Letting it sink in

It's hard to believe what the country looks like up here, you might think you've got the idea, but if you come up you might just stop the car when you reached the burn and sit for a while, so the enormity of it can sink in.

We have had one or two 'roos coming in, different to the normal healthy group of 20 or so, then tonight all of a sudden they were there, maybe about 8, sitting on the black. They looked at me for a while then took off into the next paddock and I was sad I had disturbed them. It must be hard to find food with so much of their local haunts wiped clean of all green. There is bush behind us but not a lot of grassland. Tomorrow we'll call in at the DSE and see if they know what our local grasses are and if we can buy seed anywhere to start some regeneration.

Yesterday I was about to head off wood collecting when I noticed Schnook was very interested in the corner where the house joins the garage. Fortunately I looked as there was an echidna burrowing for all he was worth with Schnooks' nose in hot pursuit.

I called her off and moved some wood across to protect him, then rang the wild life helpers who are still resident at the Taggerty store. They arrived with gloves, a washing basket and a couple of towels. He really didn't want to be moved and I was feeling a bit ambivalent about calling for help as Melissa her colleague went to work with gloved hands and my garden trowel. Eventually, after much digging and squirming, he was picked up, a big prickly ball with a long wet nose, probably after the ants which have arrived this summer. I stroked his prickles and sent him a mind message of peace, he was safe and would be well cared for.

I was sad to see him go but Schnooks and echidnas are a bad mix, she worries away at them and they burrow into the impossibly hard soil. Melissa said they would check him at the store to make sure he doesn't have burns, then take him up onto the mountain so he can forage in peace.

This afternoon we saw some photos of baby koalas being fed at the store, so tiny and so accepting of help. Our wild life people come from a group called 'Aware' and are extraordinarily dedicated to their task.

There's Alex with the little Joey in a bag which she let me peep into - little bald head with folded back ears, perhaps the whole head being the size of a young child's fist. Every so often she would lift up the bag and simulate the mother 'roo jumping, up and down around the verandah for a while, then sit back down to chat again. And there's Michelle who is in charge here and looks so tired every time I see her. She's pretty jaded about the articles in the press and bigwigs arriving at the store and being shown some of the wounded.

A lot of what we see is beautiful but getting up at night to feed the animals and dealing with them when they are in acute trauma, that would be hard. I intend to do some training so I am of more use another time. Yes there will be other times, we all acknowledge that. Not in our area hopefully although it's quite possible.

We hear more and more stories all the time. I met someone yesterday (at the store again) who was in Melbourne with her dogs locked in the house up here. There were reliable reports that her whole street was wiped out and it took a few days to discover that not only was her house ok but so were her dogs, hungry and thirsty but ok. The cat was ok too in its outside run under the gum tree!

The other women at the store yesterday both worked at Marysville. One of them has been back and is ok with her grieving although still shocked and profoundly sad. I encouraged her to stay a part of the community, she was a part of the community and spent most of her days there in the business. There are plans to very rapidly build temporary dwellings, shops, post office, supermarket, internet cafe. So she can go back up there to shop, sit in the cafe, go to the post office, and most importantly, meet people. She will be alright although she knew many who died.

The other woman was acutely traumatised still, unable to sit still, her face haunted. The couple who ran the business she worked for died in the fires, and many other people she knew as well. She doesn't want to go back there ever. I wouldn't presume to think I could understand what she's going through, but I think perhaps her decision is right at least for the moment. It would take a lot of courage to go back and look at where so many you were close to had died. Perhaps she doesn't have the right emotional support for that in which case going back would retraumatise her rather than help.

We chatted for a while about the people of Marysville, the people we had met up with since who were ok, the ones who weren't. I wonder about some people who I haven't heard about and I wonder about others in our area who I haven't seen yet, the women at the Alex library, are they ok? I haven't been back there yet but I'll call in tomorrow, see if they're ok, let them know we're ok.

In some ways the Taggerty people are beginning to settle into a new way of being. We all feel closer although now the urgency is over there is less contact between people as they get on with clearing their own land. The store has become the meeting ground - we love going up for a drink (they make a good Dandy latte provided you bring your own dandelion tea bag) because we invariably meet someone new, have a nice chat, hear the news.

Today we pumped water down to the olive grove - one side of the drive is burnt out and the other is still green! I dug trenches around the trees that looked as though they might have a chance, gave the soil around them a good soaking and filled the trenches with water. I filled the old bath tubs in the hazelnut paddock with water so the wild life have somewhere to drink, and dug dead blackberries out from beside the shed - now how did they burn and the fire not touch the shed??? It's a lot easier to grub dead blackberries out that green ones but I still had sweat pouring off me and called it quits after I'd freed up the gateway into the burnt olives. Then I watered anything around the little house that might have a chance, and spread some chook poo and mulch around some of the trees.

Next Kerrin and I got on with cleaning up the debris on what were our fences. Gloves, pliers, wire cutters, shovel, more sweat and a few curses. We're getting there.