Memorial...and random ramblings

Today is a very weird day.

It's 142 days since The Fire hit Mallacoota.

Today, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, and almost 5 months after the fire changed life for everybody in this town, the Grocon cleanup crew have been demolishing what's left of  the homes of my next door neighbour and her next door neighbour, and I've been hit by a huge and unexpected wave of grief. Wow.

On the roof of my other next door neighbour's house stands a tradie with what looks and sounds like a giant hairdryer, drying off the grouting (or whatever it's called) on the roof tiles.

In the middle of the two, armed with one of those weeding implements, I battle Kikuyu grass, ably assisted by my two chooks, Sybil and Tibbs. Overhead - quite low, really, two Wedge-tailed Eagles circle. It's surreal.

I don't know quite what to make of it.

In the months since the fire I've been keeping an eye on my neighbour's place. It'd be a pretty low act for somebody to rob someone who's already lost everything - but it happens, so I've been the archetypal stickybeaking neighbour, dashing outside to check out any unexpected noise coming from "the ruins". Usually it's just a bemused kangaroo hopping over the downed roofing iron, but I also startled the insurance assessor, early on...

I learned, early on, that rubble doesn't sit still. In the strong winds that we get here, the roofing iron has flapped and danced, shifting its position on the land. I used to worry that it would become airborne, but it didn't.

I learned that weeds don't mind creeping underneath the rubble, inching their way across the landscape , and I pulled out great swathes of Thunbergia as it crept under the shifting sheets of iron.

I learned that the ruined landscape, the longer it sits there, starts to look normal. I am no longer horrified by it. When my sweet, thoughtful neighbour says she feels so bad that I have to look out at it every day, I don't know how to react, because my first inclination is to shrug and say "nah, it's ok" - but that sounds so callous. It's not ok, but it's become the New Normal and I've stopped being horrified by it.

When Grocon first arrived to start the job, there was a sense of relief.  And yet, this morning when they put up their temporary fencing and the demolition machine moved in, its long articulated arm lifting and shifting screeching piles of roofing iron, I was overcome by completely unexpected grief; grief for my neighbours and the homes they've lost, because until today, those "homes" were still there in some form. Now they, and everything they contained, will be cleared - erased from the landscape. It's so awfully sad.

That started me thinking then about how those of us who haven't lost anything, actually HAVE - and on top of the "survivor guilt" is the guilt I feel when I dare to acknowledge the fire's effects on me - the loss, however temporary, of a fabulous neighbour; the feelings of security and safety I used to have; the loss of the town I know and love - while I sit in my still-standing home.

Saying "well I lost something too, you know" sounds whiny and  pathetic in the face of other people's overwhelming losses, so you don't say it - and you try not to even think it - and that comes at a cost too, I suppose. I am one of the lucky ones, after all. And as I watch the excavator lift armful after armful of twisted furniture - there goes a bedframe, and a sofa-bed - and listen to the men in Hazmat suits raking over broken glass and crockery, that is reinforced.

Trying to look anywhere but next door, I think again about the Wedgies. The other day, when Grocon was occupied cleaning another ruined property just up the street, I noticed the pair circling very close to the road and quite low over the clean-up area. It was quite a buzz. Imagine my surprise, then, to see a pair circling quite low over the current clean-up area this morning.

Perhaps the rubble has been a temporary home to all sorts of little critters - rabbits, antechinus, bush-rats - and the Wedgies have learned to follow the excavators, whose giant pincered arms resemble the curved beaks of carrion-eaters, pecking away at the wreckage.  Those clever Wedgies must've learned that the giant orange machines mean a potential easy meal for them as the little critters flee the giant scything beaks.

Encroaching rain chased me indoors after about an hour of Kikuyu-pulling teamwork with the chooks, and afterwards, this:

As I said - it's a weird day.