Regeneration of the Native bush

It is wonderful to see the surrounding area putting out new growth after the devastating Bushfires

Food Again

Finally after being so preoccupied with the Bushfires and the damage to our land and property, I am once again interested in FOOD.

These tomatoes were happily growing in our vegetable garden before the fire. However what was left on the bushes became roast tomatoes and the plants themselves charred and dried.

We had Spagetti Marinara for dinner last night, an old favourite with a glass of white for me and a glass of red for Ian.

Lets Look at some Gentle Beauty

I am tired of looking at all the Black & Grey in the country.

Iceberg Roses along the driveway at our home in Melbourne:

More Stress

The builder that has been engaged to do the repair work around the house by the insurance company has been causing further upset and mayhem. (See below Working Through)
He rang about ten days ago and said to Ian..”Can you pick me up in M……” cause I don’t want to bring the truck out to your place.”….a round trip of 75 Kms TWICE. Ian didn’t.

Late in the afternoon we hear someone yelling down at the front gate, for someone to drive him up to the house. We yell back that ordinary cars have been going up and down the driveway all day and that we are sure his small Isuzu truck will make it.!!!

More demands, admonishments, questions “how am I going to get the tank into the property?” “Can my work men camp here in tents, I’ll provide a Porta Loo”?
He leaves and we are stressed out again.

I would say the final straw happened on last Friday however it wasn’t.

When we arrived at the property we saw that someone had broken into the house through the back toilet window. As there was no Porta Loo anywhere it wasn’t hard to guess who had done this. Nothing was taken but there was lots of mess in the bathroom and finger prints all over the wall next to the window.

We contacted our builder who rang us back saying that none of his men had broken in but they did use the toilet as the back door was unlocked. This of course was not true. Grrrr all he had to do was apologise as it wasn’t a big drama, by denying made the whole thing more sordid. Ian was furious.

Ian had already left the property and I was late leaving on Monday morning. Thank Goodness as two major disasters were averted.

The builders mates turned up and I mentioned I would move my car out of there way. “Where are you going to park it” ?
“Oh just down there”
“The whole driveway is being fenced first so don’t be long”

"What ????"

They were going to fence the driveway with barbed wire at Tony (the builders’ instruction) It would have been awful, it never was fenced and never was any mention made of this. Why would you want to fence in this pleasant drive up to the house. Of course the drive no longer looks like this but I am told it will again one day!!

Then the painters turned up with the WRONG colour paint. Not just a little bit different but with Pink paint instead of a beige colour. Tony had told them the wrong colour.

I rang the Insurance fellow and told him the troubles and said I could no longer even speak to Tony. Tony did call back and started to say something about getting our property confused with another one, but I said I had to hang up and I did.

A LOVELY DAY AT CALLIGNEE:

Some friends of ours organised a working bee and 10 of us got to work clearing, weeding chainsawing, and planting new plants.

The garden bed before our friends got stuck into it.

This was a very lovely thing for them to do and we really appreciated it.

Garden Bed after a serious going over.

One Frond

......does not a garden make but it's a start.

This soft tree fern has put out one frond to start the slow regeneration process of the surrounding flora.

These lovely flowers were sent by L

We went out to dinner a few days ago and during the meal we were startled by of all things ....an earthquake. What next?

Scallops for me.

Beef rib for Ian

Working Through

I have been feeling very bad for the past three weeks since the bush fires, but now I am very pleased to say that I feel like my old self again. I thought the self that I know best had desserted me and in her place was this jittery, negative mess. I am very glad she didn't stay around any longer.












I took this photo on the morning of the 7th Feb because this Flowering Gum was finally out in bloom and looked very nice in the clear morning light.






This is how the above tree looks now: dessicated.
You can see how all the dry leaves have fallen on the ground....looks better than the blackened earth

Post traumatic stress syndrome or in old terms shell shock. This is a disorder that can develop after exposure to one or more traumatic events that caused or even threatened grave physical harm.

