A minor miracle

30.1.2012

Yesterday, something amazing and totally unexpected happened. In the morning we had a family gathering at Bo’s place. Al brought over his three kids so that Bo could take them over to the airport. I asked Bo if she had got the E-mail copies of photos of old family photos I sent her. She had, so I explained that I was sharing photos with the family to reduce the chance of loosing that slice of family history.

My big regret is having lost all the photos from my own life in England in the fires. I was sad that I had none of the kids’ baby photos, especially the ones of Wayne before we adopted him. Bo went to her cupboard and looked at her own collection of photos to see what she had and then her face changed. She found my missing photo album with her own!

There it was, good as new, with pictures of my brother, my school friends and the houses Edd and I restored all those years ago! There were photos from the sixties when I was nursing in London, and photos from the agricultural research station where Edd and I met in Berkshire. The really odd thing is that neither Bo nor I knew she had the album or could remember her borrowing it. Who cares, I am thrilled beyond measure to have it restored to me.

sad loss

29.5.2012

My energy is returning and this week I have been able to focus on community issues. From the bush fire funds published report Erin has discovered that the Yarra Valley got very little of the donated money, or at least compared to other communities we had significantly less resulting community support. She lobbied for a last ditch effort to try and get funding to help people in the valley recover.

This has resulted in several emotionally charged meetings but although we cannot correct the balance we can start now to access funding support in a minor way. We formed a task group and interviewed about 50 % of the community about needs. From the results of this survey areas of need were identified and discussed so in a relatively short time we have results. This morning we got a promise of support from the DHS guy overseeing the last of the donated bush fire funds.

The true picture is that the community has not recovered physically or mentally despite three years passing. We still have people living in inadequate temporary accommodation, and tears and tempers arise over minor incidents. Many have no idea how they can escape the devastation in their lives and land. We have relied on self-help within the community but everyone is worn out with the magnitude of what is needed so any external help is really welcome.

Edd and I have also restarted the schools program and yesterday we had another class of year nines from Healesville High School here. The weather was awful, and as usual the young people arrived without the right footwear or clothes. At least we could all go to the house and have a meeting in the warm.

Over lunch one young man borrowed Edd’s guitar and strummed away. Then he started singing quietly to himself but the quality of sound stopped us in our track and he was persuaded to sing for the group. Wow! Could he sing. He could play the guitar pretty well too. This was an unexpected treat for everyone. The acoustics in the big room helped too.

On a much sadder line we have lost a family member this week. Trish, passed away yesterday after a long struggle with renal failure. She was an amazing woman who remained cheerful and as active as possible and always managed to dress beautifully. Al’s kids are really up set as she was very much a Grand mother to them.

the earth moves again

24.5.2012

Mike returned with his earth moving equipment and dug a ditch around the front of our house. Our job is to line it with plastic and rocks so that it makes an aesthetically acceptable way to drain excess floodwater away from the house and drive. Edd has spent the week in the walk in robe putting up flat pack units so we can store our clothes in some sort of order. I should have painted the walls and ceiling in the storage area but I got stuck on accounts and other domestic jobs, so no big steps forward were made by me anyway.

We are still taking the young goats to the buck. It has been a very long drawn out mating season. We are feeding out branches from the lucerne trees. They will start flowering soon and not be fit for fodder any more. Really, they flower at just the wrong time of year, because it would be much more helpful if we could use them for green feed over the winter months.

The chooks are also having a rest period. I usually have new point of lay birds coming in at this time, but we are still short of chook sheds so I cannot introduce young stock until we have extra sheds and clean green runs for them. Luckily there are still enough eggs for family and friends. The eggs are pretty good too, extra large with deep yellow yolks.

Our new wood stove is going well. Last night I put a rabbit stew into the oven before going to bed and it was perfectly cooked in the morning. The fire went out in the night but the radiators still had hot water in them, so the house was as warm as toast. The heated towel rail is a real luxury and we seem to have plenty of hot water. It is fantastic having a wood stove and a fire again but we now have to do the extra work of cutting and collecting firewood.

