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things I never thought I'd see
Feb. 14th, 2009 08:28 amDriving up to Dean's parent's place last night via our usual kind of back roads route we came across a police roadblock. Which wasn't a booze bus, just a roadblock. It took a minute before I realised that if we'd been turning right we'd be on the road to Arthur's Creek. The roads are still mostly shut. We turned left and kept going.
There is a refugee camp in Whittlesea. OK, technically it's actually an "Internally Displaced Persons Camp" - refugees cross borders, IDPs don't - but even so. It's in Whittlesea. Pretty much as a direct result of this, Whittlesea was the most crowded I've ever seen it. Not just for a Friday night, even for Christmas shopping days. Cars everywhere.
We went past 3 op shops which were all busy at 9pm on a Friday night. The Salvos, the Anglicans, the Red Cross. There are container loads of stuff sitting in spare areas. There are three alone filled with animal foods/bedding.
The Red Cross had two signs up:
"Thank you but sorry, we cannot accept more donations here."
and
"Please keep Vet car park clear for animal casualties."
We didn't actually go down to the two sites where people are housed/fed, we were going for tea with Dean's parents. It's been kind of a stressful week for them. Sitting in the Italian restaurant the conversation kept veering from the fires, away to something else, then back to the fires. This person's lost their house. This person's son's in the army, has just been sent down here. This person didn't make it. This person who used to live here 15 years ago drove down from Brisbane with a horse trailer full of donated goods, arrived this morning.
"Tell me a joke" Dean's father asked at one point. "I need something to make me laugh".
I told him about the possum at work. He laughed.
I told him the only jokes I'd heard about the fires (of course there are jokes - black humour is everywhere) were musings along the lines of whether the smoke around Flowerdale had had an hallucinogenic effect on the firefighters. Flowerdale is known around the area as being the place where large amounts of marijuana is grown up in the hills. Dean's father giggled. "I'll have to pass that one on, that's funny."
A table in the corner was celebrating a child's birthday. One of the women had her arm in a sling. God knows. There were quite a few people with bandages, slings and on crutches around.
Leaving the restaurant we ran into a bloke Dean's family knew who was wearing what looked like a hospital ID tag (it was for the IDP camp) and chatted to him for a while. He was picking up a pizza for his family, his kids were tearing in and out of the restaurant while they waited for the order to be ready. His house was saved, but they couldn't go back up yet. They were lucky - the front was coming straight at them when the wind changed. All the houses the next road up the ridge were gone. He talked about one man who'd gone down a dead-end bush road with a 1000 litre water tank on the front of his tractor and gone around and around his house spraying with water to save it. "That family - they're all mad buggers."
He looked around to make sure the kids weren't in earshot, dropped his voice a bit and talked about neighbours who didn't make it. No one could understand how this bloke had died - he should have had time to get out. These guys left it too late, were caught in their car. This man had a cellar, no one knew whether he didn't make it there in time, or whether the house collapsed on it. Some were saying that it was possibly water from Elvis that collapsed the house. No one knew. It was all very matter of fact.
The pizza was ready, so we said goodbye and headed off. There were kids heading in groups up the main street, and it occurred to me that for some of them Whittlesea was the big smoke and this was probably the most excitement they'd seen on a Friday night outside of the show.
On the way home there were a steady stream of cars heading back up to the town.
There is a refugee camp in Whittlesea. OK, technically it's actually an "Internally Displaced Persons Camp" - refugees cross borders, IDPs don't - but even so. It's in Whittlesea. Pretty much as a direct result of this, Whittlesea was the most crowded I've ever seen it. Not just for a Friday night, even for Christmas shopping days. Cars everywhere.
We went past 3 op shops which were all busy at 9pm on a Friday night. The Salvos, the Anglicans, the Red Cross. There are container loads of stuff sitting in spare areas. There are three alone filled with animal foods/bedding.
The Red Cross had two signs up:
"Thank you but sorry, we cannot accept more donations here."
and
"Please keep Vet car park clear for animal casualties."
We didn't actually go down to the two sites where people are housed/fed, we were going for tea with Dean's parents. It's been kind of a stressful week for them. Sitting in the Italian restaurant the conversation kept veering from the fires, away to something else, then back to the fires. This person's lost their house. This person's son's in the army, has just been sent down here. This person didn't make it. This person who used to live here 15 years ago drove down from Brisbane with a horse trailer full of donated goods, arrived this morning.
"Tell me a joke" Dean's father asked at one point. "I need something to make me laugh".
I told him about the possum at work. He laughed.
I told him the only jokes I'd heard about the fires (of course there are jokes - black humour is everywhere) were musings along the lines of whether the smoke around Flowerdale had had an hallucinogenic effect on the firefighters. Flowerdale is known around the area as being the place where large amounts of marijuana is grown up in the hills. Dean's father giggled. "I'll have to pass that one on, that's funny."
A table in the corner was celebrating a child's birthday. One of the women had her arm in a sling. God knows. There were quite a few people with bandages, slings and on crutches around.
Leaving the restaurant we ran into a bloke Dean's family knew who was wearing what looked like a hospital ID tag (it was for the IDP camp) and chatted to him for a while. He was picking up a pizza for his family, his kids were tearing in and out of the restaurant while they waited for the order to be ready. His house was saved, but they couldn't go back up yet. They were lucky - the front was coming straight at them when the wind changed. All the houses the next road up the ridge were gone. He talked about one man who'd gone down a dead-end bush road with a 1000 litre water tank on the front of his tractor and gone around and around his house spraying with water to save it. "That family - they're all mad buggers."
He looked around to make sure the kids weren't in earshot, dropped his voice a bit and talked about neighbours who didn't make it. No one could understand how this bloke had died - he should have had time to get out. These guys left it too late, were caught in their car. This man had a cellar, no one knew whether he didn't make it there in time, or whether the house collapsed on it. Some were saying that it was possibly water from Elvis that collapsed the house. No one knew. It was all very matter of fact.
The pizza was ready, so we said goodbye and headed off. There were kids heading in groups up the main street, and it occurred to me that for some of them Whittlesea was the big smoke and this was probably the most excitement they'd seen on a Friday night outside of the show.
On the way home there were a steady stream of cars heading back up to the town.
