Forged with Flames

by Ann Fogarty

  It was exhilarating to explore so many new sights and experiences. I was particularly taken by the weatherboard dwellings around Elsternwick, thinking it must be marvellous to actually live in one, sort of like being an early pioneer and living in a log cabin. The eucalypts in their back gardens, though, looked large and rather ugly to me at first compared to the elegant English trees I’d been used to. But when I first saw a colourful parrot, I was enraptured that such beautiful and, to my eyes, exotic birds, were actually flying about freely. I would stop and gaze at them before they flew out of sight, wondering why people around me weren’t doing the same! Some nights after tea, Terry and I would drive down to the beach, just ten minutes away. The only times I had ever been to the ‘seaside’ were on family summer holidays so the idea that we could visit the sea every day if we wanted to was marvellous.

  Not long after our arrival, Terry found an old weatherboard cottage for rent on the outskirts of Berwick, then a lovely country village outside Melbourne. Terry chose the location, especially, thinking it would feel more like home to me, as well as being convenient to his workplace in Bayswater. I realised what he meant as soon as we drove into it for the first time and saw the English trees lining the road. Soon after we moved in, we were treated to a breathtaking clear vision of the most enormous, luminous full moon I had ever seen in my life. I never failed to marvel every month as we watched this vision appear from behind a small hill beyond our little cottage—a massive orange ball, pitted inside, beginning its nightly arc. I still stand outside for ages gazing transfixed by a rising full moon, sometimes recalling those evenings standing beside Terry.

  Thus began our journey of married life, of learning to be together and relating to the outside world as a couple. And Berwick was a wonderful place for that. Just about everyone we encountered was open and friendly, which for me was a real contrast to the much more reserved English. People I had only just met would invite me to drop in some time for ‘a cuppa’, which I appreciated enormously even though I knew I could never take up the offer. If they had said, ‘Come on Thursday afternoon at two’, that would have been altogether easier.

  Being quite a long way from services and other towns, I noticed that the distances people were prepared to travel were enormous—no one seemed to mind driving for miles to get somewhere on a routine matter. You could cross half of England in the distances people would drive to visit family or friends or simply buy something! And the weather… There were many days in my first summer in that uninsulated timber cottage when I had to keep getting in and out of a cool bath to function at all.

  Above all, though, I was thoroughly enjoying being married to Terry. We were contented in each other’s company and enjoyed our quiet home life on the edge of Melbourne. Cooking was a challenge, though, especially since my mother-in-law was one of the best cooks I had ever encountered. My mother, on the other hand, had always found cooking stressful and we were never encouraged to help prepare meals or to think of it as anything other than onerous. I’d learned the rudimentaries in college, although the boarding-house style meals we ate there weren’t exactly inspiring. Fortunately, Terry was generally patient with my efforts, which were a bit hit-and-miss, but even he drew the line when I unknowingly served him pet mince for tea one night. I think it was after this episode that Flo sent him a bottle of multivitamins, fearing he might need to supplement his dodgy diet.

  You can imagine my trepidation, then, when she and John came around for afternoon tea for the first time. In retrospect, it would have been more sensible to have opened a packet of Tim Tams or offered them a slice of shop-bought cake on the day. Flo wouldn’t have minded that I hadn’t prepared anything—she was an extremely generous woman in all sorts of ways—but I really wanted to impress my recently acquired parents-in-law, despite my rather limited cooking skills.

  I decided to bake some scones. How hard could that be? I looked up the recipe, only four ingredients, and set about it with gusto. All went well. The scones looked exactly as expected when they went into the oven. They smelled wonderful as they cooked, and rose beautifully, becoming nicely browned on top. I smiled to myself as I set them down to cool, convinced that I’d excelled myself. I even wondered why I didn’t bake more often. Terry and I couldn’t resist having a couple first, all set to sink our teeth into their fluffy pastry—or at least trying to. My beautiful-looking scones were as hard as rocks.

