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.

Edd gets a puppy and Josh breaks his arm

27.5.2009 The weather has changed. It is definitely damp and there has been a little of that rare stuff …rain. We should be jumping for joy. I am sure all the plant are, but with the wet comes mud and we have started excavating shed sites so I expect a lot of mud. I have no right to complain with so much of the country up north having such bad floods.

On Sunday Edd’s new dog arrived. Delivered to our door by his breeders who have very kindly given him to us. He was pretty frightened when he arrived and had been sick in the car but he has settled down fast. The people who stayed here the weekend of the fires found him for us and arranged everything. Edd has called him Jana (rhyming with Banner), which apparently is a Cornish way of saying John! He is a black and tan kelpie and a very solid little chap with a very long tail.
Edd says he often sees ghosts of our dogs that died in the fires who work around the place with him. I have seen no ghosts and still miss the dogs terribly. I do not feel ready for a new dog myself yet but it is good that Edd does because he is working on the farm every day now and has time to spend putting the work in that a puppy needs. I have been quite surprised so far at Jana, who behaves well over night and is trying hard to fit in.

My main task this week has been catching up with our accounts and getting in Tax statements. We have endless bits of paper that have to be sorted in to some form of order. It is quite horrific having to spend so much on new household things. We lost everything from sauce pans to furniture so are continually discovering new bits we can’t function with out. Friends have been very good; Jane even brought me over a thimble this week in a bag of other sewing goodies. I discovered I needed one when I had to sew up the baby clothes I have been knitting.

I have also brought tools to tile the shower room. Edd has lined the donga porch with cement sheet around the shower unit so it is ready for finishing now. We have hung up a small bathroom cupboard and will make a tiny shelf for the men to put a mug of hot water for shaving on. We have to use the kitchen sink as a basin as space is tight.

Down at the old house site I have begun working on my destroyed garden beds. They look so much better when the soil is raked of rubbish and dug over. I am laying broken bricks as a cobbled path round the drainage ponds at the back of the toilet. I fancy covering the old swimming pool with ferro cement. It would repair the damaged liner and burnt walls back to a useful condition and make a stronger pool in the long term.
I am studying ferro cement construction on the Internet every time I get a spare moment and am intrigued with the possibilities. I do wish I was younger and stronger but perhaps it is just a matter of working out an approach.

Our latest problem is that Josh fell off a ladder at work and broke his right arm. He spent most of Friday sat in Dandedong hospital waiting for attention and we picked him up in the evening after he had been given an anaesthetic and had the arm set. He is pretty fed up about things but is really not feeling well enough even to try going back to work yet. He even found walking round the super market hard yesterday. I am taking him for a check up tomorrow and if all is well he is going to visit his friends in Townesville and spend a few days somewhere easier to live while he recovers. He left Townesville in a very depressed state and I hope it will be good for him to put old issues to rest. He has now got his degree and has got over his broken heart so he may see it differently.

Steels Creek was one of the areas badly affected by the bush fires. Even now, three months on, many areas show no signs of recovery. Bare, burnt, tree trunks stand silent on grey ground devoid of any visible life. The social structure of our community is in turmoil slowly groping towards a new pattern. Individuals show their stress in the loudness or intensity of their speech whenever the fire is discussed.
For Edd, Josh and I most of our immediate problems have been dealt with and it is time to look back and learn from our experiences. We have had enormous help from everyone to reach this point and send a special thank you to all our Permaculture friends who have given us such wonderful help and support.
With time to reflect I can now see that our land also continued to support us. We had a fire plan that was part of a larger disaster plan and although we lost our buildings the essence of the disaster plan worked well. I can see now that a fire plan needs to be in two parts. Firstly there is the part we all know which is about preparing the property, and being ready to shelter and then put out spot fires.

The second part is the one you need if the conditions make saving buildings impossible and it is your life you need to protect. The particular weather conditions that produce killer fires can now be identified and we need a warning system so that those with no fire safe place can leave in safety. I have friends and neighbours who died because they knew their properties were well set up and that it was possible to defend them. Our dogs died taking shelter for a short time in the house.
We lost all our buildings but luckily had a plan B for survival that worked fine.

