After the Fire

I’m calling this series of posts  After the Fire, although that’s not strictly true. The fires are still burning, and will continue to devour vast swathes of this country, probably for some months yet. For me, it’s a month since fire consumed much of my home town and I’m trying hard to untangle the maelstrom of disordered thoughts drumming inside my head, to make sense of the awfulness. Is such a reflection therapeutic? That remains to be seen. I just know that it’s something I need to do -  to set down some sort of record of my own experience of this life-changing event. Anyway, here goes...

After the Fire - Part 1

This time exactly a month ago I was on a plane home from Perth. I’d spent Christmas with my grown-up kids. As I boarded the flight in Perth, Mallacoota was foremost in my mind. Huge bushfires had been consuming the east coast of Australia for many weeks. A warning for all tourists to leave East Gippsland had been published the previous day. A notification came through, as I caught a ferry across the Swan River, that a fast-moving fire had begun at Wingan, and that the Princes Highway was closed. Too late to leave Mallacoota, it had said. The next day I began my journey “home”- to Mallacoota.

I changed flights in Melbourne under an apocalyptic sky. While I waited to board, the VicEmergency app on my phone beeped. The Wingan fire was expected to impact Mallacoota between 5-6pm. The Genoa-Mallacoota Road had been closed. Mallacoota, at the far end of that road, had been cut off. I sat alone at the airport, sweltering in failed air-con, crying helplessly.

My wonderful friend Jane collected me from Canberra airport with news I already knew: “You can’t go home tomorrow”.

My house is on the Genoa-Mallacoota Road, a couple of kilometres outside town. My next door neighbour sent me a text before she evacuated – what did I want her to do with my chooks? We decided putting them in the house would be best – a place of last resort. Thank you, neighbour – the fact that you even thought of Sybil and Tibbs while you were preparing to leave your own home still amazes me and makes me teary.

The next morning – New Years Eve – I woke early after a night of broken sleep, knowing that my friends and neighbours had probably slept far less, if at all. How the hell do you get to sleep when you know that a monstrous fire is heading straight for you, devouring everything in its path - and that there’s no escape?

The ABC coverage of events on the TV, up and down the south coast of NSW and across the border into East Gippsland, was terrifying, compelling viewing. The fire still hadn’t impacted Mallacoota, but it was bearing down on my home town as “thousands huddled on the beach”, ringed by firefighters determined to save lives first, and whatever they could save of my small, beautiful, remote town, nestled in the bushland by the sea, next.

The world knows how events unfolded, so I don’t need to repeat them. What I can tell you is how I felt, watching and listening to the voices of friends and neighbours being interviewed, hearing that the morning sky had turned blacker than night, that “the sirens just went off”,  that people were preparing to jump into the water if necessary.

There was a knot of anxiety in my chest. I found it hard to draw in a deep breath. I didn’t want to watch or listen, but I couldn’t not. I should’ve been there. I was glad not to be there. I was watching a bigger picture than those in Mallacoota were watching, but from a distance. All they knew was what was right in front of them and coming for them, what they could see and hear and smell and feel. I felt grateful, but oh so guilty for feeling grateful. My imagination will never be able to grasp the reality of that terror, but I can understand every little bit of the helplessness they felt.

What I had in common with those who were there was a sense that my world had changed forever. Like them, I didn’t know whether my house was still there. I was certain that my poor cats had been incinerated in the boarding kennels at Genoa, a beautiful bushland setting where I’d left them 8 days earlier. I imagined their final terrifying moments over and over, the loop playing in my head refusing to be shut off.

It was devastating.

2019: so far, so crap - and loving my community.

Well, I had every intention of making 2019 a good year, but 4 months in, I have to say it's a bit shite.

Most days for the last 2 months it's been a struggle to get out of bed. No, not the Black Dog, although the click click of its nasty little claws patter about in the recesses of my mind now and then as I haul myself up, gingerly place my feet on the floor and wonder how much will it hurt today?

Most days, the answer is - a lot.

So..... this is what Ross River Virus feels like. Its other name is Epidemic Polyarthritis. Ouch.

The mozzies this year have been dreadful - clouds of them, nasty bitey little monsters who attack in squadrons and leave victims flapping helplessly (and futilely) at two or three simultaneous bite-zones. Bastards. And it only takes one of them to bring you down. I hope I managed to splat whichever one it was that got me.

I used up all my sick leave in the first 2 weeks, way back in late February, so now I hobble in to work, thankful that my shifts are short. Sometimes holding a pen is difficult. Bending down to reshelve books on the bottom shelf is - unpleasant - and keeping the smile on my face when all I want to do is cry, or go home to have a little lie-down, is getting harder every day. Nerve pain in my right arm and hand - the joint swelling appears to have exacerbated my not-too-bad carpal tunnel problem - wakes me up in the night, most nights.

It's cruel. There were two consecutive days last week when, for the first time in 2 months, I had NO PAINS in my feet! I was so sure I'd "turned a corner". Perhaps I had, but there was another brick wall waiting there for me and I splattered headlong into it. Fuck.

The pains and swellings in my extremities are one thing, but the blow to my energy is perhaps the most cruel. My calendar painting is very behind schedule. My house and garden are a mess. I get hungry but have zero energy or motivation to cook. I eat a lot of biscuits. I've gained three kilograms. I miss my walks.

I've painted a fairly bleak picture, haven't I? Come on, shines, where's the silver lining? 

This is the bit where I tell you how wonderful it is to be part of this small community. Wonderful friends have leapt to my aid, mowing the lawn, pruning, providing meals, firewood and a hot water bottle; offers of errands and shopping have abounded, and I've never had so many hugs. I love you all, my lovely, kind-hearted friends.