  I can’t remember what Plan B was, but it was painfully obvious that there would have to be one. We needed to get rid of the evidence to avoid the humiliation of admitting to my failure, so decided that the birds could have a treat. (They had beaks, they could deal with them.) Without further ado, we took the tray of offending scones outside and threw them onto the iron roof.

  The visit by my in-laws was enjoyable despite it not being the culinary triumph I had planned and my failed attempt at scone-making was kept secret. Or so I thought. As we all went outside to say goodbye, and climbed down the veranda steps, I couldn’t believe it: there, lying on our freshly mown lawn, playfully blown down by the wind for everyone to see, were one dozen freshly baked scones.

  While Terry resumed working in his old job when we first married, I had to retrain to be a mothercraft nurse as the qualifications needed in Australia were different from those back home. This included spending a month at the Berry Street Babies Home in Richmond, after which I applied for a couple of jobs as a kindergarten assistant, but without success. Jobs were easy to come by but not necessarily what I was qualified for. Whilst I was waiting for something suitable, I found a job not far away at the Heinz factory in Dandenong, filling cans with tomatoes. It was mind-numbing stuff and I got into trouble from my fellow-workers for filling the cans too quickly—I’m sure the boss didn’t mind! After working there for only a month, I was lucky to land a job at a newly-opened kindergarten close to home at Beaconsfield.

  During those early months and years, England would sometimes seem to be a world away. Although I wrote to my parents regularly, we didn’t have a phone at the cottage and even if we had done, international phone calls, which had to be booked via an operator, were very expensive. Phone conversations with my family were therefore limited to Christmas and birthdays, when we’d use Flo and John’s phone. I always felt a sharp pang of homesickness right after those calls, missing my family and the familiarity of England; I realised, too, what a steep learning curve I was on and how much I was making it up as I went along, every day. On the other hand, my eagerness to explore and discover more of Australia, the countryside and the people, remained undiminished.

  Our favourite activity on the weekends was to pack our gear and go camping in an idiosyncratic little car that Terry had brought back from the UK. It could only have been designed by an eccentric Englishman! The fetchingly-titled Dormobile, made in the south of England, was barely the size of a small sedan yet had lots of added extras not found in a normal car. The roof—which looked like a small, upturned boat when down—lifted up, enabling an adult to stand quite easily in the back. The rear seat folded down and the back of the car folded out, creating a bed wide enough to sleep two people. It had a stove, two small fold-out tables, a tiny sink, and various cupboards. It was really like a miniature caravan.

  Terry had found it terrific for touring England, Scotland and Wales in the two years he spent in the United Kingdom. And of course, it was in the Dormobile that he proposed. So we both had reasons to be attached to it and didn’t think anything of shipping it back to Australia when we were due to leave England. Until the girls came along, we would head off for a low-cost holiday whenever the whim took us.

  It was on one of these trips that I had my first encounter with kookaburras. Early one morning in the summer of 1971, I was woken from a deep sleep when a group of them began to laugh uproariously. I shot bolt upright in an instant and made sure Terry woke up too, being convinced there was a gang of thugs outside the car. What else could it be? When Terry, laughingly, told me it was only birds, I didn
’t believe him. The only birds I’d known—water hens, willow warblers, kingfishers, herons, woodpeckers, ducks, and the like—didn’t make noises remotely like this human-sounding cackle. It wasn’t until I’d looked outside and reassured myself of the source that I could settle back down to sleep, wondering at the strangeness of a country that had birds whose natural calls were indistinguishable from a bunch of people having a good belly laugh.

