#treechange

2 years and counting

On the morning of our bushfire two year anniversary in early December I went to the beach to listen and watch the waves. They soothe and remind me of the perpetuality of nature. On our bushfire impacted block there has been much regeneration and survival of plants and critters. Over the last few years I understand the term our First Nations Australians know and understand as deep time, we have only moments to observe nature as she has endured and will endure long after us, despite disruptions and a heating climate we don’t fully understand the impact of. All of us touched by the black summer bushfires now appreciate a climate changed world is not a happy one. A CSIRO study published the week prior to our anniversary confirmed that climate change is the dominant factor driving Australia’s 800 percent increase in bushfires. The weather that enabled the 2019 bushfires will be four times more likely to occur with the forecast levels of global warming. So vote hard for decision makers who listen to evidence and care for the enviornmanet and the people who live near it. You can also make decisions within your control that will reduce emissions.

On that anniversary day I sat with my new perspective on resilience and recovery while I wore clothes from my old life packed by my husband on the day before the fire came. I had in my pocket something retrieved or stolen back from the fire. I used to have a set of ceramic runes - yes I confess the paganistic prophetic use of them appeals to me, but I’ve always been drawn to them as early forms of writing. One of these runes left on my bedside table survived the fire, and the bushfire rubble clearing, and one day unearthed itself to me in the place where our old home once was. In the dirt I found Hagalaz - the rune for air. It symbolises transformation and is also referred to as the egg of life. Our block has been transformed from what it was pre fires and after fire, and our new life has emerged.

It’s wonderful to be back but not unreservedly so. In early November we experienced the first very hot day since our return with a strong westerly wind. I was on edge. The day before someone had started a burn off, I texted my neighbour who shared my incredulity that anyone would do so, knowing the wind forecast the next day. The day and discomfort passed uneventfully. A few weekends later on a rainy afternoon, while I was finishing some interior painting balancing on a scaffold my eldest son asked me, ‘What will we do if the fire comes again?’ Firstly I pointed out the window at the rain pouring down as La Niña was working her watery magic. ‘No fires this season,’ I smiled. ‘But yes one day, there will be fire again.’ I explained what he knew, that the full external sprinkler system with dedicated pump would soak the building, and talked about all the features we had added (or are soon to add) to make the place fire proof - fire proof gutter guard, steel and cement sheet window shutters, flame zone foam and metal flashing infills, no external timber, flame zone chimney for our internal wood heater, steel or copper external pipework as well as the large cleared area around us. How we will work regularly to keep around the house and along our track clear of vegetation. I told him that on catastrophic fire days we won’t be here. We will go into town to be safe. I suggested we had learned what was important to take, and that we would be ready to take those things in our new trailer. I gently said that we know everything else can be replaced. He listened. ‘But if it burns down again I don’t think I’ll want to live here,’ he said. ‘I think that would be fair enough,’ I agreed.

The difficult feelings have subsided and overwhelmingly I feel gratitude. I’m grateful for people who have helped us get to this point with actual or emotional support - our neighbours, our friends and family, my boys teachers, my work colleagues. I’m grateful for our temporary new home and the time covid gave us to hunker down together and create it. For my flexible job. For my newly grown veggies. Now, importantly, we are not living in a building zone and we are not spending all of our time building - we have exited crisis mode. We made a purposeful decision that helped us reach this point that not every bushfire impacted family could make, my husband stopped work to focus on our place. I’m grateful we could make that decision.

The return

It’s coming up to 3 months since we returned to our block and it took us 8 weeks to slow down. On the weekend we slowed down we enjoyed the first official Friday night catch up with our neighbours as the full moon rose. On Saturday we went out for brunch. No sport on Sunday morning meant a sleep in. I played handball with my boys for the first time ever in my life. Lamb shanks slow cooked on the wood heater. We squeezed in a late Sunday afternoon fishing trip. It took us 8 weeks to find some calm. We had forgotten how to do normal. I haven’t written for this blog since um wow December?! My leisure time since then has been extremely limited and when it occurred I prioritised my mental wellbeing and sleep.

