I keep dreaming I’m home, in my own bed. Half awake in the half light of dawn, imagining a solid murky pink wall to my right, the perfect cool temperature to press warm legs against at 2am. A solid bed, and a solid floor and a solid life wrapped around me.
And then I wake, a little further, and there are windows surrounding me, and I’m high up, and there’s no comforting hum of electricity running through the walls, or the glow of a nightlight through the hallway. No one likes a pitch black house. Or a pitch black bus, temporary living, are you going to rebuild…
Life really can change in an instant, and we say this, as a prayer, as a psalm, mostly in hope of good things coming for us (a lottery win, a new baby, a good decision) but here we are, our lives changed in slightly more than an instant, a long hot burn through the dawn light, coals, embers, fire retardant in my hair, my elderly dog trying to hide in the coals, waiting to see if we could find the bodies of foster kittens.
And then thrust into real life still – trying to talk to insurance at 7am, but there’s no phone numbers, why are there no phone numbers? An online application, but I can’t find my ABN, and the grass is wet, and my feet are wet, and my heels are bleeding and my daughter can’t breathe – but what do we DO? What do you even DO.
Watching everything burn in the half light, when the unreality hasn’t fully set in, when you might still be dreaming, hope you’re still dreaming, except you’ve got covid – you’ve all got covid and surely no one dreams of ash in their mouth, ash in their eyes, covid filling their lungs along with smoke and desperation.
(what do you even DO)
And then three months later, trying to process everything, keep the family together, keep the teenagers brains functional, move us forwards forwards forwards, because there’s no going back.
Maybe insurance is ready to settle, but we’re in that half-light/half-life of waiting for them to call me, because there’s a notification saying “your claim has progressed!” all cheerful, but this is still merely the beginning. Three months later and we’re still at the beginning
(what do you DO)
Day to day, minute to minute sometimes, and people count the costs, count the dollars, like that’s what matters. Like I can’t still taste the ash in my mouth, the frozen horror in my heart.
“but at least you get…”
no thank you. i do not want it. i just want my life back.
…
(with apologies to Jen Buxton, Linc LeFevre, and probably Deb Talens)
I’m learning to use a new oven. Again. And sure, it’s better than cooking everything on a gas BBQ and in a pizza oven (although the pizza oven absolutely has my heart for bread baking), but I hate learning a new oven. It’s gas, and the preheat light doesn’t work, so I never know if I’m at temp or not.
It’s been a long time since I cooked on gas, and I’m remembering how, slowly. I haven’t burned too many things.
The bus is nice. It would be amazing if we were travelling, and still had a house to come home to. If it were insulated. If I weren’t uncomfortable and always too hot or too cold. If I had somewhere to sit that didn’t make my bones fall out of place.
But hey, at least I have a tiny kitchen.
The oven in the Airbnb was tricky – it ran hot, and one hot plate only worked on the highest temp, and you could see where previous people had put overheated pots onto the Formica counters. Five weeks in an Airbnb and I hated cooking, hated trying to feed us all, hated losing something I normally enjoy. The pans were all second hand and terrible, saved as “good enough” but not really. No sharp knives, no knife sharpener, two tea towels in the entire house.
The view was great though. I mean, the water, the river, the swans. $350 a night view.
The whole Airbnb felt dreamlike. It also felt like an abomination that a house that size wasn’t filled with a family permanently. The insurance company paid more than 12k for us to stay there for five weeks and that feels like some sort of legal scam, but there you go.
And now we’re home again. It’s been three months since we lost everything, and gained a bus. At least there’s a bus. And a kitchen, and a new oven to learn how to use.
Tomorrow we get the cables laid for the start of electricity reconnection. We have to apply for an entirely new connection again, because everything is bullshit when your house burns down. We won’t have (non-generator) power for a bit yet, but all progress is good progress. Expensive progress.
On November 8th, 2024, we were woken in the wee hours of the morning by the smoke alarm. Smoke hung heavy in the living room, and we frantically evacuated our burning house. I had two foster kittens down my shirt – having spent the last fortnight saving their lives – and I only grabbed my phone because you need that to ring 000.
I left the front door open in the hope our cats would find their way out, and we bolted, herding kids in front of us.
The thing about watching your whole life burn down around your ears, quite literally, is that it’s really hard to tell your anxious children that nothing bad is going to happen. Because yes, we could have all died. All that stood between us and death was a few minutes and a smoke alarm.
Fire is fast. It is so fast. And it’s even faster when your house is old and made of volatile timbers. Which is something we only found out when it burned like a matchstick.
It’s been three months. Which is both an impossibly long and an impossibly short amount of time. In between here and there we’ve been in a motel, an air bnb, we got robbed, had our car stolen, moved home, lived in tents, lived in our half burned studio shed, and now, we’re living in a bus.
It’s easier to forget how incredibly shit everything is when the weather is fine, but today is raining and cold and we’re all on top of each other, there’s no comfortable seating on the bus, and we’re still having to run a generator for electricity.
Let’s NOT talk about the cost of fuel right now. (Or groceries, or literally anything else.)
