectors going over properties, looking for ‘souvenirs’—our destroyed lives had become somebody else’s entrepreneurial opportunity. ‘I’m tempted to put up one of those “Keep off or you’ll be shot” signs,’ Sean said. It was sorely testing my non-violent principles as well.

  For us, getting rid of the remains became a priority, but these things always take longer than you’d like. For us, as long as the debris was still there the phoenix couldn’t rise from the ashes; we needed a blank canvas. The managers of the clean-up process had set up site offices in the township and the demolition convoys had become an integral part of the local traffic scene. Loaded to the hilt, large-muscle trucks, bulldozers and tracked vehicles with huge grabbing mechanisms would roar up the main-road hill to the designated landfill site, then come screaming back an hour later. ‘We’ve been teaching the crews to get in touch with their feminine side,’ one supervisor offered lightheartedly. The hardheads of the industry were not used to being delicate about whether a daisy got squashed.

  The managers were patient and understanding with our constant queries about timelines. There had already been occasions when the demolition crew had arrived at a property only to have the owners call a halt because they couldn’t after all deal with seeing their material life dumped on the back of a truck. While we awaited our turn, Sean and I would try to sketch plans for a new home. Mostly, though, my paper either stayed blank or threw up a replica of our destroyed house. The old layout would tumble out automatically and stare back at me from the paper—it was frustrating, and doing nothing for my state of mind.

  Then, at last, I reached a turning point. In one of our offloading sessions with John and Julie, I started to relate the things about Number 59 that we hadn’t liked, found impractical or would have preferred to change. For example, the bathroom opening off the family room had always been a bugbear; so too was the small, impractical laundry, and the lack of built-in storage. This in itself was mentally confronting. How picky, obscene even, to be criticising what we would have had back in a heartbeat, warts and all, given the chance. But it worked. The more I conjured up the things I would have changed, the easier it became to turn to something new, and bit by bit an entirely different layout started to emerge. Both Sean and I would play at refining it. We had no conflict over the basic concept, wanting it all to be as environmentally sustainable as possible, with no wasted spaces, everything having a practical purpose but also replicating the warmth and earthiness we’d injected into ‘the Battlestar’. There was no thought of costing our ideas at this stage—rather, it was a cathartic focus on the future, a goal that could be aimed for one step at a time.

  Now our attention turned to constructing the barn. Here it was a bonus to have a handy husband with an engineering brain who could manage the project. ‘It will be really funky. Like a New York warehouse apartment,’ Sean declared. (Well yes, bar the Manhattan skyline.) Thus was conceived what became known as ‘the Barn Mahal’. It had to be American style, with a pitched roof and a mezzanin
e, and there was also instant consensus that it had to be red. Why, I don’t know, except that barn and red seemed to go together.

  ‘We’ll put it where the house was. That way we can use the old septic tank and the paths and brick paving,’ Sean said. ‘Let’s salvage and re-use what we can.’ He went through reams of paper drawing up a big red barn, with his own engineering specifications. It would give us enormous leeway: comfortable enough to live in so we could spread the house-building process (and its financing), and providing adequate storage for cars and building equipment. And it would look amazing from the outside, rather than turning into one of those ‘temporary’ sheds that never quite gets removed or improved further down the track.

  Clearing the site now became even more urgent. The goods being offered by friends and relief agencies had become a major issue, with good basic items having to be rejected or delayed for the simple reason that John and Julie’s spare bedroom and sheds were already filling up and there was nowhere to store them. It hadn’t taken long to go from owning only what we stood up in to having to buy extra coathangers and a shoe rack. Bigger items needed a different solution, and by April we’d hired a commercial storage unit off the mountain. There was a suggestion that shipping containers were being brought into the community as temporary storage, but for most residents this initiative seemed to fall through the cracks, so rather than relying on others we sourced and bought our own.

  There were also rumours that philanthropic individuals were offering to provide a large storage facility for the community to share. Unfortunately, this initiative appeared to get bogged down in council arguments about where it should be situated, despite the fact that it could be used for community purposes later. We couldn’t wait for the issue to be resolved so made our own arrangements. It proved to be an inspired decision, putting something substantial back on the property, providing the reassurance of lockable and secure storage, and rapidly paying for itself in saving us the costs of a commercial facility. Besides, we couldn’t have bought a small garden shed for what this steel number cost us.

  Money was a constant consideration. Our initial insurance payouts had been rapid, and our first use for this money was to clear all our debts. There were no ‘handouts’ in relation to Number 1 and nor should there have been; it is an investment and any investment carries a risk. But the financial reality was that it had gone from a renovated, rented asset to an unimproved block of land—the only remaining structure was the Hills hoist and even that was totally bent out of shape. We had no hope of rebuilding there, even if we could raise the energy to do so, but at least we could sell part of it if our finances became stretched. The remaining insurance payouts we earmarked for building our new house, though the finishing and furnishing of that will occur over a longer period of time.

  But many other people, once they had paid out their mortgage— a requirement by banks in many cases where properties were totally destroyed in the fires—still owed some of the original amount and only had inadequate contents insurance to subsidise rebuilding or buying elsewhere. It has frequently been questioned why people weren’t adequately insured, with much tut-tutting about the stupidity of this. But nothing is as simple as it seems on the surface. Most tenants, for instance, never think to insure their belongings with contents insurance—indeed, nor did I when I rented properties in the past.

