2009

I've been avoiding writing this post, but if I'm going to do it today is the day.

Bad stuff first. Feel free to skip ahead to the good stuff.

2009 hasn't been the easiest year for our family. It seems to me like it began on the 7th February, with the Black Saturday fires, though before then there was blissy post-Christmas camping in Mildura and the rest of January, a lot of which we spent in shopping centres escaping the fierce heat. And a week before the fires Frederique, my first baby, started school, though I guess the two will always be tangled up in each other. The fires came within two kilometers of our house before the wind changed, driving the fires back up to Kinglake. Neighbours who were home watched flames approaching on the surrounding hills, listened to the explosions of gas bottles and - horrifyingly loud - the petrol station in Kinglake. Twelve people in our town died, 38 from Kinglake up the road. Friends lost their homes, and in the aftermath we watched marriages deteriorate and our school community shrink as people moved away. The fires weren't extinguished until mid-March. For a month we were on alert, exhausted, grieving our old ignorance as every time the mercury climbed or the winds picked up we evacuated. And all the time knowing 'we are the lucky ones' - our house was spared, and we weren't home on the day.

In March I had a not very serious car accident, though all car accidents feel serious, don't they? And it was serious enough to almost write the car off. The accident was to affect me as a driver most of the year, and I am only just getting my nerve back. I still won't drive on the Hurstbridge road.

In May my sister, Kylie, had her baby at 27 weeks gestation, weighing less than 2 pounds, in a Northern English hospital, and her world began to fragment around her. We tried to get the fare together so I could go over and be with her, but it was impossible. Distances grow and shrink, I've always found, never before this year has England seemed so impossibly far away. (Happily, Joseph and Kylie are both thriving).

In June our town suffered another devastating blow. Helicopters circled, bringing back horrible memories of the fires, and Martin and I scoured the bush around our house - on a cruelly lovely winter's day, the sunlight streaming through the trees - for a three year old boy who had wandered from home. It shocks me now to say 'three' because he was the same age as Una, they had done a few dancing classes together, and we knew his mum to say hello to. Una is now four, and yet he will always be three. The look on Martin's face when he came back from his last shift has never left me. The little boy drowned in a dam. I picked up Fred from school that day, and mothers stood around, their faces white, for all of us, it was all our children that day. I broke the news to Fred, knowing it would be around the school yard. She wanted to know, distressed: did they dry him after they found him? This solicitous response, the tiny mother in her was also affected. After this I must admit I was hit by silence. I didn't feel I could blog about it - it wasn't my story to tell. And yet it was the only story I had to tell. I am not a negative person, not sad, or depressive by nature, for all that I am contemplative and reflective (pensive, Merri Andrews called me in Year Twelve). And yet sadness has entered me this year.

In October Martin's father lost his long battle with cancer. Not two weeks later, my half-sister died shockingly off Legionnaire's disease.

Our local school, which we love, is affected by a drop in numbers - mostly because there simply aren't a lot of kids in this area (there are a lot of very longstanding residents, whose own kids have grown up). We are wondering if it will be the right school for Una, there is only one prep kid next year, and Una may also be in a class of one. Even with blended classes, I worry that she will be socially isolated. If you secretly have a child in St Andrews, you will never find a better prep teacher than Erica, who won an award for her innovative teaching methods, AND WE HAVE BETTER NAPLAN RESULTS THAN THE OTHER SCHOOLS IN THE AREA (they aren't allowed to advertise this fact, but surely I am permitted to spread it around as a big ole [true] rumour). And the school community is lovely, and so open to new ideas.

In November Martin went from being a student to being unemployed. Even though there's no real difference financially for us, for some reason this has been an enormous source of stress, as the bills rocked in and the present buying season assaulted us.

So that's the bad shit.

The good stuff is:

We nearly lost Miles last summer. The fact that we had so many more months with him is a blessing, and I am always thankful for it. In that time he seemed more peaceful in himself, happy to live for every day. His funeral was a joyous affair: a tribute to a man who lived a good life, and made lasting friendships, and parented with love.