We had seven paying guests staying that Saturday,
We were very worried that when they did get them leave they had left it too late. They all survived, but by the time we had looked after them the roar of the fire drowned everything as it poured down the hillside in a sheer cliff face of flames. We just had time to call the animals to a safe area, start the fire pump and get a few items to the safety of the cellar.
At the base of the forest covered hills the fire split. The first flame front to reach us used the road reserve and attacked from the South. It was so fast and intense that the gas cylinders at the cottage exploded sending shrapnel in all directions and the steel brewery and concrete cottage were blown apart. Neighbours said the fire sucked the oxygen from their fire pumps, rendering them useless. Ours worked well until the fuel ran out. There was an underground pipeline from the dam that remained serviceable.
Unfortunately our house was large and two stories high. With just two people it was not possible to extinguish all the firebombs and with in a short time we realized that we had lost that battle. The fire walls had protected us from most of the radiant heat but when the main front passed we withdrew to the bare paddock with our animals, which the flames had already crossed.

Now here is the good bit. In the cellar we had all our camping equipment, a store of tinned food, orange juice and water and our most important documents for insurance purposes. We had beds in there but as a polyhouse had survived we used that to camp in for the next few days. I had some spare clothes and coats in the cellar but in future I will also have spare boots. The soles burnt off the pair I was wearing.
In the polyhouse we had tomatoes and capsicums. There were still potatoes in the vegetable garden and some zucchinis that were protected by the corrugated garden fence. The apple orchard survived well, chooks had cleared down to bare earth around the trees and some still had fruit even though their leaves had been scorched off. It is now possible to see that most of the fruit trees survived. . Our larger olives and citrus trees are showing signs of recovery; trunk size seems the main factor.

By saving the animals we still had fresh milk. Once help arrived we gave away or sold about half our animals because we had too many to feed and too many to fit into the yards we had built from salvaged materials. I can see that if a different sort of disaster had resulted in no help arriving we could have eaten the excess animals. As it was we had a high meat diet in the following days because it was easier to prepare and eat without facilities to wash anything. We spent five years working in the desert with the Warlpiri people and we used what we had learnt from them to avoid health problems.

Three months on, rocket, lettuces, mustards, Chinese vegetables and silver beet have self-seeded. Underground crops like spuds, garlic and asparagus are still Ok and many of the common herbs have come back. We have now got a very serviceable kitchen set up and can move gratefully back to a European diet.
Some chickens found a safe place and have now started laying. We have too many roosters but I expect we will eat them at some stage. There is an abundance of firewood and we have some water left in tanks. The concrete tank that was not partially underground was damaged and leaks but the large one seems fine.

It is extremely reassuring to know that despite the devastation of the whole area we had enough resources to keep our selves alive on our own property if no help had arrived. This is surely part of what Permaculture is really about.

A summary of survival strategies.
It seems that chance and local geography govern individual cases of property survival. Wood sheds and our polyhouse survived when solidly built mud brick home did not. But the following facts seem important where the fire hit worst.

1 You need somewhere at least partially underground. Or a group of people and a building surrounded by bare earth with no vegetation anywhere near.
2 Gas systems are a problem. In bad conditions they can cause solidly built houses ,even mud brick ,to explode.
3 Do not rely on pumps of any kind.
4 Store food, water, clothes, shoes, camping gear etc. in a cellar or dug out close but separate from the house with important documents.
5 If you can last three months you can have time to grow new food crops.
6 Prepare for fire attack from all directions, there is no safe side.
7 Mulching trees does not reduce their survival chances.
8 Find out how much your house would cost to rebuild and insure for that amount. Do not take the insurance companies estimate as a guide. It takes a huge fight to get them to pay out but it can be won.
9 A house in a bushfire has better chance of survival if enough sensible adults work to defend it. A house in a fire storm may not survive what ever is done.
10 Skylights are likely to let fire into a house.
11 We must have a new category of fire above the total fire day that can be used when the conditions for killer fires are expected. This should signal immediate action of fire plans and force non –residents to leave the area.
12 If a fire is approaching sirens should be sounded in all possible ways. At this point no one should attempt to leave unless it is to a close by safer property.
13 Owning animals and having ways to maximise their survival ensures ones own chance of surviving total disaster. I had worked out that whatever disaster happened from terrorist attack to weather events the chances of the forest igniting were pretty high. We always have the paddock around the large dam grazed right down for this purpose. On other occasions when we have had more warning we put all the vehicles in the bare paddock as well as stock.

