Back to Kinglake

By Marlyse Carroll

Wednesday 11th February 2009, 8pm.
The Kinglake Ranges is our home, as it was to about 4,000 other people. 550 houses burnt last Saturday evening.

The black and white landscape looks like a stark, surrealist painting, or a nightmarish vision. Grey earth, stylised black trees and a white sky. One house after another burnt to the ground. The charred remains of cars driven into trees and ditches. Police cars and men in uniform everywhere. Here and there a chimney is still standing amongst twisted sheets of corrugated iron coated with dust.

Silence. No bird songs, no dogs barking, no voices. The subtle presence of death permeating both outer and inner worlds.

Am I dreaming? If I am, what a nightmare…

Only 5 days ago, when Michael and I left the Kinglake Ranges to go and teach downtown, children played amongst the trees. Birds flew noisily overhead. And a young mother, infant on her hip, was watering tree ferns with rainwater, chooks pecking the ground around them. No water restrictions here as everyone is on tank water, paradise on earth.

We’re now slowly driving past a family home reduced to a heap of dust, bricks and metal. That’s it… A place like ours, a place like yours, a house where people loved, laughed, fought and dreamt has gone back to dust. Where are these men, women and children now? Have they also been reduced to dust or did they escape the inferno? Where are their loved ones? With them or grieving alone?

Baby, where are you? I must be dreaming. Help me wake up…

Silent tears run down my cheeks. Yes, who was in those homes, in those cars when they entered the wall of flames? I don’t dare imagine that moment. Oh God please, tell me it was quick. Tell me it only took a split second between life and death, between terror and love, between suffering and eternal light. Tell me that, at soul level, those who died chose the time and manner of their transition.

Right now, I don’t know any longer what I believe to be true.

And, oh surprise! Amongst all this desolation, a pink house surrounded by blue hydrangeas stands intact. A group of men in bright orange vests are felling trees. A little dog barks.
The unexpected noise and splashes of colour bring me back to the present.

But is the present real? Or am I still dreaming?

The bright red identification bracelet tagged to my left wrist reminds me that I’m a resident of Kinglake driving back home, my darling husband Michael sitting next to me. We’re amongst the lucky ones. We’ve got each other and we still have a home.
Since Saturday night, we’ve heard the broadcasts, seen the news, talked with a few friends who survived the fire, and cried for those who didn’t. Yet the reality still hasn’t fully sunk in. Only the overpowering smell of burnt wood seems real.

As we keep driving very cautiously on the partly cleared road, I notice how unpredictable the path of the fire has been. How could it be that a house, a shed, a garden or a paddock remained untouched in the midst of other properties that seemed to have exploded into a million pieces? Why did the firewall jump over some houses to land in the property next door, even though their physical landscape was similar?

I don’t understand. It’s as if the fire had a mind of its own. As if it randomly chose places to pulverise whilst others were left alone. About a hundred meters west of our property, the fire followed a fence between two equally bone-dry paddocks belonging to different neighbours.

On one side of the wire fence, ten acres are thoroughly scorched, and on the other lies an untouched hay field, home to five horses. Just imagine a dead straight line, separated only by flimsy wires – one side with charred black earth, the other untouched with knee-high grassy, yellow stalks… How can it be?

The Royal Commission will no doubt identify commonalities and anomalies relevant to bush fires. Will it shed any light on the mind of God? I doubt it. Did those whose houses still stand think or act differently than others? I don’t know and never will.

Our ‘Trust for Nature’ property is one of the lucky ones. We were away when it happened, oblivious for a few hours to the disaster that had struck our community. The fire changed course close to our boundaries, and our house stands as if nothing ever happened. Next to it, the ‘Land for Wildlife’ forest of which we are custodians is intact, teeming with big and small animals. Our chooks are alive and well, noisily laying eggs.

If it wasn’t for the active fires still burning on the other side of the Melba Highway, I could have been dreaming this whole story. In this twilight hour, the landscape facing me looks like a slightly out of focus sepia picture, with greyish-brown hills blurred by smoke.

So it’s far from over. The story is still unfolding. Will the fires get worse or will rain consciousness or love consciousness change the scenario? Once more I don’t know.

What I do know though is that we’re all in it together. Whether we’re amongst the lucky or the unlucky ones, our response to Mother Earth’s plea is what counts. Let’s keep raising our awareness. As individuals, let’s bring more love to all our interactions. And as a global community, let’s respect Nature so she doesn’t need to remind us that we aren’t her masters.

And to me, this isn’t a dream. This is Reality.