This journey has brought me to the edge of my psychological and physical limitations. I watched my husband do a terminator style non stop renovation while trying also to commence a rebuild. His promises to take time off over Christmas dwindled to 2 days. There was so much to do. I helped with whatever jobs I was able to and then focussed on the household and occasionally, our boys. Midway through January this year we realised trying to work on both the renovation and the rebuild was insanity. The local real-estate market was booming. Post COVID, Sydney city dwellers realised they could put in a few days in the city then work from their coastal holiday pad the rest of the week. We decided to get our investment property, come bushfire haven, onto the market before the summer ended. We mapped out each remaining job and the days required to accomplish them. We calculated selling time, settlement time and remaining bank balance. What were need to do’s and what were optional extras. If everything went to plan, we could pay to get some work done at the block and make it habitable enough to move into. It was an extreme test of time, energy and resources.

It worked. We listed by the end of February, sold in three weeks and settled five weeks after settlement. I write that all in one glib sentence. Of course all of that only happened with considerable focus and effort. Life for the boys was hectic. 99% of their toys were packed and moved into storage weeks before the house went on the market. As the house neared completion we stressed about them damaging something. When the house was on the market we stressed about them getting things dirty - the walls, the windows or the cupboards. I banished them from the bathroom, they had to brush teeth in the laundry and shower outside. Luckily it was warm and didn’t rain much in those few weeks! Anyone who has sold a house while living in it knows how painful open homes are. The logistics and effort of cleaning and styling, while working full time from home, scheduling everything between work appointments, getting the dog out of the way and the boys to school, nearly broke me. Thankfully the selling process was short, but we packed a lot of opens into that time and by the end of it all, I had become a shouty, grouchy mum and wife. It was also a real highlight to hit menopause and bring some phenomenal hormonal energy into the mix. Phew.

Before we packed up and left I was lucky enough to have a week away with the boys. My fully wired self hit Melbs and my family gave me refuge and forgave my intensity. We managed some fun and the change of scenery was a big relief. Husband, however, stayed behind to work on the temporary shed home. Holiday behind me, I returned to packup and clean and polish the house for the financial return of our lives. Literally.

Can you then imagine our triumphant and spectacular return to our block bathed in happiness and light? Um well perhaps instead picture this - we arrived exhausted to an unpowered, work in progress temporary residence in the middle of a mice plague and endured 200ml of heavy rain in four days leaving us surrounded by mud. Happy to catch the rain in our tank? I wish! The new tank leaked 8000L the week before we moved, and only our neighbour’s spare tank loan meant we had any water at all. But being so small, it overflowed and made even more mud. The heavy rain was so loud on the tin roof it frequently woke the kids in the night (who then woke us), mice ran across the floor, huntsmen spiders dropped from the ceiling. With nowhere really to unpack things, cooking became like the biggest ever memory game, which box were the bowls in? Where did I pack the cutlery? The rain delayed our solar power install so for 10 days we lived out of an esky and by torchlight. We both kept working full time, getting the boys to school, after school sport commitments and then husband kept building after he got home and into the night. After a week of stress and chaos we knew something had to give, fortunately husband could take time off work to focus on our build and family life.

Fast forward to now. The financial pressure of the summer has eased. The temporary living quarters are functional and steadily improving. We have a beautiful wood heater. Our off grid solar system is powering us even during these short winter days. I have more kitchen cupboards than ever before, plus a dishwasher! I have hung up my clothes in a full wardrobe for the first time in nearly four years. The boys each have clean new wardrobes. Their separate rooms are still being built so they are in what will be our room which is insulated and wall paneled. We can cope with an outside shower and toilet. My husband is a legend.

