Black Stumps and the Air Filled With Ash

Hello from the 'burbs,

It was hard to leave last night, but here I am back in the office.

Yesterday we started the day by cleaning up around the house again. Picking up old bits of building wood that had somehow never been cleared and raking more dead leaves which seem to be falling as fast as we clear them. Then under the house. We thought it was pretty clear under there, but I raked and filled buckets with dead leaves for what seemed like an age, while Kerrin variously removed old nails from wood to be dumped or carried my bucket loads to the trailer. Then we sat on the garage edge and watched a family of blue wrens, one colorful male and his three soft brown companions, as they joyfully harvested the insects from the ground we had cleared earlier. Such a beautiful sight seeing the wildlife dancing on the soil against a background of green forest.

We are blessed here, with so much green still behind us.

Tuesday we drove down to Buxton for some supplies and on to Narbethong to check on friends and land marks. We experienced great relief to see the Igloo still standing and the Bucky Pub - many memories in both places, then stopped for a while and took some photos of Sid's place or what was left of it, some burnt out old tanks, buildings with walls just gone and roofs collapsed down, the cafe tables and chairs sitting as though waiting for customers, blackened and silent. In Narbethong we drove past Tudor House and then realized what it had been, but were delighted to find Wombat Cottage unscathed, the herb garden out front still green miraculously despite the lavender which most people now loathe because of its highly flammable oil content. How is it still there when lavender everywhere else is just black stalks? King Henry's has gone, all the old junk cleaned up by nature's hand, just gone, I hope he got out.

All along the way were just hundreds and hundreds of blackened stalks with the tops missing, the forest burnt quite beyond recognition and many many houses gone. We saw some surviving houses - how would you live there now with your neighbours dead or gone and the trees horrible reminders of the night?

Kerrin has stopped seeing flames when he wakes, a good sign. I have stopped worrying about why I wasn't there and am accepting it.

Yesterday afternoon we started on the front of our place, wanting to get the fences done and some semblance of the place being loved. We cut out a lot of the old grevillea with its blackened roots that used to be covered by blackberries. No blackberries now. We cut and dragged and stacked and cut and dragged and stacked, then drove it out into the bare paddocks and left it to rot. It will be good habitat for lizards and little birds for a while. We still haven't seen any snakes, I wonder how they managed.

Now I'm back here and preparing to start work. It will feel a bitstrange at first, but my body and mind are adapting, listening to the familiar bird calls, doing the familiar beginning of the day things.

The transition between town and country is going to be harder for a while.

Thanks for all your support, I think these blog letters will continue for a while, so let me know if you'd like me to take you off the list. For some people this is the first letter they've had for a while. I'm sorry about that but my address book wasn't duplicated onto my laptop so only the people who sent me mail could be added. We're still getting calls from people we haven't seen for a while who are concerned about us.
If you know someone who knows us, please let them know we are ok and if they'd like to receive my emails could they write to me,
love Marg