I taught all year at Melbourne Uni and took great pleasure in it. It's a great way to keep learning and to challenge my own knowledge and assumptions about the writing process and the inherent value of the act. And I met some great students, who have a lot to contribute to the literary community in Australia. I also did some fantastic high school workshops, and heard some great writing (the best thing is when the teacher says with genuine surprise, 'Student X never writes anything'). One highlight was a weeklong workshop at the SLV with kids who love writing so much they wanted to do it in their holidays, they were so switched on and enthusiastic. Another was going back to Bendigo Catholic College with Kate. But all the schools were fascinating and young people everywhere delight me.

In July Little Bird came out. I am so proud of this book. It's got exactly the right mood to it, and the right structure. It's the first of my books that has a structure like it (all my other books are structured identically - ssh.) And I remember last year Miles asking when it would be out, and the expression on his face when he said 'that's ages away.' He lived to see it and the book is dedicated to him and Catheryn (and to my own Nanna, Ada May).

Writing Dear Swoosie with Kate was FUN. And it's a really great book, it's happy and light and funny but not insubstantial, it pokes reverent fun at vampire YA books and flashes back to the 80s (a la Romy and Michelle which I watched as research - yay!), and most of all it feels like we're putting a nice thing out there in the world. It was a fun bonus too - conecived in March finished by early July - because I thought I wasn't going to have a book in 2010 at all. And Kate and I discovered we work beautifully together and have plans for at least five more books (some of which are Swoosie sequels and may be written purely and solely for Susannah Chambers, editor extraordinaire).

All year I have been rewriting Only Ever Always, three incarnations it's had so far and considering it's so short (about 33ooo words) it's the hardest book I've written. Hopefully it's worth it. Just quietly, I think it might be. Most of you won't be reading it till 2011 which seems an age away. I finished the latest draft on Thursday and feel it is achingly close. Which means...I can start writing something new! Entering perfect platonic ideal book stage! One of my favourites.

Josie and the Michael Street Kids being shortlisted for the Children's Peace Literature Award, nearly two years after publication, was a lovely unexpected surprise.

In July I had my first short story for adults published in The Big Issue. This was exciting enough in itself. So I was thrilled when it was picked up by Delia Falconer for Black Inc's Best Australian Stories 2009.
2009 was the year of Twitter for me (I joined Oct 2008). Although dangerous in its power to distract, I love Twitter, I have always liked having friends living inside my computer and it doesn't feel quite to powerfully addictive as other online communities I've been apart of. It's comfortable. It's fun. Okay, it can be addictive. But it's easy to back off from. And also, there's lots of smart funny interesting clever successful people on there, so it can't be so bad if they want to hang out there too.

All this year I have missed Zoe, who has been my BFF since we were five. I was going to put this in the sad section, but I am putting it here because in missing her, and feeling missed by her, I think we have recognised for the first time in ages just how much we love each other. (I have a little tear writing that). My girls adore her boy Jethro with a passionate sense of ownership, and we talk about Zoe and Dan and Jethro nearly every day. And I think about them EVERY day. Jethro has gone from being a baby this year to being a great big strapping toddler. Watching him and Una play together in the Hobart Botanical Gardens this year filled my heart with joy - our kids playing together, our childhoods repeated in some small way in them. That's the stuff.


Martin has had some exciting offers for 2010. They are difficult things to grasp, jobs that have barely been invented yet, but there is great potential for him to find something intellectually challenging and family friendly.

2009 was also the year of the iPhone. I know it sounds horribly consumerist of me but I cannot tell you how much pleasure my iPhone gives me. I love taking spontaneous photos and video. I like being able to check my emails on the train. I LOVE having an ipod in my phone, music has been the thing that's cured my driving anxiety (yeah, turns out listening to constant play by play of the bushfires on 774 - bless their cotton socks - was probably contributing to my sense of fragility). It may sound strange to say this at my newly franked age of 35, but this is the year I feel like I've become an adult. Not just because of the things we've faced, the consequences of our grown up decisions to buy a house in a bushfire region, or the very adult pain of losing a parent and sibling, but also because I've reclaimed my own space as an adult. The iPhone symbolises this a little to me. But not just that. I've been finding new music to listen to. I've been reading more challenging literature. I've been thinking outside our domestic daily routines. Perhaps all this comes from having Fred start school, I no longer feel like my days are entirely devoted to the immediate and pressing needs of my children.

In that light, I've joined a new writing group. I really like those people.