I collect kindling in the mornings when I go out to feed the cows and sheep but Edd gets the wood splitting and chain saw work. We still have a lot of wood piled up from the trees that were cut up after the bush fire. What we need next is a woodshed so that we can keep it dry and ready for use. Yet another job to be tackled!

Al has started work on his new house. He first demolished the old laundry to make room for a unit for India and then started stripping the old plaster in the house. This job became complicated when he discovered asbestos hidden behind the plasterboard. He was hoping to work slowly through the house when he moved in, but this find has caused a change in plans.

The house block is basically vertical. The first grass terrace behind the house has a good view of the chimney top! Perhaps we will have the hanging gardens of Warburton. It is probably a good thing to strip the house back to the frame because they can rewire and put the plumbing in the right place as they go. Al is getting quotes for replacing the dodgy stumps too so the house will get a new lease of life all round.

Despite all the above we are not spending all our life building any more. Edd went to the Welsh choir rehearsals this week and I managed to get to art class. I even had a girl friend visit today! Life is looking up.

returning to normal

19.5.2012

It is absolutely wonderful to be living in a house again and this house is everything we hoped for. OK, there is still a lot of work to do and some big jobs to be tackled but even so we are very comfortable and for the first time in years we are able to think about the broader picture. I think we have managed well up to now by not thinking too much. Even now when I allow myself to dwell on just issues that are yet to be sorted like passports, land deeds etc. I quickly feel over whelmed by the magnitude of the task.

Our strategy so far has been to concentrate on the priority problem and leave everything else for later. Our first priority was to get shelter for our selves and our animals and a supply of water. From there we replaced just enough fencing to cope and with lots of help from Eaton volunteers we began clearing up the mess. Then offcourse we started on the house. This process has totally absorbed all our energy for the last year and a half but now we are ready to tackle a bit more.

I think completing the sheds and getting a roof for the water tank are pretty high priorities. Along with this we are joining a community effort to try and help others who are still struggling. Luckily we are in a quiet time on the farm with most of the goats dry and pregnant and harvest season is over.

This week Gary and his team have paved around the house so the mud is now a respectable distance away. This is a great help. Edd has been assembling flat pack furniture in the walk in wardrobe so we will have a place to put clothes and I have been tackling a few paperwork jobs. Actually, I have also spent quite a bit of time relaxing and even went to join my pottery and art groups again! Picking up on the pottery was easy because I had a task to finish, but getting back into art will be much harder.

The best thing about the groups is that at last I can reconnect with friends and the community. I have been a hopeless friend for the last two years and I do wonder if my girl friends will all be so disgusted with me for ignoring them that they won’t want to know me any more! I probably deserve anything that I get on this line! 

a glorious day

10.5.2012

We have just had a glorious sunny day. Gary and crew started paving outside the house on Wednesday and already we have a mud free entrance. I have started to catch up on the accounts but progress is slow because now that we are living in a proper house again I have relaxed and feel no particular need to rush at anything.

We have also had a slow trickle of visitors, neighbours and other people who have helped us get to this point so we have spent time just sitting and talking. Tonight we went with Bo’s boys to football practice so that she could practice her singing in the city and then attended yet another Steel’s Creek meeting. The gist of the matter is that there is still money in the fire fund kitty but extracting it is a complicated puzzle and no one is prepared to divulge the rules.

At least Erin and Eva came to this meeting. Usually it is just the old retired community members and the younger set, who have kids, are not represented at all. I have very little hope that we can get any help for people who still do not have houses. I have heard that there have been several suicides up at Kinglake and I am not surprised. Edd and I still have masses to sort out before we will be back to a normal life style and I am sure that we are not the slowest to get things tackled.

My strategy is to knock off the issues one at a time. I am pretty sure that catching up with the accounts is the first priority. With all the building there were so many financial transactions going on that this task is a lot larger than normal but I have kept all the receipts in some sort of order so it is not impossible. It would be nice to have a shower in the house but I think I need to know where we are financially before we start on any more projects.