  We lived in our rented cottage in Berwick for two years before deciding to buy. It didn’t take long to find a property we both liked: a small, redbrick house on three-quarters of an acre in Upper Beaconsfield. I loved it the minute I saw it; the way it sat so neatly under its pale sloping roof, the white-trimmed windows contrasted against the red bricks, its location among the tall and majestic gum trees that I’d come to love by this stage. We marvelled that so much land could be ours with bush right outside our back window. There was something wild and unrestrained about the surrounding bushland that stretched beyond the house in all directions. This was definitely no place for a white picket fence—even I could see that! We started dreaming and planning immediately. Terry could clear some trees for a lawn, a backyard and vegetable patch; I could even grow turnips in it, I quipped, thinking back to Wheatley Lane Primary School and its tiny yard. When a rosella swooped by I was sold.

  Having a place of our own was both exciting and a settling influence; it clinched my life in Australia. Like most newly-weds who have just acquired their own home, we spent many hours and weekends making the house and its surrounds just the way we wanted it. Fortunately, Terry was handy in the carpentry department, making some stunning bookshelves and a beautiful corner cupboard out of jarrah for the lounge-room.

  Pendle Hill, as I named it, was a short distance from the shops down St Georges Road which was a no-through road even though it was one of the main streets. It was sealed but narrow with dirt at both sides, so that only one car could be on the tarmac at one time. There were no footpaths, just tracks along both sides of the road through stringy-barks and lemonscented gums, with a sprinkling of pines. Along both sides, set amongst the trees, were older weatherboard houses and the occasional new brick veneer home. Many of the houses on the downside of the road, like ours, were separated by vacant scrubland but all backed onto virgin bush, giving you a sense of being right out in the country, not close to a large metropolis. I relished the daily walk up to the Post Office to collect the mail as there were no postal deliveries. Inhaling the scent of the gums on a warm day or listening to the bush sounds—the rustles of a fleeing lizard or the far-off call of a bird—was all so tranquil and mysterious.

  Never in my most fertile imagination did I envisage that this place which had brought me so much joy, friendship, and contentment would one day be the scene of my worst nightmare and a death trap for twelve firefighters.

  Upper Beaconsfield was a real little village then but nothing like English villages. The latter were soaked in history which seemed to emanate from the cobblestoned streets and the buildings. In Upper Beac, it felt as if history was just beginning. I didn’t know or appreciate then that people from the world’s oldest continuous culture still inhabited this ancient continent. Even old things here were new. There wasn’t much in the way of shops; just the Post Office, a milk bar, butcher’s shop and general store, as well as the inevitable village garage. Everyone, however, was welcoming and friendly as they had been in Berwick and, to my surprise and delight the neighbour on one side came in to introduce herself, riding a horse. For me, this felt so quintessentially Australian.

  The next ten years seemed to pass very quickly. Astonishingly, my parents decided to visit us in 1973, a magnificent effort for people who had never flown and had such limited resources. I could hardly believe it. I felt so grateful to them for making such a sacrifice to take this long and expensive journey for me. Sarah was born in 1976, followed two years later by Rachel. We joined the local Anglican church which was conveniently located at the end of our street—a charming white weatherboard building with a pitched, tiled roof and stained-glass windows. This welcoming and supportive community immediately catapulted us into a ready-made social life. Terry and I went to Bible studies, taught Sunday School, helped out at working bees and participated in progressive dinners, which were all the craze then—that’s about as wild as we got!

  Upper Beaconsfield truly was my ideal of a country village, with a strong community life which we embraced, and close and enduring friendships. I became involved in whatever the girls were doing, even to the point of standing in for the preschool assistant, teaching religious instruction and listening to reading when Sarah started at Upper Beaconsfield Primary. Naturally, my anxieties would pop up again when I stood in front of a class, but the girls loved having me there so I would push my panic to one side, just get in there and do whatever was needed.

  Procie, one of our elderly neighbours who lived just across the road, took to coming in for cups of tea at least twice a week, which I really appreciated. His wife died just before Rachel was born and he became a grandfather figure to us all, babysitting once a week while Terry and I went down to Beaconsfield for some time together over games of badminton or occasionally to the drive-in in the Dormobile.

