One particular bone of contention (though not, I hasten to add, as far as friends and family were concerned) were the larger, publicly raised grants. Entitlements for those who’d lost loved ones were never at issue—for children without parents, for parents who’d lost children, or for those facing lengthy, ongoing medical treatment—and indeed it struck me and others that these particular grants were a little slow in coming. There was another basic criterion for eligibility: namely, that the destroyed or damaged property had to be clearly identified as the principal place of residence.
Business grants also came in for their share of scrutiny: who got them and why, who qualified and who didn’t, why some people were apparently knocked back while others with part-time enterprises received the full amounts. But the greatest public attention has understandably been reserved for the Bushfire Appeal Fund grants. Soon after the initial $50 000 was announced, a further payment of up to $40 000 was rolled out; this one was stringently means-tested, and granted on a sliding scale of need. Along with many others, we didn’t qualify. Nor did we apply for it as such: the paperwork filled out for the first $50 000 formed the basis for qualification for any subsequent grants, so notification of what was or wasn’t coming your way was automatic.The intention was, in my book, fair: families with school-age children, pensioners and those with other dependants were going to find the financial road ahead particularly tough. Besides, charities such as the Red Cross are above all about helping people in need. (The test was later modified and the criteria revisited, with the result that every owner of a totally destroyed primary place of residence again received some money.)
But each individual views need differently. Arguments arose about whether people who had lost holiday homes, weekenders and investment properties were deserving of grant money. Some people who’d lost infrastructure but still had a house standing voiced their feeling that they’d been somehow cheated. Some small rural holdings qualified for grants; others that came in just under the number of hectares required for eligibility missed out. Charity groups began to work more on a word-of-mouth basis to distribute what they had to offer. It had become apparent early on that some people were persistently accessing the free services and monetary grants, while others totally eschewed them. That’s human nature, of course, and shouldn’t come as a shock.
What disaster-affected people place greatest value on is, like anything else, going to vary from individual to individual. Sean and I felt morally obliged in regard to the fund money that came our way, all of which we earmarked for rebuilding and restoring some value to our land. Even an additional $2000 winter handout for people shivering in temporary accommodation, which became known as the ‘blanket grant’, was used to buy insulation for the temporary living section we installed in the barn. Without the Bushfire Appeal Fund grants, we wouldn’t have been able to build the barn so easily, but even so, the main structure wasn’t entirely covered by what we received and we accomplished the fit-out through careful use of our own funds and some savvy recycling. The furnishings came from friends and family, or welfare agencies.
The material-aid handouts continued unabated through most of 2009, but the question is whether they remained relevant all that time. Undoubtedly the goods saved families a lot of money on shopping bills along the way, but after the first few months we found the notion of calling into the centres strange. What for—another tube of toothpaste or a toilet roll? We knew we would, though, need some good secondhand items once we moved into the barn, as furnishing temporary accommodation with expensive new stuff just isn’t practical. Some agencies, such as the Salvation Army, realised it was important for donations to be staggered to meet needs as they arose, and kept funding in reserve for that purpose.
Like many others, it was practical goods that we appreciated most. Once people moved into temporary accommodation or got a house built, case workers ensured there were fridges, washing machines, beds or a pack of kitchen items, which seemed to roll up the driveway on a Salvos truck at exactly the right moment. When compassion fatigue sets in, which it inevitably does at some stage after a disaster, is the time when survivors are most in need. Often they get by with very little at first, but eventually they need to face having to acquire at least the basic goods to make a house liveable. In our case, after seven months of living with John and Julie we had no need for a moving van to get our worldy goods back to Number 59. But within a week or two we needed core furniture and items such as cookware and crockery, and storage solutions for clothes. For us, the shipping container had been worth its weight in gold for storing such things until we needed them, but not everybody in a disaster zone has such an option available.
There were so many groups and individuals whose generosity went above and beyond the call of duty too. The support from the RSPCA was stunning. They provided stockfeed and pet supplies by the truck-load, specialised veterinary services were put in place rapidly, and they built new horse shelters for many people, including us.
I felt compelled to track down the people in uniform who had been so big-hearted and helpful to us. Senior Sergeant Dan Trimble, the police officer who took Harley off the mountain and helped get him to a vet in time, was stunned when he received our letter of thanks. He hadn’t received too many of those in his career, because both he and the public figured he was just doing his job. But as a member of the first response team to come into Kinglake, what he had driven into that night was about as tough as an assignment gets, yet he used his own time to save our precious, suffering dog. And the vet refused to charge us a cent for the phenomenal ongoing care Harley received.
Along the way there have also been additional donations, including holidays for jaded survivors, or a small army of friends and volunteers potting up plants for the garden or giving up weekends to help with the barn fit-out. Then there were the craft groups that churned out beautiful handmade gifts, from an endless supply of colourful wool beanies to a stunning patchwork quilt that was delivered to us and has already become a family treasure. Corporates rolled out vouchers and household goods, which again were sensibly delayed until people most needed them and were distributed on a point-score basis to ensure fairness.
