Victoria Bush Fires

Radio 3AW presenter:  We have on the line Rhiannon from Kinglake.  So what's your situation Rhiannon?

Rhiannon: (very young but calm) Er..well.the property we've moved to is completely surrounded by fire and we're just waiting for it to hit.  Um..er..we've seen no emergency people and we really need help right now.  

P: How many of you are there Rhiannon?

R:  Well, there's eight kids, all under the age of ten.  Two elderly ladies.  Four adults.there's quite a lot of us.  And.

P: And how far is the front of the fire from you do you think?

R: Half a kilometre.  Not even.

P: And it's burning towards you at the moment?

R:  That's correct yes.

P:  And is there any capacity at that property in terms of water and pumps and. 

R: We have pumps and sprinklers going but.uh.I don't know if that's enough.   We really.we heard that there's a strikeforce or something, some fire engines being sent up Chum Creek Road, Heath Road.  And if they are there now we really need help.

P:  We'll see what we can do.  We'll see if we can get some action.  Unfortunately there.

R: It's only minutes away.

P:  We'll do what we can.  What you guys need to do is..er.if possible try and find somewhere in the house.

R: We're in a house.  And the idea that we're, we're putting into place is going to the centre of the house where there's a bathroom and just covering ourselves with wet towels and to stop the smoke or anything like that.

P: Absolutely.  And make sure you've got no synthetic clothing on.  It needs to be woollen.  If you have synthetic clothing then get rid of it.  Endeavour to fill the bath so that you have water there as much as you can.

R: Yep (shouting in the background)

P: How far are the flames away now Rhiannon?

R: I can't see, there's too much smoke now.

P: Rhiannon, we'll see what we can do.

R: (crying) Please send help.

P: You're ok.

R: What?

P: You're ok.

R: Well, yes for now.

P: What can you see?

R: Not a lot.  There's so much smoke  (dog starts barking). The house we were in is now engulfed in flames and..oh.there are still people in that house.

P: There are people still in the house that's on fire?

R: (upset) Yes, we're going to back for them.  Maybe cut through the paddock.

P:  Rhiannon, Mary's on the line who's in Heath Road and her husband's trying to come up with a tank of water on a trailer.  Can you speak to Mary?  She's on the line now.  Are you there Mary?

Mary: Yes I am.

P: Can you hear Mary, Rhiannon?

R:  Yes I can.

Line goes dead.

P: We've lost them.

Woman interviewed outside community centre:

We managed to save..um.the horses and neighbouring sheep and, I think, the cattle.  Um.but Pete lost his house and all his tools and everything.  While we were in a safe spot because the grass fire had gone through the open paddock and we'd parked everything down there.um.a  man came down with his daughter and they were really badly burnt..um.and he'd lost his wife and other children.    And we got separated because they came into town in the ambulance.with his daughter. I.er..(upset) She was only about two or three years old.

Man interviewed on the radio:

(North English accent).  We moved here because we wanted to live in paradise.  We lived in a caravan while we built our house.  Then we leant that caravan to new neighbours when they came and built their houses.  We were off the mountain because we went to pick up my daughter from the airport.  My house is gone.  It's only treasure, it's only junk.  But my neighbours, they're all in their houses.  They're all dead.  They're all dead.

Radio 3AW presenter a few hours later:

P: We have on the line Mark, Rhiannon's dad.

Mark: (crying) Oh man, yes I am.  

P: What's the situation Mark?

M: Rhiannon's safe.  Her brother saved her.

P: Oh fantastic.

M: (very upset) Oh mate, you've no idea.  You've got no idea how happy I am.

P: Oh Mark.  That's great, we're so happy to hear from you.

M: You ain't go no idea.  (crying).  Her brother, he's an absolute legend.  He's gone down through the burning paddock, cut his way through to the other house and got 'em all out on a little tractor with a little pump on the back of it.  And he's got 'em out of the house.  And I think the house is burnt.  He's got 'em all out, they're all safe.

P: And he did that single-handedly.

M: (crying) He's a legend.  With his brother, or his cousin, I'm not sure who it was.  It's a tiny little tractor and he's dragged them all out and put 'em all on it and got them back to safety.

P: How old is he Mark?

M:  He's 18.

P: And how old is Rhiannon?

M: It's her 21st next Sunday.  

P: Well, Mark, you give her our love and say (crying) we're very relieved here because.

M: You've no idea how happy I am.

P: (crying) It was so distressing.

M: Can I just say too please, I spoke to a woman at the fire brigade at Hillsow and she's a legend that woman.  She's done everything she possibly could and I.the CFA goes much further than firefighters.  This woman in the office, mate, she had everything under control and she organised it and I really take my hat off to those guys.  And also those guys working in the CFA office.  I just thank them so much.

