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Black Saturday: Not the End of the Story
One hundred and seventy-three people lost their lives in the Victorian bushfires of February 2009, the greatest number from any bushfire event in this nation’s history. The memories and thoughts that Peg Fraser heard from the survivors complicate much of what we thought we knew about the experience of catastrophic natural events. Beginning each chapter with an object from the bushfires, Fraser reveals how each person’s identity, including as a man or a woman with a particular social position in the town, impacted upon experiences and understandings of loss.
280 pages, Paperback
Published December 1, 2018
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February 17, 2019
The day after the tenth anniversary commemoration in Melbourne of the 2009 Black Saturday fires throughout Victoria, I begin reading this book by Peg Fraser. At the time the young woman in the unit opposite my house took me with her to check on some friends near Kinglake and see what donations may be useful. Fellow members of a women's health organisation board had more trouble getting to monthly meetings as they took on important roles in healing their local communities. I felt inadequate then as an outsider likely to only get in the way if I tried to offer anything as they dealt with the enormity of change they all had to face together. In the ten years since I have felt my worth and ability to contribute to community diminish alongside the personal growth undertaken by so many across so many issues of rebuilding and re-identifying as communities. Even my sense of staying out of the way but paralleling activities and awareness has been diminished over this time. All the signs and symptoms I had previously learnt to look for and address have been countermanded by so many other inquiries and projects. Now I am meant to jump out of my skin and respond to fires on the other side of the world as if they are happening here in my own suburban backyard. I have had cigarette butts squashed on my sidewalk or thrown in my garden all too regularly throughout the whole year most especially during the past five years.
People doing these things to try and raise my awareness about their view of the world just don't seem to understand that threats and panic are no answer, no effective response. I do what I can to remain in contact with people I had previously worked with, but this becomes impossible against the tide of interference in how I see and live within this community. The sense of imperative increases but the imperative of sense decreases. Craft days turn out to be a kind of therapy of everyday life. Without the frame being identified first, those who do not have this need to begin develop mismatches with everyone else in the room. The whole process begins to feel a little false. By the time the frame is recognised the sessions are over. Laughter transfers the tears from those who are coming out of despair onto those who have lived hopefully but in a somewhat distant parallel existence. Where are the real meetings if the meaning isn't shared?
Comments become a constant taunting and teasing. This could be dealt with if it wasn't also for the slow but constant dismantling of every attempt to do anything on my own property, within my own garden. The solar converter is meddled with, the tap at the back of the house broken off, the pipes cut or pulled down from the top of the watertanks. The misuse of fire energy is everywhere with these people, but the solutions are worse within my little and ostensibly private life. What shade should protect small plants has been labelled as a fire hazard even though it also retains moisture in the soil. What mulch I distribute around the base of trees is considered rubbish and unsightly, as if looks could start a fire or kill. What was a pleasant observation exercise becomes hard work. I cannot even build a fence because of these people who step over boundaries with their reliance upon media messages of elsewhere, elseone.
I vaguely hear of disputes between different fire and emergency services. I hear of safety issues for staff taken up by unions. And I feel totally alone for not working, for not owning a television, for not wanting to know every little detail of things that do not concern me as much as the very real activities I am pursuing to improve conditions where I actually live almost all of the time.
Meanwhile I become aware of the environmental impact of every major war for the past two hundred years. The rate at which forests were decimated for the development of society as we know it is one thing, but the added speed of destruction simply to wage war against neighbours, invaders or ourselves in civil wars is stupifying. I just want to stop knowing what I did not know until a short while ago. I no longer want to hear anyone else's perspective on how they have lived or hope to now live. I don't want to know what industrial endeavour has rectified the disasters it has also created.
I want to feel the temperature for what it is rather than what someone tells me they heard it to be on the news. I want to feel how hot I am and how I can mitigate it by my own choices. I have never coped well with air conditioners since I had blood noses from entering shops which used them when I was a teenager. I have tried to get myself used to such buildings now because it is expected to get worse, but for me it has not really helped. I am seen as abandoning what is most important to me rather than learning to tolerate what others so insistently expect.
When I think of all the things I could have achieved in the past ten years if anyone understood what I was really doing instead of their own fear and collective effort in other directions, I weep. I have wept many tears of anger and despair and frustration over this time. I have stopped considering anyone my friend. I exist merely because I am here. And I don't know how long that will continue, as none of us do. But I know many who have given up trying to influence me with their prejudices. They have rarely attempted to understand me, only to begin a conversation for their own purposes of ease and dissertation.