What’s it like actually being back? I confess I was nervous about my own and the boys emotions. Eldest son is extremely happy to be back. Youngest son has taken time to adjust but that has more been due to his fear of the dark. The noises of the bush are unfamiliar and there are no streetlights out here! There has only been one time where a prebushfire memory overwhelmed me. Every person’s bushfire experience and recovery is unique. Unlike many others we are fortunate have the opportunity to not have to build on the exact footprint of the old place and I think this is psychologically helpful. It’s not the same space, and with some trees dead and gone the landscape is altered, its a slightly different perspective. The boys are older now, so our lifestyle is different too. Slowly we are finding a new rhythm on our land. The boys are absolutely loving being back on their bikes on bush tracks.

I was excited to resume my morning walks, although maybe not as excited the dog! He’s happy to have his off-lead roam again. But the first week of walking I found tough, the burnt and recovering state forest I traverse didn’t bring me the joy it used to. In the heavily logged areas where only isolated saplings were left unlogged, they couldn’t survive the heat of the fire or they didn’t have community trees to share nutrients through their roots to support recovery. The undergrowth is now the canopy and is booming with all the extra sunlight but when I look at it, all I see is fire hazard. Then as the weeks went by, my view softened, I recognise the bush is healing like me. I am appreciating small wonders of nature. A spider’s web highlighted with morning dew or the fascination of new plants thriving. There are trees that have fully recovered, others seem to be doing well, and there is much green in the landscape to enjoy.

On my morning walk I also see which animals are about in the night from what they leave behind. There is at least one very busy wombat! We see wallabies reasonably often and last week one morning I found big roo prints in the clay right near our place. We hear a boobook owl calling most nights and more frogs chirping croaking from the gully than I ever remember. Which now makes sense, we definitely were in drought for some years prior to the fires and the creek has this year been running for months. Less exciting is hearing foxes at night, my son especially dislikes their eerie calls. In daytime the bird life is altered. We are down to one lyrebird, there used to be two with adjacent territories battling loudly with their extraordinary mimicry. But at least there is one, how a ground bird survived I can’t imagine. The yellow robins aren’t around us now, we have wrens in the cleared spaces and in the lush shrubs busy brown gerygones dart and chirp. A shrike thrush has made a nest in our bushfire remains pile, her song is piercing and wonderful. Rarely are the yellow crested black cockatoos here now. This past weekend we did see two circling wedge tailed eagles the silent assassins of the sky wheeling high over the gully with that phenomenal wingspan.

Surprisingly my greatest source of happiness in these first few months being back has come from the sky. Unobstructed by buildings, the sky feels bigger in the bush. I’m loving the late winter sunrises. My very favourite time is just after the sun has risen when the horizontal sun rays set tops of the trees bright orange. Those are magical minutes of golden tinged trees. The sunsets. The stars. The moon. the sky has been a revelation and a source of happiness. Maybe because I’m spending more time outside I notice it more. Seeing glittering stars through the steam of a hot outdoor shower makes the cold walk inside completely worth it!

Slowly I am regaining my sense of gratitude for this place. The quiet. The privilege of not seeing another house. Having no curtains and that not mattering. Not worrying about noise and neighbours. Lack of street lights at night.

I remember back when the treechange thing happened and I did these to kinda make a point about the eyewells.

see the big issue with the tree change wannabes was the eye wells on bratz dolls are HUGE and the eyes people were painting were small which made them look well... very deformed.

The top doll was a Bratz Kid who kept her original eyes but I repainted and put on a eah body for the lulz. I still quite like her lol.

The other one was a crappy Cloe.

I did a couple of these, dolls who were utterly fuuuuucked or who’s original faces were so damn boring and bland they were pointless. I should redo them, my paintwork is way steadier now. I mean damn this is grainy. The lips aren’t bad but could do with another layer but the eyes and eyebrows are bugging the shit outta me. lol.

The only thing I think the treechange trend got right was highlighting the nose of the Bratz so they obviously HAD a nose. I kinda like that effect and still use it today on dolls who have really small shallow sculpted noses.

Bonus extra wrong Bratz Kidz head on a mature body bwhahaha.

Because I COULD.