It’s fucked.
…
A few years back I decided to change how I engaged in social media. For my own mental health, I worked on actively sharing good things, fun things, kitten things. I joked that fostering kittens was mental health support, and sharing them online was part of that.
But it’s really hard and exhausting to be the constantly upbeat person. And today, in the rain, and the cold, it’s hard.
People say really strange shit in the wake of a fire. Things like “at least you’ll get a nice new house!” and “I mean, maybe this happened for a reason?” Like the end goal is New Things and A New Life.
And I know they’re probably also looking for the upside here, and not meaning to be impossibly shit, but it drives home how much people don’t think through what they say. I don’t actually want a new house, or a new life, or to rebuild everything from scratch.
My upside here is that my kids aren’t babies, so they come home and tell us the stupid things people have said to them and we can laugh and laugh, and agree that this sucks balls. (Someone suggested the other day that maybe it was actually the neighbours house that burned, not ours? Maybe we were confused? And I’m not sure what their thought process was, but we are still joking about that)
…
Of course I’m grateful we didn’t all die and I’m grateful I didn’t have to bury a child. But it kind of goes without saying. I don’t think I should have to brighten up all my complaints and struggles with “but at least no humans died!”
Our cat, Spark died, of course, overtaken by smoke, hiding under the couch. I heard him screaming at the end, and couldn’t do anything about it. We found his body curled up, so I know the smoke got him first, at least. At least at least at least.
Then we had to put our dog down, because she was old and confused, and her brain fell apart when she couldn’t navigate her life by smell and memory anymore.
And our cat Estelle is missing again – having come home initially, and then vanished, not loving the status quo.
I got a call from one of my kids psychologists the other day, and god, she is lovely, but you cannot talk about normal teenage coping strategies and how to keep teenage brains safe and stable in the wake of watching your house burn down, because all our coping strategies burned alongside it, and we’re all just sort of clinging to each other and black humour. I know she was just trying to help, but what works for standard depression is possibly akin to throwing teacups of water on a bushfire.
Again. It’s exhausting. Because unless you’ve been through this yourself, you cannot understand. And I hate that we’re part of this club, but mostly I hate that this shitty club exists.
Anyway. It’s cold and shitty today. I’m still waiting for insurance to settle everything, and apparently a good crisis is great for making me want to blog again.
Darren* showed up at my house, one frosty Saturday morning a few years ago. He’d answered my ad on Gumtree – Wyandotte Rooster, Giveaway, Excess to Needs. We’d messaged back and forwards a few times, set up a time and day, and there I was, locking my dogs inside and heading out to hand off a rooster.
A rooster, I might add, who had been VERY unhappy about being caught the night before, and screamed as he was unceremoniously dumped into a nice large box, lined with pine shavings, and nicely poked air holes. How DARE I lay hands on the VERY ROOSTERIEST ROOSTER WHO EVER EXISTED.
He had high opinions of himself, despite being smaller and lower down the pecking order than the rooster I was keeping. But that’s chickens – they all have very high opinions of themself.
Normally rooster handovers are a quick and simple affair – someone shows up, I hand them a squawking box, they thank me and leave. I’ve done it plenty, and I wasn’t expecting Darren to be any different.
“Hi, how are you, here’s your rooster, all boxed up.”
“Oh, he’s in a box?” Darren says, and starts trying to open the (taped shut) box.
“Um – he’s not tame? Like, he’ll come up for a bucket of food, but you can’t just pick him up.”
I’m watching nervously as Darren’s hand starts diving into the box, hunting, as the rooster frantically scurries around the corners and screeches at us a little bit.
“Mate.” I am firm now. “If you let him out, I will not be able to catch him again today, and you will have wasted a trip.”
“Ah” says Darren. “I guess I’ll just leave him in there then.”
“Yeah, please? I gave him a preventative treatment for mites and lice last night, just in case, so he’s all good to go!”
I am chirpy here – my rooster handoff is almost done. I can go and have a cup of tea and get out of this freezing air.
Darren has other ideas. “Are you the quail lady? You’ve got quail, right? Can I see?”
Sure thing. We leave the rooster in his box, and head out to the paddock to have a look at some of my young quail. It’s about now I notice the thongs which have been duct taped to Darren’s feet, as he walks through my ankle high frosted grass, bare toes showing. Don’t get me wrong, who among us has not duct taped a pair of shoes back together in order to make it to payday, get a little further, stretch a little longer? I’m not judging, but it’s definitely an interesting choice on this winter morning.
We chat quail for a bit, and chickens, and Tasmania. Darren’s face is marked in the way that poverty, and hard living, and Tasmanian Bush Life leaves its mark on the faces of people who spend their time cutting wood and making a living from their hands.
And then, his phone rings, and I’m pretty sure I’m watching a drug deal get organised for later on in the day.
“Mate, mate! Where are you!” the man on the other end of the phone is a bit frantic. “I thought you’d be home!”
“Nah man, I’m just picking up some chickens. Later, yeah? Later. I’ll be home later.”