Edd has been trying to get the services working. He has phoned the shop about the problem with the oven of the new stove and today the gas arrived and the new underground gas tank was filled. The solar panels heated the water today but the wood stove heats it on cloudy days equally well. The snag is that the pump to the radiators is not working as it should and I cannot get the stove hot enough to cook on with out boiling the water system!

Al will have to move out of his rented house soon so helping him get a roof over the families heads for winter is another priority. We actually wonder how we ever managed to fit going out to work into the time equation. I have not really started work in the garden yet. We are still eating fruit from the strawberries and there are still capsicums and pumpkins but I have planted little else. 

ukulele for Morren

6.5.2012

Yesterday we went into Melbourne with Al, Ti and Morren on a special trip so that Morren could choose his birthday ukulele. He took it very seriously and played every instrument in his price range for over an hour before making a choice. This was a dead serious business and he stayed totally focussed, calm and intent all the time. He spoke using an amazing vocabulary and has learnt to pick and strum. He has long flexible fingers and obvious ability so let us hope he will use his new instrument for regular practice. It is possible that we have another musician in the family.


Back on the farm the rain is still falling but we have a fire going in the new house and at last we are protected from the weather. I feel absolutely worn out and now, when I go into the donga for a shower, I wonder how I ever managed in there for the last three years. I feel very fragile and not ready to cope with any new problems just yet.


Our new neighbour, (who brought the property next door where Lynne died in the fires), came over wanting to move our boundary fence but he did not get a good reception. Basically the fence has been in that position for longer than the thirty-three years we have lived here and although it is not up to suburban garden standards we repaired it after the fires and it is an effective stock barrier. Edd told him that we do not agree to him slashing the trees etc on our property or trying to get down to our creek with his tractor in this wet weather. Oh dear. It has always been country people living here so far so we have not had these attitudes before.


As soon as possible I want to get some fencing up around the new house so that the sheep can keep the grass short around the house and on the roof. Then we can get down to the paddock next to the new neighbours and replace the electric fence that protected the tree run between the two properties. Brian, on the hill opposite planted native trees around his gates and in the last three years he has grown a beautiful dense forest so I hope we can do the same thing. The trees between Craig and us are recovering nicely. Soon we will have our privacy back on that side too. Our house faces North and the presence of our own hill plus the steep side of echo vale means that we cannot see another house in that direction. For most of the time we have lived here we have only been able to see one house light in the distance at night and I must admit I do like it that way. We have been very lucky getting such nice neighbours as Craig and Eva to our East.


4.3.2012
It is very wet and miserable, which is a shame because we have a gang of people here taking photos of the house. We all put in a herculean effort at the start of the week to get everything as ready as possible. Stevo helped us with last minute woodwork, Richard moved piles of wood and Craig and his father brought over a bobcat and a truck and straightened everything out between the house and the dam. All the piles of sand and rubbish were relocated and the piles of mulch left over from the fire clean up were spread over the mud. In the evening Al and Arden came over with take away tea and did the final touches. We put down old railway sleepers to make a bridge between the turning circle and the house entry and then balanced plants in pots at either side as and attempt at landscaping.


Craig had already moved the rocks that were in our old turning circle to the new one, but we did not get round to doing anything extra to make that look right because it was getting too dark. It was a really good thing we worked so hard because next day the weather changed and we woke to heavy rain. With out the mulch we would have been isolated in a muddy swamp! Also we have had the windows cleaned and without the gravel and mulch they would also we splashed all over with mud again. The cleaners almost did too good a job on the windows. Everyone has been forgetting they are there and walking into them!

We still have cooking problems because the wood stove needs to have the radiators adjusted so that the water can pump away excess heat and the gas stove has a problem with the oven ignition system. It is most annoying that the cheap gas stove in the dong works so well and that the expensive one I in the new house has all these problems. If we are lucky we will have gas delivered today. The cylinder is now buried underground ready to go but the gas filler truck only comes on Thursdays. At present we are managing by using the gas from Josh’s camping cylinder through a connecting devise. I have no idea how this actually works and have been too busy to worry.


India is taking her driving test today after school so I am keeping my fingers crossed for her. It may mean that she cannot come tonight when we are having a family gathering to celebrate the move into the new house.