The appeal fund was closed to donations on 17 April; by mid-October it had distributed $321 million. At the time of writing, there was still a great deal of money being held by the fund, which has been earmarked for community building projects rather than any further individual survivor grants. There is already a growing sense of hostility towards any attempts to use it for programs that would normally be expected to be funded by local, state or federal governments. The fund has stated that this won’t be the case, but until communities can regroup, both finding out who represents their needs and applying for these funds will continue to play out over time.
At the end of the day, the fund is answerable to the vast number of people who dug deep to create it, and the public deserves a voice in how it should be spent from here on in. But the sooner there is an end to it then, I believe, the sooner communities can settle down. And as for whatever is left in material-aid warehouses and distribution centres, they can ship our share to other recent victims of natural disasters in our region, such as Samoa and Indonesia.
10
‘Trauma brain’
MANY people, including your nearest and dearest, are often too polite to constantly ask how you might be travelling emotionally after a major traumatic event. They understand when you inadvertently forget birthdays, miss appointments and burble on disconnectedly about personal issues in the middle of a conversation about something totally unrelated. It is thoughtful and accommodating of them, though it must be said that there are times when a bit of a wake-up call—an indicator that you aren’t behaving normally—would be useful.
There is no shortage of literature about dealing with posttraumatic stress, but the bottom line is to remain alert to signs that something might not be fully connecting in the neuron department. Symptoms and behaviours that we had experienced d
uring the fires lingered on for some time afterwards. A full night’s sleep continued to elude us for months. A stretch of four hours was a luxury, whereas I’d normally be non-functional with less than eight, though this didn’t seem to impact on our physical or mental energy levels in the initial stages. At times we resorted to excessive ‘self-medication’ in an effort to relax, but alcohol didn’t touch the proverbial sides—no effect whatsoever. The same went for tranquillisers and sleeping tablets. The psyche had its own ideas and stayed in a constant state of high alert for six months; any sleep I did get was dreamless. Even now, some nights I wake up in the early hours of the morning for no apparent reason and wander about aimlessly until exhaustion takes over.
The timeless sensation we’d all experienced during and immediately after the fires also continued for months. It was a battle to keep track of times and dates, which may well have been a side-effect of sleep deprivation. If you’d asked us what we did the day before, or even that morning, we simply couldn’t remember. Yesterday had been expunged and tomorrow was too far away—we took things one day at a time.
The other source of frustration was an inability to think clearly, to finish sentences or a train of thought; engaging in daily conversation took a concentrated effort. Straightforward day-today tasks—going to the supermarket or the bank, organising some paperwork—would fall victim to an indecisive fog. I would find myself standing in a shop, completely blank, wondering what I was doing there. Several times, in the supermarket, I left my half-full trolley and just walked out. Even a shopping list didn’t seem to register: there was no connection between the items on it and what I was looking at on the shelves. On Julie’s first trip to the supermarket, she told us when she got home that she’d walked through the checkout like a robot without putting her purchases on the counter to be scanned. Aha, I thought, it’s not just me. Attempts to acquire necessities—clothes, hair products, shoes—were equally unsuccessful. What I was observing, trying to choose from, just didn’t seem right, so mostly I’d make no decision at all. Even now, impulse buying seems to have gone out the window; what I might once have bought because it was attractive or a bit different is now dismissed as unnecessary or frivolous.
The tricky part is sifting through the ‘guidebook’ and deciding which part of your behaviour is to be expected, is normal somehow, and what are the telltale signs that a day of feeling down is in danger of plummeting into a more extended period of the blues. It took me months to recognise and deal with certain personal actions and reactions, and that is, in fact, still an issue. Getting through the initial days hour by hour turned into getting through the weeks day by day, assuming you were doing fine because you’d made it to the weekend without a meltdown. The sense of humour is intact, we’re functioning, feeling quite strong and planning a future. Situation pretty normal, really.
What we hadn’t fully anticipated, though, was the cumulative effect of successive extraordinary experiences. We came to know this state of mind as ‘trauma brain’: one thought at a time, one decision at a time (and, even then, a spontaneous one), the avoidance of multiple choices. We would pore over money decisions endlessly, whereas previously they were fairly cut and dried. Running into a brick wall with a service provider, dealing with any sort of incompetence, could reduce us to rage—or, just as easily, to despair. Even tuning into television or radio and trying to absorb ‘heavy’ issues has taken time. News related to our circumstances, the forming of a royal commission, major political issues, the machinations of the local shire council—any of which would once have got us steamed up—ceased to matter much. If it didn’t directly relate to getting through the day, it could be ditched.
Similarly, small talk, people complaining about seemingly selfish things, idiotic drivers, or thoughtless comments and actions, tended to take on monumental proportions. It was as if we’d been asked to assess in detail what information we really needed and what was surplus to requirements. Even now, there is no flicking on of television or radio just for the sake of it, and if a program bores us or is inconsequential we talk instead.
