out of the safety zone

In all probability I had already changed into an old woman before the fires but I was too busy to notice it happening. I feel as if age snuck up on me when I was distracted by all the drama. Just at the minute it does not make any difference. Some how I have to deal with each days problems and see the funny side as often as possible.

Last week we had enormous help from all directions. Sharron brought out a whole team of able bodied and enthusiastic workers from her work and Rod brought out a busload of equally willing people from Luther collage. Edd’s good friend, Trevor and his mate Chas even stayed two nights and with all this help miracles have been achieved.

It became clear that I was going to have "spare time", that long lost commodity I have not seen for years. Not to worry. I have always wanted to do more art and had already brought suitable materials from the two-dollar shop. However there was one big snag. I could think of absolutely nothing I wanted to paint or draw.
It was tempting to do a dot painting, as a way to start, but borrowing someone else’s voice seemed to be missing the point. In the end I just got a canvas and painted it black. At least I had made a start, and as my friend Merv used to tell us, the muse can only reach you if you are in the studio waiting for her call.

I looked hopefully at the black canvas but still no inspiration emerged. My youngest son Josh once wrote for a school exercise that for him, “ black represents the peaceful tranquillity of a non threatening void”. Maybe I am stuck in the black. My past all wiped out by the fire and my future unformed. May be it is peaceful and non-threatening at this point. Perhaps I will have to work at dragging myself back into life.

I set myself socialisation targets. On Wednesday we had a Permaculture meeting at Nola’s house. I think I stuffed that one up. Luckily Nola has the most intelligence in people skills of anyone I have ever dealt with. On Thursday I dragged my black canvas and paints off to the Steels creek art club. There were only three people there because someone had died this week. This was bad but good for me as there were less people to react with. I actually enjoyed several hours trying to interact with the black canvas and I don’t think I really irritated anyone.

My art has always been too controlled, too left-brain and safe, so I am forcing myself out of my comfort zone in art as well as life. I want to use our loss as a catalyst for personal growth. This all sounds very brave on paper but putting it into practice will be more of a challenge.

Luckily Edd is being far more practical and has almost completed enough fencing to allow us to release all the animals from their pens. My socialisation has given it's first results in that I now have flu. It may or may not be swine flu, which has already reached our valley, but it is not too bad.

A difficult journey

Yesterday I rashly agreed to collect a wood stove that Al is having repaired in Seymour. I had ulterior motives. Seymour has a craft shop that sells baby wool in lots of exciting colours and also I could find out if there was any chance that I could salvage my old Aga. I was hoping Edd would be able to come and that we could have a day out but this was not to be. Edd was needed to work with Mike on the shed excavations and do fencing.
No worries, I would go on my own. The men must have been better informed than I was because the drive was horrific. All the way to Yea pipe-laying trucks had taken over the road. It was drizzling too, so the road was a wash with greasy mud that the numerous trucks threw all over the windscreen. That, plus all the waits at traffic lights whilst large loads were manoeuvred out of small holes made driving hell.

It was not even possible to enjoy the scenery. Burnt trees and muddy excavations are depressing viewing. Also there is the big question about how sensible it is to be building this North-south pipeline. My personal thoughts were not much better. I felt as if someone had stolen my identity. Last year I was a businesswoman with my own business. I had a great little X-trail to drive and really “me” clothes that I had carefully collected over years.
Now I have no job, I am wearing hand-me-down clothes and here I was sat in a Ute that smelt of dog and had the front side all melted. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, my friends seem to have changed too. People I shared with a lot are off doing other things and of course I am not meeting all the people associated with my work either. I am not upset about all this, but I am also not sure who I will become next. This is a sort of limbo period between the past and a still vague future.

Logic tells me that although we have the house insurance, the sheds, fences and farm equipment were not insured so somewhere along the line we will have to do with out something we had before. The charity we are receiving helps a lot here, but it will not be enough to breach the gap. So… what can we not have? A worse problem is that my job was going to be our only income when Edd retired. Now it has gone and Edd does not feel capable of going back to teaching. He was about to retire before but I had it all planned. How am I to sort this out now?
There is no immediate crisis because I have invested the insurance money and it will provide an income in the short term. The snag is that as we replace houses and sheds it will obviously diminish. There is just so much to rethink and so little time. Also just what has happened to the climate? Was this one exceptional year never to be repeated or is it the start of a dramatic climate shift? How can I plan for such uncertainty?

On the bright side there is no shortage of old Agas. I have a bag of bright coloured baby wool offering limitless opportunities and Al’s stove was unloaded with out drama. My eldest Grand daughter, India, had cooked us all an evening meal and sat around the table with my family my identity re-established itself quickly.

1.6.2009
The Permaculture people who helped yesterday did a wonderful job at the old house site. I now have neat stacks of cleaned bricks and most of the dead plants are gone. I did love my home. We started life here as shell-shocked migrants, living in pioneering conditions as we tried to make a good life for our family. Our house sheltered us as we built it and gradually moulded its self around us as the kids grew up.

It was a first home for my second Grand kid and a refuge for family members in trouble. All my children returned to live here as adults when their lives hit rough patches. It was a cool haven in the summer heat, and a cosy warm space when winter set in. Twice a year, at Xmas and at Mid-winter we would cook turkeys in the Aga, set up a very long table in front of the Inglenook, and sit down with family and friends for a feast. Each time this happened I took a minute amongst the rush of work to reflect on how lucky I was to have all my children and their children gathered together.

Now, the house is just a ruin, but I want to clean it up and convert it to something beautiful as a show of respect for all the good times past. Perhaps it should be a sort of spiritual space as well as a space for parties. I would like to put up pillars made of the old bricks and some roofs for shade in a square shape leaving a central courtyard open to the sky. I liked the temples at Angkor Watt, and would love to create a mini version.

The old chimney could still be used and the roofs could help collect water. It could well be possible to get the underground water pipes going again so the water could take the old route to the big concrete tank. All ideas. Meanwhile we are struggling to get up some relatively simple sheds. Al suggested that we have the sheds with steeper than average slopes to the roofs so that they are right for solar panels and look more pleasing. This means special construction, but I do agree that if we just put up a huddle of off the peg standard shed it would look pretty soulless.

Mike has almost finished bulldozing a flat area to put the sheds on. We are lucky that it has stayed dry, as an enormous tonnage of soil has had to be shifted. It is lucky too that it is just a little bit damp because if we had tried to do this earlier in the year we would have been over whelmed with dust. We are probably getting things done at the right pace but some days it all feels too chaotic to cope with.

Last week Antonia, the big white goat who allowed all our visitors learnt to milk, has gone to a new home at an animal shelter in Healesville that needs goats milk. She was one of the oldest goats and I was worried about her being too stressed in the conditions here. We are still without fences and the animals are restricted to yards that get in a worse state daily. I cut greens for the goats from the weeds in the vegetable gardens but it is not enough to compensate for the lack of grazing. I just hope the animals we have sent away are better off than they were here. I would like to sell the calves but we have no yards, so no way of loading them into a truck.