The Courage to Visit Marysville

It took me until Easter to visit Marysville. I didn't want to intrude but I have memories there and I needed to revisit some special places. We went up that way on our way to Taggerty and it seemed fitting that rain was pouring down. I could feel the tears welling up inside me to match the water falling from above.

The main focus of my visit was the alpaca shop. For about three weeks before the fires I said it was time I visited it again, but I didn't get there. Jenny has provided me with beautifully soft jumpers every year since I developed nerve pain. She met me in the street in Alexandra shortly after the fires and her eyes lit up when she saw my apricot colored baby alpaca which has been a friend for the last year. I patched some holes in it recently as I've worn it so solidly it's really ready to go out, but it gave joy to Jenny that something from her shop was living on.

It's hard to orient oneself in Marysville now, but Kerrin is good on directions and took me straight there. Nothing left but a burnt out shop fitting made of wrought iron, and the roof lying bent and burnt all piled up on the side. I took some photos and am glad I did although I was worried about doing that at the time.



This week as we drove through Narbethong, truck after truck after truck turned out of the Marysville road. Some of them were doubles and all of them were taking debris back to Melbourne. It was hard enough seeing Marysville burnt, but Marysville gone???

Along the road up to Taggerty, the houses and businesses that we are used to driving past all blackened and ruined, are beginning to disappear. Level ground cleared of all debris is what's left and I think that is maybe a harder sight even than the burnt remains. It's all being cleared so quickly, I feel like getting out of the car and hanging onto some of it and can't imagine what it must be like to have lived in one of those houses.

One more place at Marysville called me. I went in search of Bruno, and found him standing in the car park. We chatted for a while in the rain and he encouraged us to walk through his grounds. It seems miraculous that so many of his figurines were left standing. Terracotta doesn't burn easily. Some of them are broken and most of them are discolored. The trees are burnt, the undergrowth has gone. I look forward to the next edition of his book which will include the story of the fires.





It's important to the recovery of Marysville for people to return now. To return respectfully and with love in their hearts for the people, the animals and the forest. Some of those who lived there want the new Marysville to be clear of trees, others can't bear the thought of that. I understand both sides and hope a new Marysville can emerge which is safe enough from fire yet still has some of that magical green.



This last photo says so much to me. It was taken in the pouring rain, sheltering under an umbrella lent to us by a kindly passerby who sat in her car and waited while we absorbed the reality of what is left at Bruno's. The drop of water on my camera lens is a poignant reminder of what was missing on Bushfire Saturday, but the uplifted arms of this sprite are symbolic of the spirit of renewal still alive in the trees and the people.

Black Spur visual Story Part 2

Over Easter I took the time to drive over the Black Spur quietly, stopping to take photos, wandering quietly in amongst some of the trees but being very careful as there are still so many spots where a tree might fall.



The recovery of the bush continues, faster than the recovery of the animals or people. I was delighted to hear three bird calls, seeming strange in a blackened landscape but heartening. One was a kookaburra flying off across the Watts River. One of the interesting things we are finding is that some things are visible now that were hidden before by the lush growth of the forest. The Watts River is one of those, clearly visible now as it meanders along through the blackened land near Fernshaw.



It has taken me a while to get back to writing. Wandering through the black is both saddening and inspiring and I come and go in my capacity to sit with what has happened. Sometimes I feel so very small in all of this.



There are places on the Spur that hold special memories for us, but one is unidentifiable now. We used to call it 'purple corner'. An Australian mint bush on the high side of the road a few bends after Dom Dom. It was flowering in November the year we bought Taggerty and starting driving the Spur each day on our way to school in Croydon and work in Montmorency. Every year we watch for that burst of purple. I wonder which bend it is.

On the way back over the spur I stopped at another special place which holds many memories for me. St.Ronan's Well is untouched by fire so my memories came alive. The echo of children laughing as we filled our bottles, of Bon and Maria dunking their heads in the ice cold water, of quiet times on my own. I sat and let the cool of the water and green water weed restore my spirits.

Black Spur Visual Story Part 1

When we first saw the Black Spur after the fires much of the forest was blackened with dry brown leaves on the trees that were not totally blackened. Occasionally a tree fern would have one or two greenish fronds in amongst the brown and black.