“But MATE, I need you now? Now. Fucken hell, I thought you’d be home.”
I’m trying not to look judgey, or Very Middle Class, or upset – all things I am very much not – although I am DEEPLY AMUSED by the conversation. Like, dying inside, because COME ON.
“Man, just calm down. I’ll be there by lunch. I’m just up Oatlands**. You can wait, yeah? Fucking hell man.”
Darren hangs up and looks at me, like he’s just realised I am still standing there, holding a quail, waiting for him to be done, so I can be done.
“Just a mate, yeah? I uh, promised I’d do something for him…” Darren trails off.
“Yeah, I know how that goes. I guess… rooster? Time? Yeah?”
Yes. Yes. We head back to my BBQ area to grab the rooster and I am freezing cold and so so close to a hot cup of tea when Darren asks if I want to see the other chickens in his car.
And Internet, it feels so dodgy, but we are in my own yard, with my big barky dogs just inside the door, and two children in the bedroom RIGHT THERE ready to grab my husband if I need to scream or make a fuss, so I make what feels like a terrible decision and walk out to the driveway, to see the other chickens in Darren’s car.
No word of a lie, Darren has five very nice purebred Rhode Island Red chickens in the car. He proudly tells me he just paid $150 for the four hens and a rooster, who are just standing free. Looking stressed. In the back seat. Shitting EVERYWHERE.
“Yeah, I was gonna just let your boy out in there with them…”
“NO! Please. Leave him in the box! I can’t risk… god. I do NOT want to have to catch him again, please.”
So Darren, who it turns out thinks boxes and cages and any form of safe animal transportation device are cruel, finally agrees, and quickly opens the back door, shoves my rooster onto the back seat (still safely boxed, thank god), and slams the door shut.
But not before the smell of chicken coops and stressed bird shit wafts over me. It is An Experience.
Apparently Darren is not worried about roosters jumping on him while he’s driving. I can barely keep my mouth shut and this time I am absolutely judging, because what kind of person just lets five chooks roam free in their car, shitting everywhere and trying to jump at the windows?
Darren does.
I expect my rooster ended up living a decent life – he was used to free ranging and Darren didn’t believe in pens, or coops, or locking chickens up. He was buying and selling chooks to make a bit of extra money, and my wyandotte rooster was going to be introduced to some nice wyandotte hens. I’m not sure how Darren planned on keeping them all purebred, considering the lack of fences, and the other roosters hanging around, but hey, better than soup, right?
*not his real name **not where I actually live
(Not the rooster I was giving away. Also not wyandottes.)
A few years ago, I noticed my mental health falling apart. Social media, while being my favourite place with my favourite people, was making it worse. That’s not an indictment on what everyone else was posting, it was solely a symptom of how *I* was using social media. Swim in the mud for long enough and everything gets muddy and awful, y’know?
So I made a conscious decision to change how I used social media, solely for my mental health. Instead of being publicly angry about politics, I started posting photos of chickens, and kittens, and telling stories again.
Don’t get me wrong, I still follow politics closely – as a disabled autistic woman, I cannot afford to NOT follow politics closely, when their decisions affect my daily living. I still shout at the TV a lot, and obsess over things.
But I didn’t talk about it online so much. I had no spoons for being furious on the internet anymore, and I didn’t have the mental capacity for balancing other people’s fury either. So, I rejigged things.
It’s a balancing act, for sure, because objectively, the world is terrible, people in positions of power suck, inequalities make my head want to explode, there aren’t enough vaccines because our government fucked up, the NSW number of Covid cases are making me incredibly stressed, and disability politics make me so furiously exhausted I can’t function.
So instead I post photos of Marigold’s babies, and talk about Spark, our new rescue kitten. I take photos of Theo (our other new kitten) and his perpetual naughtiness. (WHY DOES HE LIKE EGG SHELLS SO MUCH?!! WHYYYYY DOES HE STEAL THEM FROM THE BIN!!!) I talk about the hen who WASN’T MINE, who showed up with fifteen babies, clearly fathered by my roosters. (WHYYYY)
Focusing on the small things doesn’t make the big shit easier, but it does make my coping strategies work better.
WHO IS THIS HEN? I guess she’s mine now.
Marigold’s chick. One of, at least.
Spark and Theo. They’re best friends.
I cannot make the world better, but I can make my corner of it a small safe haven for frivolous things. For anecdotes, and stories, for kittens and comfort. I can’t fix covid, or disability, or how fucked the NDIS is and the ways in which the governments are failing the people.
But I can look after myself, and my friends, in a very small way.
And being frivolous in the face of all the very big and awful things feels subversive, in a way. The internet doesn’t need me adding another hot take on vaccinations to the mix (but y’know, please get jabbed once your local area has supply for you), but maybe I can make a tiny part of people’s day better.
Plus, these kittens of mine are ADORABLE and I love them to bits and so yes, you’re getting photos of them all day every day, thank you.
So post the frivolous things, even in the face of so much awful. You’re not failing the world when you need a moment to stop and breathe, or when you find a patch of peace and want to share it.