Another day and the sun rises along with the temperature. Another insurance fraud. Another legitimate claim held up by the greed and interference of others. The world goes on as it always has, with some getting away with things until no-one worries to correct their mistakes even when they are found out, and others failing to receive the help they need when they really need it. And I close myself down to not hear of every instance. I bring myself inward to try and remember I accepted responsibility for this little piece of the earth that others will not allow me to be responsible for. And I read another book just to see what the world thinks of itself now in case there is another opportunity to meet and be met differently at this time. When I can identify it I will finally be able to leave this place I intended to leave years ago, and grow into a person I want to be now.
I also decide to take a friend up to the site of the memorial mentioned in this book while the flowers are still present from the commemorative gathering. I truly appreciate his presence as a mirroring of the woman who brought me a similar distance ten years ago. But this time it is my choice, my questioning, my coming to terms with what I was in no position to process along with so many others for that full ten years. I am humbled. But I am also healed. We all take the time we need. We each need to accept the help or simple witness of another to do so. Strength and respect to you all.
People doing these things to try and raise my awareness about their view of the world just don't seem to understand that threats and panic are no answer, no effective response. I do what I can to remain in contact with people I had previously worked with, but this becomes impossible against the tide of interference in how I see and live within this community. The sense of imperative increases but the imperative of sense decreases. Craft days turn out to be a kind of therapy of everyday life. Without the frame being identified first, those who do not have this need to begin develop mismatches with everyone else in the room. The whole process begins to feel a little false. By the time the frame is recognised the sessions are over. Laughter transfers the tears from those who are coming out of despair onto those who have lived hopefully but in a somewhat distant parallel existence. Where are the real meetings if the meaning isn't shared?
Comments become a constant taunting and teasing. This could be dealt with if it wasn't also for the slow but constant dismantling of every attempt to do anything on my own property, within my own garden. The solar converter is meddled with, the tap at the back of the house broken off, the pipes cut or pulled down from the top of the watertanks. The misuse of fire energy is everywhere with these people, but the solutions are worse within my little and ostensibly private life. What shade should protect small plants has been labelled as a fire hazard even though it also retains moisture in the soil. What mulch I distribute around the base of trees is considered rubbish and unsightly, as if looks could start a fire or kill. What was a pleasant observation exercise becomes hard work. I cannot even build a fence because of these people who step over boundaries with their reliance upon media messages of elsewhere, elseone.
I vaguely hear of disputes between different fire and emergency services. I hear of safety issues for staff taken up by unions. And I feel totally alone for not working, for not owning a television, for not wanting to know every little detail of things that do not concern me as much as the very real activities I am pursuing to improve conditions where I actually live almost all of the time.
Meanwhile I become aware of the environmental impact of every major war for the past two hundred years. The rate at which forests were decimated for the development of society as we know it is one thing, but the added speed of destruction simply to wage war against neighbours, invaders or ourselves in civil wars is stupifying. I just want to stop knowing what I did not know until a short while ago. I no longer want to hear anyone else's perspective on how they have lived or hope to now live. I don't want to know what industrial endeavour has rectified the disasters it has also created.
I want to feel the temperature for what it is rather than what someone tells me they heard it to be on the news. I want to feel how hot I am and how I can mitigate it by my own choices. I have never coped well with air conditioners since I had blood noses from entering shops which used them when I was a teenager. I have tried to get myself used to such buildings now because it is expected to get worse, but for me it has not really helped. I am seen as abandoning what is most important to me rather than learning to tolerate what others so insistently expect.
When I think of all the things I could have achieved in the past ten years if anyone understood what I was really doing instead of their own fear and collective effort in other directions, I weep. I have wept many tears of anger and despair and frustration over this time. I have stopped considering anyone my friend. I exist merely because I am here. And I don't know how long that will continue, as none of us do. But I know many who have given up trying to influence me with their prejudices. They have rarely attempted to understand me, only to begin a conversation for their own purposes of ease and dissertation.
Another day and the sun rises along with the temperature. Another insurance fraud. Another legitimate claim held up by the greed and interference of others. The world goes on as it always has, with some getting away with things until no-one worries to correct their mistakes even when they are found out, and others failing to receive the help they need when they really need it. And I close myself down to not hear of every instance. I bring myself inward to try and remember I accepted responsibility for this little piece of the earth that others will not allow me to be responsible for. And I read another book just to see what the world thinks of itself now in case there is another opportunity to meet and be met differently at this time. When I can identify it I will finally be able to leave this place I intended to leave years ago, and grow into a person I want to be now.
I also decide to take a friend up to the site of the memorial mentioned in this book while the flowers are still present from the commemorative gathering. I truly appreciate his presence as a mirroring of the woman who brought me a similar distance ten years ago. But this time it is my choice, my questioning, my coming to terms with what I was in no position to process along with so many others for that full ten years. I am humbled. But I am also healed. We all take the time we need. We each need to accept the help or simple witness of another to do so. Strength and respect to you all.
Displaying 1 of 1 review