Then we would come to areas that seemed almost untouched: a little gully of green ferns looking soft to eyes that still felt shocked from some of the sights we'd driven through; a patch of tall mountain ash still reaching up to the light with unburnt bark and a green canopy; a little place where I like to stop and sit facing a beautiful valley of eucalypts, Australian myrtle and tree ferns, all still clothed in soft green and rich healthy brown.





On recent trips we've been excited to see new growth every time.



There are still a lot of tree ferns that are standing forlornly with fronds denuded of all green, looking naked. If they're still alive the memory of the burn is too deeply engraved in their exterior for us to see yet. Other tree ferns have been actively and visibly growing for weeks now and many have a dozen new fronds well on the way to maturity. Their recovery seems nothing short of miraculous. Each time we pass through the Spur we watch excitedly for new growth and each trip it looks so different. I'm not sure if I can convey a sense of our amazement, awe, excitement. Today I was continually uplifted by the wonder and beauty of its recovery.

Dirty fences and determined sunflowers

It's been one of those glorious autumn days at Taggerty, with a clear blue sky, warm sun and a light breeze. We had a lazy morning enjoying lots of fruit on the veranda, some of it local. Our oldest passionfruit vine has been prolific which is extraordinary because it is on the side of the little old house that caught fire on Bushfire Saturday.



The fire burnt right up to the house on that side - all the grass was burnt but has since come back and the house was only just saved by the local hero up the street. Since then we've enjoyed semi roasted passionfruit but also plenty of beautiful juicy fresh ones.

After our fruit brekky this morning we headed down to the little house with all our fence destroying gear. Fence pulling after a bushfire is a very dirty job and can be quite frustrating although ultimately satisfying. Here you can see a sequence of attempts on a post.




The next post proved too much for one so our neighbour Doug helped. He still wears protection over a burn on his arm from Bushfire Saturday.




The last couple of weeks we've noticed a number of unseasonal happenings. The old plum tree behind the little house has sprays of blossom at the top of burnt branches.



Many trees are coming back after the burn sprouting fresh green leaves. Some of these are deciduous and would normally have mature leaves turning autumn tones soon. I imagine the trees need this last spurt of activity to store enough energy to see them through the winter.



I expected any iris that had survived to be shooting about now, but was still struck by their resilience coming up from the blackened ground.




If nature can do it so can I, so I put aside my reservations and learned to drive the tractor today. I used to drive the old tractor but we bought this tractor just after I developed complex regional pain syndrome so didn't get to know it early on and have just left it to Kerrin. Today was the day to break through that block and it turned out to be very easy to handle.



Tired, dirty and hungry I was glad to leave the fences or what's left of that one, lying on the ground for another day. There is still so much fence to pull out I just don't want to think about it. One step at a time. On the way up the hill to the main house we stopped off at the big dam. The water level is down but it's beauty always calls us to stop a while and enjoy the peacefulness of the water.



We are blessed with lots of water storage so have been pumping water up from the big dam to the dam near the house. It's always a joy when the water comes gushing out.



I couldn't resist going into the orchard and just doing a couple of things before dinner :) That's always risky. Sure enough, it was a couple of hours before I could leave it and come inside. Kerrin just rolls his eyes when I head for the orchard, he knows he'll be cooking dinner again if he wants to eat before sundown.

It's the best part of the day for me. I lose myself in the pleasure of the moment, grubbing out fire weed, mulching, watering. I wander around with a pocket full of seeds - broad beans, beetroot and carrot today - and often just plant them where the whim takes me. There are always lots of surprises popping up in unexpected places. currently I have zillions of little cotyledons popping up amongst the carrots. I guess I'll find out what they are in a few weeks when they become more recognizable.

Just before I finished tonight I went down to admire my compost - lots of good worm castings helping out at the moment. On the way I glanced over at the old sunflower stalks, burnt brown in the heat of the fires. In amongst the brown were lots of happy new flower heads.

Smoke and sirens

Last Monday I went outside to plant a kangaroo paw underneath the old red box that grows so close to our veranda that it worries me. I love that old tree and it doesn't look as though it would land on the house if it burnt and fell, but with a strong southerly wind it could.