The CFA is the Country Fire Association.  It's entirely voluntary.  There have been many reports of CFA firefighters protecting neighbours' home whilst watching their own burn.

So far, 171 dead bodies have been discovered.  

Death of a Dream

Grief is the most tenacious of emotions.  It only feigns defeat so it can reappear, fresh-armed and stronger than before, and when you are least expecting it.  I was waiting for the bus this morning, watching crazies stumble through the sunshine of Crown Street, when suddenly I was immensely sad.  Weak and tired under the weight of the emotion I thought I’d buried last month.  I’d forgotten that grief, like any emotion, only intensifies when you bury it.  Deny it, ignore it, look the other way and that elephant will just grow and grow.  I see now that yesterday afternoon it was squeezing me hard against the wall on the beach, pressing me harder with every smile I forced and every ball I served.  

So I’m trying to un-deny it today, to admit to my grief and my broken heart.  But it’s difficult you see because if I’m honest I’m embarrassed.  Embarrassed that my grief is for a dream that has died, not a person.  Embarrassed I ever really had the dream.  On the bus it occurred to me that perhaps I need a funeral.   That’s what we do with people isn’t it?  Acknowledge the loss, vaunt our sadness.  It’s one of the few times in our lives when being unhappy is socially acceptable and we embrace it with black garb and weeping.  Which is why I’m writing this really.  This letter is my refusal to be ashamed.  My confession of a silly ambition, but one which I really believed in and which I mourn now it is gone.

I’ve always loved volleyball.  When I was 19 and living in Germany one of the few sporty things I ever did was join a volleyball club for a week or two.  Years later I played in a gay volleyball team (The Volley Partons) in London, attended tournaments in Prague, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Barcelona.  It wasn’t a very high standard and we only ever won the Miss Congeniality prize but it was fun.  It was volleyball.

When I got to Australia five years ago I discovered the combination of volleyball and the beach and immediately fell in love.  I found myself thinking that the utter pleasure I experienced when playing beach volleyball was more intense than any I’d ever known outside of love and making love.  It was so concentrated and complete, such a technical team sport (name any other where two players pass a ball back and forth), so…whatever.  It doesn’t matter really does it?   I just loved it immediately.

I soon realised I wanted to be really good at this game.  I was fed up of losing the court to better players (King of the Court is the rule on beaches around the world).  And then that ambition, combined with (take your pick here) looming middle-age;  a never-very-far need for validation;  a refusal to live life locked in an office;  a desire to be recognised as a fully-signed-up member of the male tribe;  competitivity;  trying to escape from the meaninglessness of life;  wondering if now – at last – I could achieve something in life, bla bla bla….anyway, it combined with a bundle of emotions and I decided to Go For It.  

Here’s the reasoning:  No one in Britain can play beach volleyball.  In 2012 London will host the Olympics.  Host nations like to be represented in every sport.  Host nation teams by-pass normal qualification procedures.  If I worked really hard for six years I could represent Britain in beach volleyball at the London Olympics.  Don’t laugh.  OK, laugh, see if I care.

Bizarrely my coach thought this was just about feasible too.  He thought it would take two years to get me to AA level, another to go interstate and then another to go international.  No other Brits are on the international tour.  Why shouldn’t this work?

Well, here’s why not.  The less you know about something the less aware you are of how little you know.  Just because a sport is not popular does not mean its athletes are any less able.  After three tired, disciplined, emotionally draining years I only now realise  I’m not a natural athlete.  This is not self-pity, it’s level-headed fact.  I don’t have any natural sporting talent.  I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be thick and now, at last, I know.  Also I’m not 19 (although that’s less of a factor).  And now I’m sick of doing nothing but beach volleyball every day.  In October of last year I actually realised I’d come to hate the game.  

All different ways of saying I’m just not good enough and – gulp – never will be.  I play against tourists who played a lot in high school and see they are better than I will ever be.  Admitting that is tough but denying it has been a lot tougher.  Watching them makes even admitting my ambition embarrassing.  I, who had the temerity to think I could represent my nation, will never be good as a good tourist.

So I’m burying my ambition.  This letter is its funeral.  But I’m not burying the emotion that goes around it.  I am sad, I’ve lost a dream which I really believed in, and I’m embarrassed that I ever had it.

The farewell has its advantages of course.  I’m learning to surf, I’m mountain biking when it’s not too hot.  I could go home and read the paper all afternoon if I chose.  And I’m learning to love the game again.  Maybe I’m even improving faster now that the pressure is off.  But it’s not all rosy in my heart just now.  Which is fine.  It’s OK to be sad.  OK to be normal and not over-achieve.