Abundant birdlife, visible from the kitchen and lounge-room windows, has been extremely entertaining. This is the time of year that the bowerbirds descend, stealing the chook pellets, splashing in the birdbaths and doing all sorts of interesting things. And I've read a LOT of great books.

Another thing that makes it bearable, believe it or not, is dispassionately observing the path of this stupid ailment as though I'm somebody else - an outsider watching with a sort of weird fascination as a rash appears and disappears, as random fingers swell and subside, as knuckles or ankles disappear and reappear. [Side note: this may not a good thing to tell a GP, especially if you are a middle-aged woman. It could go either way, really - you might be thanked for your accurate observations because they've been helpful in the eventual diagnosis of your debilitating, rapid-onset mystery illness, but you could just as easily be accused of neuroticism or somatisation.]

One more good thing - Ross River Virus, while incurable, is self-limiting. This too, will pass. I still have high hopes of 2019. Pass the aspirin, please!

As 2019 Begins...

Happy 2019 - a year for more watercolour birdies!

A friend asked me whether I'd made any resolutions for the new year. As I never keep them there isn't really any point - why build in failure before the year even begins? Besides, I've already given up the things that generally feature in New Year's Resolutions - smoking and drinking - my weight is more or less where I want it to be and I'm mostly happy with the person I am.

I can live with the level of mess in my house and the lack of organisation. Ditto money. So don't make promises to yourself that you can't keep! Gosh - can I be getting older and wiser (or at least, more realistic)?

Then I thought about it some more. Bugger. There are some things I'd like to have a go at this year. Here they are, divided into "more" or "less" sections:

MORE

• learning - try to learn something new each day (that sounds wanky, doesn't it? But it's fitting for a New Year's resolution, right? They're often pie-in-the-sky wanky...) In any case, learning new stuff may stave off brain deterioration as I get older. And face it, I spent enough years burning as many brain cells as I could. I need all the poor struggling ones that are still left!
• painting (or drawing) - art in general, really. Maybe get started on the mosaic I've been threatening to do. And poetry - more poetry! Words are fabulous. Enter a short story competition. Whoa, take a step back - actually write a story first. to enter into a short story competition. That's better. Aaaaaaand - planning for the 2020 art calendar is already underway - that's a good start. So far, so good!
• salad (no point resolving to cook more as I loathe cooking and would be dooming myself to immediate failure!) Can I at least TRY to get excited at the prospect of salad....thinking thinking thinking... nope. No excitement - just do it!
• saying 'No' - it will ensure I go into 2020 less tired and less cross with myself.
• anger - at the right things!

"Mollymawk" - watercolour/mixed media and original words © Sue Hines 2018

LESS

• plastic
• pessimism
• procrastination - that will definitely make the "more" list easier. No more last minute rush to get the last painting finished to get to the printer for the next calendar, ok?
• stuff - I will turn 60 this year, and ought to be culling, not collecting; streamlining, not swelling (confession: I started this one already, with beneficiaries being the Community Op-Shop and the Sea Shepherd garage sale.) Good start, Hinesey. Big tick for you 🗹
• arseholes - (oops, bad grammar - that should be "fewer", not "less"). Begone, all those who would bring me down, make me sad or fearful, frustrated or feeling inadequate. I am perfectly adequate, thank you very much!

Onwards and upwards.

 

Happy 2019!

For the Hoodies

For the Hoodies

On learning of the deaths of MK’s chicks at Betka Beach, Mallacoota.

There’s something about these tiny courageous creatures,

Some imperative of instinct, some inescapable miracle of persistence.

Year after year they come to the beach. They scrape, they lay, they sit

At the mercy of the tides (which are incapable of humanity).

In the flailing fists of storms and the beating of the summer sun they sit bravely

Between the trampling feet of tourists and locals alike and

the thundering paws of all those dogs who “never chase birds”.

They hatch, defend, almost inevitably mourn

The tiny souls whose lives they cannot protect.

They can be forgiven for following their bird nature,

The pull of place each season, however hopeless it turns out to be.

And we?

We who are capable of change and choice, who choose to ignore the signs,

Who choose not to leash our dogs,

Who choose not to walk somewhere else for a brief, life-giving time -

We who pat ourselves on our highly-evolved backs, full of civilised self-regard -

We will never have half the courage and sweetness of these plucky little birds

Who struggle in the teeth of adversity.

We cannot be forgiven.

(c) Sue Hines 2018

Littering over Summer

LITTER: A PERENNIAL PROBLEM IN A TOURIST TOWN

In the midst of tourist season I’ve a most compelling reason

To put forth a proposition to the people of this town

To avoid the awful bummer that confronts us every summer

We could bring in prohibition just to keep the litter down

Almost every can and bottle scattered freely through the wattle

And the Mallacoota beaches and the Mallacoota streets

Was once full of beer or bourbon and it’s messing up our urban

Grassy verges and the reaches of the natural world so sweet.

Tourists spend a lot of money but it isn’t very funny

When the trade-off is a heap of litter halfway to the sun

It seems the summer drinkers are the dirty rotten stinkers

Groups of bottle-dropping creeps with no respect for anyone

Every year when they’ve departed, groups of locals, broken-hearted

Get together to clean up the filthy mess that’s left behind

It’s our home, we want to share it - but we have to then repair it

After boozy litter-droppers of the grubby thoughtless kind

This harsh message I should soften, for the folks that visit often

Love this place for all its wild and pristine loveliness, it’s true

It’s the litter-chucking scum who should feel free not to come

Back to places they’ve defiled – and take your litter back with you!

© Sue Hines 2018