  For the first time in my life, I had the time and financial freedom to explore interests that would have been impossible to pursue in my previous life. I began learning the flute, and took to this new passion so much that my teacher in Berwick even persuaded me to sit an exam—still a frightening prospect. Once the girls arrived, we couldn’t sleep comfortably in the Dormobile but made up for it with other holidays, cruising down the Murray River in a steamboat, and staying at a friend’s holiday house in Dromana. Mostly, our life centred around the home, our sanctuary. Terry and I were both still essentially quiet people despite our many friends, and just loved spending time together, reading companionably, walking Tammy and Dusky, or playing board games or cards. Our life together flowed easily. It was full and busy in these years, but contentedly so. There were things I missed about England, though—the gentle, green beauty of the English countryside and my mother, especially when the girls came along. But my Australian haven in the bush was where I wanted to be; I’d created with Terry the family life I’d always craved.

  Because my time was taken up with family, community and church commitments, the difficult side of my life was kept in some sort of perspective. I was struck with nervousness at times in what would seem ordinary everyday situations—helping out at school or kinder, playing the flute in front of people, even making a meal for visitors. I was always aware that I hadn’t really dealt with my anxiety issues but with so many people around to take my mind off them, they didn’t seem the overwhelming problems they’d once been. I had finally started to feel that I belonged. Life was amazingly good in so many ways.

  Christmas 1982, unlike the blur of Christmases before, is lodged in my mind, a bitter-sweet memory. I was thirty-two at the time. We spent it at home with the girls, Flo and John, and Procie. The pine tree Terry had chopped down from the bottom of our block stretched, festooned, up to the ceiling. Christmas cards hung in an arc of string on the wall, and the dining-room table was set festively with a red-and-white tablecloth and a centrepiece of red candles. Dressed in their best summer frocks, the girls hovered, hopefully, around the pile of presents. The adults wandered into the kitchen from time to time to offer some help or to perch on one of the chairs at the kitchen bench and talk for a while as I prepared the roast. Having Flo there ensured that nothing would go terribly wrong with it. My cooking had improved since the early days of our marriage, even if my repertoire of dishes hadn’t expanded greatly. It was a lovely kitchen to be busy in; I could look up and watch the girls when they went outside to dress our two dogs, Tammy and Dusky, in decorations, or as the adults stood talking on the lawn. Even the roast was a triumph that day.

  Everyone seemed so happy, so it was a surprise to go into the kitchen during the afternoon and find Flo crying. />
  ‘Everything’s so perfect,’ she said. ‘I’m sure it can’t last.’

  We laughed together at the inexplicable comment and went back to join the others, never realising how prophetic her words were to be.

  In less than two months, things were to change for all of us, forever.

  10

  HANGING BY A THREAD

  The ambulance siren stopped mid-wail as we turned into the Alfred Hospital. The paramedic of a thousand questions lingered for a few moments after I was lifted out, wishing me well and then disappearing before I was rushed into Emergency. The trolley jolted and jarred as we passed walls and bodies. Bright lights flashed by quickly overhead. Flames flickered. Oh no, that can’t be right, I thought. Not flames. Occasionally, a face peered down at me. We stopped somewhere inside a room that disappeared as a circle of white coats closed in. Doctors talked above my body as I lay there. I could barely hear what they were saying but the sense of urgency was unmistakable. Kidneys. They needed to do something about my kidneys.

  Although I wasn’t aware of it, Terry was hovering on the edge of the group of doctors trying to decipher the medical terms they were using. Because I was in shock and sedated, he was answering the questions they were asking about the fires from what I’d told him at Akoonah Park. One of the doctors turned around and looked at Terry more closely.

  ‘Who’s he?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s her husband,’ another doctor replied.

  They’d been discussing me thinking Terry was another doctor.

  ‘Take him out of here,’ the doctor ordered. ‘Take him out!’

  A young doctor escorted Terry into a room to one side. That doctor had been given the task of telling him the bad news about me. As he stumbled around for the right words, Terry said, ‘What you’re trying to tell me is that my wife is not going to survive’.