things get better

3.May 2009
A beautiful sunny day after a frosty night. Thank goodness we are now living in the double donga classroom. We have quite a comfortable little home that feels spacious and light. Next week the plumber is coming and we are having the gas stove , shower , kitchen sink and hot water connected up. Last week Gary , Edd and Josh worked hard and completed the building of a veranda deck . They put in a new entry door from the deck and got a water tank organised on a stand with new gutters going into it all ready for rain . ( if we ever get any).

The new door has no gaps round it and the indoor fly population has decreased fantastically. Well, it is either that or the cold weather that has brought about the change. It was pretty awful before so that each night we swatted for several hours before we could relax.

Today people from Permaculture Melborne groups have come for a working B and we are getting lots of much needed help. People are so wonderful. Three people from another accommodation business came and picked up all the broken glass at the brewery site which was an dreadful job.
Today the men are concentrating on the vineyard. Before we can let animals in there to graze we have to move all the wires which is a long trying task. We have not even got the boundary fences repaired yet so all the animals are still being hand fed in pens. We had to build a new pen for the sheep as their first pen had got too muddy.

Plants continue to appear. Old friends regenerating and suspicious new things that have sprung from who knows where. The pumpkins and zuchinnis took a bit of a hit from the frost this week but the silverbeat and asparagus are growing strongly now. Strangely the flowers that came on the apple trees have developed into tiny apples and great joy, my mulberry trees are recovering. I greave for the big oak by the drive and my honey loccut trees, they still look very dead.

I am still struggling with he insurance. This can take up hours each week and is very stressful. Basically we have to prove that our house cost us the money we paid insurance for. The independent estimation we got is not enough for them. It would not surprise me if when this is all over people unite for a class action against they companies for the stress and hours of work and delays they have caused. I am so worried about my daughter and her husband. They lost the brewery and their income in the fires but their house was OK. If the insurance company holds them up too long they could loose their house now to the banks !

We had a really reassuring meeting with our local council who at this stage seem all out to be helpful. They are happy with our plans to build in the centre of the paddock and to put up shed roofs first to harvest rain. Al is preparing plans for the sheds and the council says they can be passed in as little as two weeks. We must collect rain incase the drought continues next year.

It is so lucky that our son Al is an architect and has worked on sustainable buildings with the council before. I have often wished my sons were plumbers or electrictions but now I realise that given the right circumstances an architect is probably better ! We have worked out that if Edd and I join Al and family and watch his sons play soccer on Saturdays we can kill to birds at the same time by combining it with a planning meeting.

farm news

It is once again goat mating season. The old buck, Rubicon, is making himself as smelly as possible and the girls are calling out to him day and night. Most of them are his daughters so he only has three potential wives this year. It is probably enough now we have no sheds or milking machine. Imogen’s two boys are growing slowly and also taking an interest in the girls. We will probably try and sell the black one next week and keep the brown boy as a replacement for his dad who died in the fires.
It is still extremely dry and plants that survived the fires are now struggling for lack of water. We have a big job ahead replacing all the fences. With help from volunteers we have now cleared away some of the old fencing but in places trees have grown up in the fence line and it is all a bit of a challenge.
We are slowly getting more eggs but there are too many roosters in the pen and we will need to start eating some to stop the chooks getting too much humbug. It is wonderful to have a breakfast of gorgeous golden yellow eggs again.
The silverbeat is almost large enough to start eating and we have still got zuchinis . A few pumpkins have restarted themselves and are growing fruit and all the mustards have self seeded. We still have some small but tasty apples on the trees and the