Canyoning

I was sitting in a meeting room on the thirty-fifth floor the other day when suddenly my heart began to hurt.  A British Airways jet had risen from the airport and I watched it circle lazily and disappear over the hazy blue horizon. 

I’ve been missing people a lot recently.  Maybe because so many friends and family have big-0 birthdays this year.  Lots of gatherings of people who it saddens me not to see.  Or maybe because we’ve just celebrated our fifth anniversary of living in Australia and that feels like a long time.  Or maybe no reason.  Anyway, I’m missing everyone and wish so much…well, not that I was there with you but rather that you were here with me.  Blue skies, clear ocean, crashing waves.  You get the picture.  Anyway, back to that hazy blue horizon.  Hazy because of pollution or heat inversion depending on who you talk to.  Blue because of the mountains.  

The Blue Mountains start 50km west of Sydney and shoot up from the Cumberland Plain in a solid wall of sandstone.  The first white settlers considered the mountains “insurmountable” which says more about their arrogance than anything else.  It was only after 20 years of failed expeditions that someone thought to ask the aborigines how they did it.  Easy.  Don’t walk up the valleys as in Europe or America, that way only leads to treachorous cliffs and deceptive dead-ends.  Instead, walk up the ridge lines, the song lines where generations-old songs will guide you the way.  

Still today, asphalt and tarmac smoothing the way, you can see what an incredible job it was to cross the Great Dividing Range, even with that invaluable advice.  The land regularly dips away to reveal infinite eucalypts rolling to the horizon, their leaves reacting with the heat to produce the blue haze which gives the mountains their name.  Every so often, the endless forest is cut by a line of nothing as it falls into a canyon upto 760 metres deep.  Picture that, it’s deep.  Sandstone is soft you see and after ten million years even the tiniest creek can etch deep into the bowels of the earth.  Well, OK, maybe not the bowels of the earth but it certainly feels that way when you’re down there.  Did I mention I went canyoning this week?

At first it felt like a normal bush walk, slugging through the wilderness with heavy packs.  We gawked at the 300 metre cliffs that appeared through the trees and wondered at the silence of the Australian bush (it’s already hot by 9am and all the birds, insects, marsupials, everything is hiding in the shade and trying not to move).  Unlike most walks though,  this one didn’t end when the path disappeared over a ledge.

“Ever abseiled before?” asked my mate Kurt, pulling ropes off his back.  I sort of knew he was an outdoorsy person so was sure it would be fine.  Walking backwards over a cliff ten minutes later I wondered if I should have asked about his qualifications.

At the bottom of the first 20 metre abseil, once I’d stopped kissing the ground and followed Kurt and his mate Zen down the creek until we hit one of those famous dead ends.  Except, what’s that tiny hole under that rock?  That black abyss full of water?  We climbed down into it, the 14 degree water making me gasp.  As instructed I had two layers of thermals on underneath my wetsuit, and as predicted it wasn’t enough.  The woolly hat under my helmet helped, as did the woollen socks inside my shoes.  But after watching me shiver Kurt soon gave me his diving gloves too.  Together with the abseiling harness I looked like I’d walked out of an outdoor equipment store unable to decide what to buy.

It took a while to get used to swimming in a cave that had never seen sunlight but the glow-worms helped, little blue stars littering the ceiling better than an african sky.  Lovely, it’s freezing, let’s go.  And so on (and on) we went.  The sunlight, when we found it again, had turned green through the filter of ancient ferns.  We abseiled again into unknown pools, not combat-style with two wide feet down a flat wall, but crawling and scraping so as not to swing in under the overhang and slam into the jagged rockface underneath.  

We walked the floor of wrinkles two feet wide and a hundred feet high, huge rocks split in two by the gently flowing water.  We found a red-bellied black snake (one of the most poisonous in the world), several spiders, a marsupial that looked like a mouse.  And then more green pools, black swimming caves which probably, hopefully led further down.  

I have never before felt like this - a visitor to a world made neither by nor for humans.  We were alone and far from home down there, freezing in the gloom and looking up at the baking sky.  And oh it was beautiful.  Trees which three hundred years ago had started their journey up to the light buttressed out of the rock above us.  Fish which didn’t know to fear us swam around our feet.  Bright red yabbies, somewhere between a prawn and a lobster, were gnarly and happy to attack intruders.  Our bodies and breath steamed in the green and golden sunlight.

After six hours we splashed out of the canyon and into the main river, its waters joyfully warm after the black creek of the caves.  We swam still deep between red cliffs for an hour or so until at last we found our path.  Then we slogged up the harsh hill, wetsuits wet and clothes damp, back packs heavier than ever.   I am sore all over today and all the happier for it.  Have I ever forgotten to mention before?  Australia is a land of endless beauty.  So, yes I miss you all, but I miss you here, not there.