  Following the fires it became rapidly clear to us that, where insurance is concerned, you get what you are prepared to pay for. I’ve yet to meet anybody from the fire-affected areas who says insurance will go close to covering their losses, even when they had better-than-average cover. The reality is that it is almost impossible to accurately calculate what a property and its contents are truly worth. Even a room-by-room calculation will generally be an underestimate. Usually, we think in terms of the larger items— lounge suites, television sets, bedroom furniture, fridge, washing machine, dishwasher, etc.—the ‘big ticket’ items that we don’t replace very often. But what can seriously trip up the maths are the sums for replacing daily basics: the contents of a linen cupboard that services a family of four or five (not including the doona cover you bought on a whim, or the spare stuff for unexpected guests), or every item in kitchen drawers and cupboards such as day-to-day cutlery, implements, crockery, glassware, cookware and electrical appliances. Now apply this equation to every room, and outside too. In our case, in addition to all the structures and infrastructure, we had also lost the cars and the shed and garage contents.

  In a community such as Kinglake, reliance on motor vehicles is extremely high. Public transport was non-existent when we arrived here and only now, post-disaster, is there anything remotely resembling a regular bus service. The loss of motor vehicles on Black Saturday was huge, even on properties where houses survived, and replacing them was an early and urgent need, particularly for families with children. Car manufacturers offered new-model ‘bushfire relief vehicles’ for between six and twelve months to people who had not been insured. Such vehicles gave people breathing space while they sorted out their finances, but the recipients still faced having to buy something else in a few months’ time. Of course, the loan vehicles were great grist for the rumour mill: Hah! There they are living in a caravan and driving a brand-new car. Or: They didn’t lose their house, but they’ve got a swank new set of wheels. In our case, we replaced our three comprehensively insured cars with a ‘workhorse’ dual-cab ute that would hold its value, and a secondhand, economical runabout.

  It was mid-April before we received the call to let us know it was our turn for demolition and clean-up. We were required to be present, to sign the authorisation and ensure the crew knew what was going and what was staying. As the date got closer, feelings of massive emotional upheaval were fighting with the desire to have the job done so we could grit our teeth and just get on with things.

  Clean-up day dawned in typical Kinglake fashion—it was freezing and the wind was howling, bringing intermittent bursts of sleet. Sean realised that he hadn’t yet taken down the expensive fittings that had survived on the otherwise melted bore header tank (a bit of plumbing recycling). But it was all still sitting up on the high stand, and Sean had recently injured his wrist badly while lifting heavy debris.

  ‘I’ll go up the ladder and get them,’ I offered.

  He laughed. ‘You, the vertigo queen, up a ladder with a bloody big wrench!’ True: heights and I are a bad combination. But John has the same problem, so I was determined to do it. The three of us beat our way through the weather before the trucks turned up just after dawn. ‘I’ll be okay as long as the two of you are holding the ladder steady,’ I assured everyone (including myself ). Up I went, rung by rung, clutching a seriously oversized wrench. Halfway up, that swaying, sick, dizzy feeling kicked in. I had to use both hands to get the wrench around the fittings. Terrific! But somehow it all happened, though by the time I was back on the ground every muscle from feet to backside was screaming and shaking and my head was spinning. It felt good to have faced my fear, though the phobia remains.

  We headed into our shipping container for some shelter while we waited for the crew to turn up. We reminisced about the entire suburbs of containers converted into simple dwellings which we’d passed while driving across America some years earlier, and the ones turned into dockside workshops in parts of Asia, and wondered why greater use wasn’t made of them elsewhere. As a recyclable item, we decided it was a winner—certainly better than being left to bob hazardously about in oceans. A coat of paint and a bit of landscaping, and that container is staying.

  The sounds of heavy machinery announced the arrival of the demolition crew. They stood on the front lawn shivering, in spite of their polarfleece jackets. ‘Welcome to Kinglake, guys, and this isn’t even winter,’ I said. They hopped from foot to foot and I realised that their sensitivity-towards-fire-victims training was kicking in: not wanting to rush us, politely engaging in conversation when they’d rather be in a warm cabin. Sean walked them through what we
wanted retained. It wasn’t much—the greasetrap and bore entrance in addition to the paving and the septic tank. They donned asbestos suits, set up a toxic-materials monitor and fired up the machinery. It hit me harder than I had expected when I saw the first scoopful of debris being unceremoniously flung into the truck. It was easier to walk away and leave them to it, without looking back.

  By the end of the day, Number 59 was a blank space. There was a levelled area where the house had stood; the once-flourishing front garden was a sea of track-marks; the driveway and side lawn were sporting deep, muddy grooves. We were going to need a clean-up after the clean-up. But the razed landscape made it easier for us to envisage the future, and from that day the barn project became our primary focus. It was a nightly subject of discussion with John and Julie. For John it became something positive to help plan and pore over, though he was careful never to offer gratuitous advice. The weather was continuing to be unkind—wet, muddy and windy. We were also at the mercy of the council permit process, which was proving to be slow and tedious; it took weeks even to receive the engineering drawings for the structure. Meanwhile, life went on: we went to work, came home to John and Julie’s, and continued planning the fit-out. There were moments when our objective seemed to retreat further into the distance and our guilt grew about our extended imposition on John and Julie. They, on the other hand, were never anything other than encouraging. They’d been through the experience of building from scratch and well understood the delays and frustrations. We all took things day by day.

  John and Julie also appreciated our decision to opt for ‘camping’ in the barn once it was built, rather than rushing to build a house. For us, the connection to our land was very strong, and we wanted to be close to the project, not travelling from a distance every weekend to try to get things done. At the same time, the prospect of having to trawl the private rental market, to maintain another property and have limited leisure time to get on with rebuilding our lives, was a total turn-off.