After the Fire 2 - Ordinary Heroes

When catastrophe strikes, people’s reactions can surprise. We see the very best (and sometimes the worst) in people. I think everyone in Mallacoota will have stories about ordinary heroes. Here are mine:

My next door neighbours. One, who thought of my chooks’ safety before evacuating, lost her home. My neighbour on the other side fought alone to save our homes. Amazing courage and determination. I’ve wracked my brain trying to think of appropriate thank you gifts, but honestly, what material gift can ever truly be an adequate reflection of the gratitude I feel for the heroism of these lovely people?

I finished my last post with mention of my two cats. Basil and Pollywobble spent Christmas in the Genoa Boarding Kennels. I was due to collect them on the morning of 31 December on my way home. From my place of refuge outside Michelago I mourned their almost certain demise. About 36 hours later I got a phone call from Jacquie, one of the owners of the kennels.

“Do you want to talk to your pussycats? They’re not very happy with me after I shut them in a box within in a box while all the colours of hell rained down around us.”

I’ve cried a lot of tears over this terrible time. They flowed pretty freely just then, and still do every time I think about it. The Age published a story about a week later – here’s a link to it. 

I can’t imagine the courage it took for Ron and Jacquie to shut themselves, their own pets and their furry “guests” inside a modified shipping container as that monster fire approached. The heat, the smoke, the darkness and the freight-train roar…  The thought of it gives my claustrophobic self conniptions, even writing this – there’s that knot of anxiety again.

Mail Van David is another “ordinary” hero. Basil got his prescription cat-food because David retrieved it from the Post Office in Mallacoota and drove through a devastated landscape to deliver it to that bushland setting while I fretted in Yass.

The extraordinary kindness of one of our local police officers used a medication delivery run to the kennels to reunite me with Basil and Pollywobble a few days after my return. The road between Mallacoota and Genoa was still closed, as was the Highway (and the bush access road to the kennels, undoubtedly). I’m sorry carsick Basil pooped in your car as you drove him home. I wish I could say that Basil is sorry too, but he’s a cat and a curmudgeon and was possibly delighted with himself. Thank you thank you thank you (cue more tears).

Heroes are the ordinary people who do extraordinary things in extraordinary times, and I am so very grateful to have so many of those wonderful people in my life.