As I stepped outside I smelled smoke and my body tensed before my brain could tell me it was just the smoke from our stove. There is friendly fire and there is wildfire, but my nose couldn't distinguish for a moment and pictures of Bushfire Saturday are always ready to surface.




Later that day I was sitting sipping my tea and preparing to add to this blog when a siren started nearby. I was outside sniffing the air and looking around by the time Kerrin had come downstairs to do the same. Together we listened and decided it was in Cathedral Lane. Was it a fire or police siren, or maybe an ambulance?

The sound went on and on, going further and further up Cathedral Lane maybe. Police sirens don't go on and on like that unless there is traffic. Ambulances don't. It must have been a fire truck. No sign of smoke and the siren had stopped. We asked the neighbours later but no-one else heard it and no-one knew what it was about. One of life's unsolved mysteries.

Evidence of fire is still everywhere around in the affected areas, even in the brilliance of the grass. In our home paddock there is a clear line where Kerrin stopped the fire, but now the burnt half is a vibrant deep emerald green, whilst the unburnt half is just average autumn yellow green.



A lot of the dead trees have been bulldozed out along the roads now, so where there was thick bush there is now an occasional blackened tree. More and more often though, on the jet black arms of a dead looking tree, are spectacular clusters of green shoots sometimes running the whole length of a branch as the tree begins its recovery process.



I carry my camera everywhere and we often stop so I can leap eagerly out and catch the latest spectacular show of green. Each week the colors of the trees and land are changing and I'm keen to keep a record of how it unfolds. It's hard to believe just a couple of weeks ago our land still looked black from highway to mountain.



I started this post a week ago and just couldn't keep writing. Perhaps it was the meeting I attended at Marysville golf and bowls club, sitting in the shade of the old tree, listening to how things are being managed and knowing that a lot of the people around me have lost so much. It seemed wrong to come back here and celebrate new growth even though watching nature spring back is so hopeful.



I haven't driven into Marysville, it would seem intrusive when residents have only been in for a short time themselves. Everyone I've met who had to go in - cfa and wildlife rescue people - say it is hard to be there with so much devastation around and so many lives lost. One resident I spoke to, whose house is still standing (!!!) said it looks like a bomb hit, flattening all the buildings and leaving rubble.

I came back to Taggerty blessing the fact that we have a house to go to in between clearing up all the debris, and that we are both alive. I still look at all the burn around us and the patch of green behind us and find it hard to understand why our house survived.

One of the scary stories Kerrin tells is when, in the middle of the fires, when 70,000 eucalypts were filled with raging fire on our western boundary and embers were falling everywhere, the fire pump ran out of fuel. It's behind the house, away from the bush, but we have found embers there too.

Kerrin just got on with filling the pump with petrol, praying no embers fell near him as he worked. He took the risk and it worked. Last week, out under the old gum tree, I found a patch of burn we hadn't noticed before. Perhaps 20cm in diameter, it must have been where an ember fell and kept burning, maybe burning itself out and maybe going out from the spray of the sprinklers nearby.

Today we got going on the fences again. Equipped with gloves, pliers, wire cutters and a small jemmy, we started at separate ends of the same fence and met somewhere in the middle, sweaty and tired. I finished with a roll of reasonable wire for later use, and a lot of scrap wire that will go to the tip next week as the skip up at the store has been taken away.

Kerrin has been measuring so we can order corrugated iron to put around the house under the veranda. We finally settled on that as the best solution to the problem of leaf litter collecting underneath. We'll be much better prepared next time and no that isn't being pessimistic, just realistic. Global warming and Victoria add up to more bushfires but let's hope we never experience anything like this year's fires again.

At the end of the day we all chilled out a bit in the orchard. Kerrin and the dogs took advantage of my new compost bins to take a break.

Emerald Green Recovery March 17

We drove back up a few days ago, through the Black Spur. I am amazed at how my brain had glossed over some of the damage, maybe it was just too hard for my heart to absorb at first. There is a lot of damage between Healesville and Dom Dom and then amazingly it's ok for a while, until you reach the outskirts of Narbethong. There is so much burnt from then on, houses that are not much more than twisted blackened tin lying on the ground, the timber mills that must have raged hot with flame. Then some welcome sights - the Igloo with its Big Burger sign still out, Butters Cafe still open, the little white church still clean and white.