people power

17.4.09
A new story is emerging as we discuss the fires. At first everyone focussed on such things as house siting, design and closeness to native forest as factors in which houses survived the fires intact. Now a new factor seems to be more important than all these and it is unexpectedly reassuring. People saved houses. The more people there were at each house the better chance it stood.
In some cases a group of neighbours ended up at one place as a result of a list of accidents and when ever a group worked together they usually succeeded in beating the fires. This makes a lot of sense to me because with only Edd and I working here there was just too much fire for us to deal with especially as it was on all four sides of the house. We felt if reinforcements had come we could have saved everything but offcourse the roads were all blocked, the emergency services overloaded.
I am not sure how one can factor in this when designing a new place. Edd and I want to build a semi underground home and it would obviously help if it only had one or two sides .
The other great thing about people power is that individual effort has made all the difference for people like us who lost everything. Help has mostly come from private individuals who have worked out what they could do and just done it. Caroline and her friends turned up to help every weekend and did what ever we needed. Also everyone one round here will be eternally grateful to the men who brought the classrooms for us to live in.
We are now living in the double donga classroom and it is very homely. The little bedrooms are cosy and clean and I am eagerly waiting for some kitchen cabinets that are coming next week. With lots of wonderful free help from our lawyer, Tom, our insurance company has finally parted with some money so we can set ourselves up with a kitchen and bathroom.
We are still negotiating over the amount we will get for our big house because they are arguing that we were over insured. I don’t think anyone can win. They refuse to pay the full amount for people who are under insured and if they consider you over insured they only want to pay a percentage of the amount you insured for as well. How on earth can anyone get it right? We have sent them costings for other houses built nearby to prove that we have insured for realistic rebuilding costs but they don’t like that either! Next time I insure a house I will refuse to insure with anyone unless they agree to a payout price when we first make the contract.
Incidentally all the promised Government money has failed to show up anywhere yet. I have been told that there is still money left over from funds collected for the victims of Cyclone Tracy ( in the 70’s) so I am not getting my hopes up too high at the moment. Once again, people are more effective with out leaders and committees if they just believe in themselves.

Summer ends

7.4.2009
Winter has arrived. The weather has changed dramatically from hot and dry to cold and wet. Some has of my garden survived the fire and the drought and some plants like the zucchinis have made heroic efforts and are producing fresh food for us. The goats are warm and dry in their poly house and the chickens have produced a few eggs.

Most of the surrounding bush looks very dead. On the old convict road up to Kinglake the tree ferns have started to grow new fronds but everything else looks devastated. Now the ground cover has gone it is possible to see the mullock heaps of the old gold mines and the tracks that probably serviced them. I have ridden along this road many times and never suspected their presence.

Last week we had wonderful help from friends. Steve and Johno fitted out the double donga with internal walls, all plastered and with doors that work. Caroline’s mob cleared up the terrible mess of wire and fallen trees at the old front gate and of course Gary put the roof on the toilet.

It was my birthday on Saturday and my family and friends joined me for lunch at the Toolangi Tavern where there is marvellous value at the moment. I am so lucky to still have all my kids and Grand kids around me. Al came back to the farm with us and we began to talk about rebuilding. The upsetting part was that he brought information he had received from our insurance company.

He had sent them a plan of our homestead but they had sent a different plan to a building assessor who costed the fictitious house at much less than we are insured for. It was all total lies. For instance they omitted the staircase and swapped cavity wall brick for brick veneer. We found it quite devastating to know the devious means they go to to try and avoid paying out claims.

I spent Sunday on the net finding out the real cost of items like stoves and wood heaters so I could gather evidence to help our cause. Everything is so very expensive it is frightening. Yesterday we went shopping . We need to set up our new house with a kitchen so we can cook proper meals again. We brought a large fridge with a freezer lower half but we also looked at horse gear. We would like to have saddles and bridles so we can ride our horses but they have become disastrously expensive.

It was all very depressing but it was Dave’s last day here. He finished building steps into the double donga and we all met up in the Indian restaurant in Healesville for a farewell do. The food was good and we forgot our woes for a while but last night I kept waking with nightmares. We are starting to feel ill with all the stress.