Trauma was, of course, also a reality for our extended family. They too had suffered a loss and felt a need to grieve, while at the same time keeping a watchful eye on us for any signs of aberrant behaviour. Our closest friends and family found it incredibly hard to visit us for some time after the fires, and all of them were reduced to tears when first faced with the obliteration of a place that held so many happy memories. Other friends got as far as John and Julie’s, but couldn’t bring themselves to cross the road to Number 59.
But we cherished their encouragement, the praise for every step forward, the sensible advice and the practical help when needed. Typical of this was arriving home to find our dear friend Camille had simply turned up to do some planting. ‘I knew you’d say not to get dirty and it’s all a dangerous mess. So I decided not to wait for an invitation, just had to get something back in the ground,’ she said. She’d also loaded her car with a bottle of wine and some cheese and biscuits, which we shared in the trusty caravan. Things like that—positive, thoughtful, genuine—touch you deeply.
Overall, we felt fortunate that we were travelling through the recovery process without any major crashes, so far. Among the survivors there had been reports of suicides, relationship breakdowns, people still in serious denial, ongoing grieving, anxious children, enormous isolation for those forced away from their communities, and feelings of injustice and abandonment.
In many instances, it has been the support of others in the community that has helped people through. In the early stages of our barn-building project, Sean and I were working to clear felled trees at Number 59 when a car pulled up. Out jumped Lorrie Casey, the friend John and I had met on the main road on the night of the fire, with her old dog Sheba. We’d been searching in vain for Lorrie ever since, concerned about what had happened to her. This was the first time she’d toured the neighbourhood. ‘I’ll go and get us some lunch at the bakery. I really need to have lunch with somebody,’ she said, roaring off and soon returning with a selection of hot pies, including one each for the dogs, and a six-pack of beer.
Lorrie hadn’t yet returned to her own property; instead, she said, she’d come up the mountain at weekends and sit in what used to be a scenic reserve off the main road, trying to summon the courage to face her blitzed home. ‘There’s no time like the present,’ Sean said, and took her there to see whether we could get a container in place. When they returned, we swapped notes about the joys of shipping containers, finding good builders, and staying on the mountain. Lorrie yearned to come back, but couldn’t get her head around the enormity of the task on her own.
‘When John and I ran into you on the road that night, what on earth had happened?’ I asked her. She had no recollection of having seen or spoken to us: her entire focus was on her friend and neighbour, the CFA volunteer, lying badly burnt on the back seat of her car. When the fire threat escalated that day, Lorrie’s neighbour asked her to come and get her dog as she’d been given the choice of staying to defend her property or joining the crew on the fire truck. She stayed, but wanted the dog taken to safety.
Lorrie had barely made it back to her place when the firestorm barrelled over the hill and sent her fleeing to the township for her life. Then her neighbour called again, asking that she take care of the dog since she didn’t expect to make it out alive. Lorrie reacted instinctively, driving back through the fire, smoke and chaos before being stopped by a fallen tree. She left her car running and found her neighbour fighting for her life. Lorrie got her to safety and she was taken off the mountain by air ambulance. After that night Lorrie had slept for a week in her car, with the two dogs. Once her neighbour was released from hospital, the two women began sharing a rental house off the mountain while working hard to find a way to get back again. She described to us the symptoms with which we were all too familiar: the sleeplessness, the disjointed thought patterns, the sense of disconnection and, some days, the strugg
le just to function.
Other friends relayed their experiences of nursing victims through the night after they’d crawled out of burning cars, or of seeing neighbours on fire. Where there is a disaster with a large death toll, stories such as these abound and are part of a collective, wider experience. You can either deal with the ongoing fact of horror piled on horror, much of it revealed many months after the event, or go into some sort of denial.
So, is the answer to get help, to work it all through with a professional? For some survivors, that was the case and they have found enormous comfort and healing in the psychological and counselling services offered by the state and federal governments. There was, however, something of a one-size-fits-all approach to these services in the interim stages—quite understandable, given the enormity and urgency of the task. We were all going to get a case manager, but what sort of case manager would be most appropriate for the individual took months to identify. The focus was on emotional dealing and healing—name a natural stress-relieving therapy and it was on tap—but what Sean and I craved more was a clear brain that could access the services most valuable to us, keep us updated and carry out practical functions such as determining barn-building requirements or chasing them through. We did, though, resort to free massage and relaxation sessions in the hope they would restore that elusive sleep.
In our deep-rooted self-sufficiency, we found dealing with strangers as personally confronting as standing in a Centrelink queue. Even the notion of being automatically appointed a case manager was difficult to comprehend and, besides, much of what we were feeling was difficult to articulate to outsiders. In reality, Sean and I had formed our own counselling circle with John and Julie, talking ad nauseam about our shared experience, finding this easier than trying to describe it to others. We even developed our own post-traumatic humour and language, laughter often proving the best leveller when something became psychologically or personally sticky.
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