As we got closer to Taggerty I was ready for the blackened paddocks and the houses that were torn down in the fire's rage, but I wasn't ready for the emerald green! The grass is coming back (and so are a lot of weeds) and its brightness is such a stark contrast to the charcoal black of the ground that it is as though someone has strewn emeralds across the land. The sight of green is so soothing to eyes that are tired of black and still remember the red soreness of smoke for days and days and days.

The grass is greening but the mountain is browning as it becomes more and more evident how much burnt. At first sight it would seem that our whole mountain is going to be denuded of trees, but we went for a climb yesterday and were amazed at what is hiding in the blackness.

Climbing up the mountain from our side is always a bit arduous, but we found ourselves repeatedly stuck on steep climbs with shale underfoot that was shifting and falling. It was a bit hair raising and unexpected as we've climbed the mountain many times before with only a few patches of shale to navigate through. After a while we realized that there were countless rocks with bare clean faces and realized that we were walking through rocks exploded in the heat.



On that Saturday night, massive explosions were heard up the mountain and Kerrin eventually worked out that the small stone pieces that were hailing down on him like shrapnel were actually pieces of exploding rock. We had no idea how much had exploded until yesterday. In fact it's hard to remember what the landscape was like, but I think there was much more soil and more large boulders.




Then we began to glimpse little bits of green. Bracken pushing its way through the shale, new growth at the base of burnt tree trunks, small fern fronds beginning to uncurl under sheltering rocky outcrops and most startling of all, rows of young stems covered in small leaves appearing on big old blackened tree trunks. The bush is coming back.



The only sign of wildlife we saw were the birds, and in amongst the black there were very few of those. One lone butterfly was fluttering above the black, dancing in the sunlight for a while then gone. We met some of the bush inhabitants at the store yesterday - a big old koala sitting in a laundry basket and his two rolled up companions, young wombats curled up in towels. They were all on their way to Frankston to complete their recovery before being brought back for release. They all seemed very accepting of their human helpers and the wombats allowed us to gently touch their fur. I hope they received the loving blessing I sent with my touch.

Up the top of the mountain we sat for a while looking out at an unknown familiar view. We could see our land more clearly as there are less trees blocking the view, so we could make out the driveway up to the big house and the little dam. That used to be obscured by trees.



We could clearly see where the fire had been and the color of the Black Ridge across the valley was beautiful in its red browns and black. I took some photos even though the light was bad, only later realizing that in each photo there is a ray of sunlight coming through the clouds and falling on our house. One of those beautiful synchronicities which makes me recognize the greater plan of which we are just a little part.



Today we cleared more burnt fence debris and took it to the skip in town which is one for community use at present. Taggerty will need a community skip for a long time, there is so much to clear. We felt good to have taken one load down but it's just a little dent in what remains to be done. At least we can now see where the old harrows are - they had become overgrown with grass and we had wondered how we'd get them out. The fire fixed that!



Once we were up in town it seemed logical to sit on the verandah at the store and have a coffee. Gossy makes a great coffee and he's pretty good with the dandelion variety too. We sat and chatted for a while, caught up with some of the local news, saw some people we know. That's another change the fires brought, our store has been a hub of activity through the fires and beyond, and we, like other locals, are more inclined to stop for a drink now and hang out for a bit on the verandah.

Back at home. I've been working in the orchard - still battling the wildlife raiders who this week chomped the new broccoli seedlings off at ground level. I guess we're doing our bit keeping the wildlife fed but I'm beginning to think I'll just have to disguise the vegies better. The carrots are all being eaten still so I guess I just need to harvest them while I can still see where they are. At last we have two little pumpkins growing but I wonder if we'll get enough sun to ripen them, it seems a bit late in the year. The plants are all a bit confused - the sunflowers are trying to flower again, perhaps to make up for all the beautiful sun faces that were scorched in the burn.



The local bees are feeding off my marjoram which has decided to flower (I'm not sure when it's supposed to flower but I doubt whether it should be now). Our bee keeper neighbour explained that any flower is better than none, but what the bees really need is eucalypt flowers for pollen and nectar. They'll be waiting a while for that I guess.

Well it's time to go sit on the verandah while Kerrin poaches us some eggs for lunch, then to sit some more while we eat and enjoy the view.