I just kept remembering the more dangerous times of the bush fires, particularly when I tried to sleep. It was as though my thoughts were in a loop or on rewind, a re experience or flashback of the fire glow all around the hills surrounding the house, the ride out of the hills by myself and driving back through the burnt out landscape, putting out fires around the house. Compared to what other people have been through, this perhaps doesn't seem very traumatic but to me it was.

Then there was also the sadness of losing the trees and surrounding flora. I didn't realise that I was so upset about the surrounding landscape in which we lived. It seems trivial in the face of what others have lost, but I guess it affected me.

But as I say, I feel heaps better now and we have had a clean up around the back of the house. Could have done without the tiger snake that jumped out of one of the pots in the wheel barrow though. !!!!!

We had one of our outdoor lunches, the surrounds are not all soft and leafy green,as they used to be, but very nice all the same. We are very lucky to still have a deck to have lunch on and we realise a lot of people aren't so lucky.











I can’t begin to tell you about the builder’s visit last week..... (the one the insurance company sent) He sounded a little stressed when we spoke to him in the morning around 8am and I think his day just got worse from then on.

For a start he was from North Balwyn/ Doncaster ( not that I’ve got anything whatsoever against North Balwyn) ….but he was quoting for restoration in the country around Callignee. Totally burnt out. He couldn’t even turn his car around on a dirt road, his wheels kept spinning.

He arrived at our place about 7.45pm at night and stayed 10 – 15 mins. He took no measurements. We didn’t even get to show him everything….he kept saying
“What not more work”
“How am I supposed to quote for that” “
“You’ll have to help me a lot on this”
“What replace a water tank…how?”

He was totally over whelmed by his whole day

“Everyone wants to tell their story”
“I only had a couple of tomatoes for lunch”
“Can you show me the way to my next quote address” It was getting dark by then….so of course I did. .
“Can you show me how to get back to Traralgon”

So you can imagine how we were feeling. We’ve heard other insurance jobs are going well and Yes I have contacted the insurance assessor to tell him we didn’t have much confidence in his appointed builder and to plead for a local one.


Another builder has now visited and he was very good about looking at all the damage.







This little wallaby is around the house quite alot at the moment. We have been feeding him vegetable scraps and any green foliage we have come across as there is nothing for him to eat around at the moment.

Victorian Bush fires Our Experience

Some of you will note the irony of my blog name!!!

*********

The following is a brief account of what happened to us over the night of Saturday 7th February 2009.

The morning of Saturday was bright , hot and beautiful. We were aware of the northwestly winds that were due to turn the day into a marathon heat event of 45 degrees and that we were to be aware of fire warnings.

About 1.30pm in the afternoon we again turned on the ABC radio to hear of a huge fire that had started in Churchill in a pine forest and this fire was travelling very fast towards the south east. We knew there was a wing swing due that evening, and that would turn what was now the long side of the fire travelling away from us into the front of the fire heading our way.

We spent the Sat afternoon making final preparations as Ian was determined at this point in time to stay and defend the house.




Fire in the afternoon heading South East away from us at that time. No smoke over our way, estimated distance from us as the crow flies 30kms.








On the Sat evening about 6pm I noticed that the wind was dropping from the North West ( I am an old 'sailor' and keep an eye on the wind) It seemed to be coming around to the West. The 'Cool Change " as we in Victoria like to call the change of winds that come to cool things down, still wasn't supposed to come to this area for about 3 or 4 hours according to the radio broadcasts telling where the winds had already changed .....so what was going on here??


Then we noticed that there was a glow from the fire not just from the south but somehow it was all around us to the rear of the property. Not flames but that red glow.



I went into flight mode. I couldn't stay.... my legs wouldn't stay on the property. After getting some sort of agreement from Ian that things were different /weird he said he would leave the house and meet me in Traralgon after he had hosed the house down again. So I finally left the house at about 6.15, Ian finally left at about 6.30 after hosing it down many times with the independant firemans hose.


We estimate the fire front came through about 6.50. So, we were very lucky to get out, as the road out is devastated… The wind shift to the South West with winds of 100+ kms came earlier than anyone expected and I think this is what caused so many lives to be lost …..well possibly at Callignee.

The drive into Callignee alone was very frightening as I was shaking allover, the anxiety of having left Ian was horrible. When I got to a nearby road juction there was a road block set up....no one was allowed back up into the hills. There was alot of screaming and yelling of people desperate to get back up to ..... I guess loved ones who would soon be in the path of the fire.

Some people must have run the blockade because on my way down a car passed me going the other way about 160kph, nearly out of control on the bends , so I became aware of the danger of car accidents. Same thing happened with Ian, two cars sped back the opposite way when he left.

It was about now that the wind changed properly to the South West and a huge black cloud of wind and smoke descended on the whole area. Day literally turned into night with terribly fierce winds blowing ash and embers over a wides spread area. One house I know of in the area escaped the fire, but had it's roof blown off. No wonder they couldn't put the fire trucks in front of the fire and also why there was no helicopter support, the winds were too strong.

After registering with the Red Cross we were put up at Murphy’s Motel. Radio reports about Callignee were sketchy, so Ian and I at about 12 midnight drove out to the traffic lights at Loy Yang where there was a road block…..hundreds of people but still no news of Callignee. No one knew what was happening there because no trucks went in because the fire was travelling too fast and no one got a message out because everything was burnt.


At around 4am, Ian and our neighbour who was also at Murphy’s and has a large beef cattle farm, sneaked back using back roads that were at this time still open. We knew by reports that the fire front had gone through and there was no wind, so they promised to take no risks… .. we were all wanting to know what had happened.


When they got to our area, they feared the worst as the road in was shocking. First to our place which was still there…...they put out some fires and then to our neighbours whose house was still there and they put out a fire in his machinery shed, using buckets of water from the swimming pool ……alas his hay shed and a lot of the cattle had perished.



The road to our place





They came back to pick up the farmers wife and myself…I cried tears of joy when Ian told me the house was OK. So at 6.30am on the Sun 12 hours after we had left, we drove back to the house where we stayed for days without contact except for our battery radio. No one was allowed in or out of the area because it was declared a crime scene, although a ‘check point charlie’ was set up and generators, food and water was handed over at the border.



















The ground around the house is just blackened earth, but there is some green in the tree tops particularly down the front, so they should come back OK. The garden at the very front of the house is OK as well.



















Ian's much loved shed is OK, and wonder of wonders, our pet possum survived although she is singed. I felt her all over and though her coat and tail fur have burns (from embers we think) , she has no wounds…...on the Sunday night she ate two pears and then skipped off into the blackened trees. The house had sheltered a small tree which had sheltered her possum box.



























Points which I feel why our house is saved when our immediate neighbours’ houses burnt down.

The wind came down the hill to us. If fire races up hill it is faster and the house is on a level with the tree tops.

We had raked all leaf litter and twigs, and mowed the area up the hill behind the house…..knowing that the winds come from that direction.

On one side we are next door to a farm whose cattle had grazed the land from the direction the wind/fire came.

Ian hosed the placed down and filled the gutters at the last minute

We think the fire went out on the house because the gravity fed polyprop pipes attached to a galvanised tank would have melted in spots and sent a spray of water over the flames under the eaves….perhaps…we can’t understand why it went out otherwise.

And just luck or whatever you call it …….but then unlucky to be in the path of a fire that resulted from awind swing, that had come from a huge fire deliberately lit.

Well we’re Ok and that’s the main thing, and my heart goes out to those who are not as fortunate as ourselves.


I'll post more to this at a later point


I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of rugged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terrorThe wide brown land for me!

Dorothea Mac Keller (1885 - 1968