And of course nearly every day friends and family - old and new - made me smile and laugh, despite the litany of disasters and sorrows above. And really it hasn't been such a bad year. I've loved to the very fullness of my being this year, loved through hardship and loss, loved through frustration and self doubt. I've branched myself out in love, loved people far away, overcome distances with nothing but love. Mostly I am happy.

And if I was happy ALL the time, admit it, you'd loathe me.

Things to look forward to in 2010
Two weeks camping in Tassie in January
Meeting my new nephew Joseph
Jethro's number two birthday party
Dear Swoosie coming out, I can't wait for people to read it!
Writing another book with Kate
Starting a new writing project for myself
Doing more schools, teaching at Melbourne Uni
Martin getting a job, something he loves that says 'so there' to the me that cried when he didn't get the job 7 minutes down the road
Hopefully having some money to do some stuff to the house and pay off some debts
A year of stability for the girls, with school and creche not changing
Fred turning seven (*faints*), Una turning five (*faints*)
Una getting ready for school
And who knows what else? The mystery of it.

And in 2009
New Year's eve with good friends just down the road

Happy New Year everyone. Thanks for reading.

Raspberry Swirl

This time last year we went raspberry picking in Kinglake and came away determined it would be a Christmas tradition.
In February massive fires raged through Kinglake and many properties - and lives - were lost. We were relieved to discover that the raspberry farm was operating and drove up today to pick. It was the first time Fred had been up that way since the fires, which came within 2km of our house. The bush is regenerating, as it does, and in Kinglake there was a green fur on many of the trees and a wonderful understorey of ferns.
The cafe we went to last year, after the picking, is gone, but showing signs of rebuilding. As we drove past we noticed that some of the lovely gardens had survived, flourishing in all the spring and early summer rain we've been having.
It was a typical family outing, Fred got carsick (but not in technicolour luckily), I had an anxiety attack on the winding mountain road. looking down at the skeletons of burnt trees, Martin got cross with us all for doubting his safe driving, and a dog stole Una's sandwich when we arrived - and Una ran, screaming and crying, which only excited the dog more. Certainly memorable, in that way that outings are, which is to say they blend in together, and become a sort of composite memory.
We came away with just over a kilogram of raspberries for about $16. Excellent value. Some are in the freezer, waiting to be turned into a raspberry and lemongrass trifle. Some are in the fridge for snacking. And some are sitting cooling on top of the stove, nestling on an almond frangipane and folded in a buttery pastry, which signifies a rupture in mine and Martin's lowcarb eating plan.
But you know. It's raspberries.
Recipe for Raspberry Galette
This recipe is cobbled together from a few different sources. I actually made a smaller tart and used half the amount of pastry and frangipane, and plan to make a second tart tomorrow to take in for Fred's teachers' morning tea, so have put the rest of the pastry and frangipane in the fridge to assemble the pie tomorrow.

Pastry:
1.5 cups plain flour
125g butter
1/2 cup icing sugar
1/4 cup (about 1 lemon's worth) lemon juice
Preheat oven to 180ºC.
Place flour and butter and icing sugar in bowl and process (or do what I did and rub in softened butter with your hands). Add the lemon juice gradually and keep processing or mixing with your hands until pastry comes together easily. I didn't need all the juice.
Roll the dough into a circle on a piece of baking paper and put in the fridge. Mine ended up quite thin because of our diet, but I think it would be great to be thick and generous with it too, it's a very buttery biscuity pastry, with a strong lemon flavour. Refrigerate for 10 minutes.
Frangipane
60g butter
75g caster sugar
100g ground almonds
1 egg yolk
A tsp of vanilla essence (or you could use something else, like brandy or cointreau)
Cream butter and sugar, then add almonds and egg yolk and mix or process well.
Spread on centre of pastry.

Raspberries
Toss in icing sugar if desired. Then tumble them into the centre of the tart. Quantities depend on what you've got, but probably a punnet would be enough for a smallish tart. You could adapt this recipe for most fruits and you don't really need the frangipane, but, hey, I like it.
Fold the edges of the pie pastry towards the centre. It should look rustic. Some might say messy.
Bake in mod oven for 30-35 minutes.

Fox Mama Love. Fox Dream Dog.

1. Yesterday Martin's parents (aka Nana and Papa) drove up from the eastern suburbs for a quick visit. Martin's Dad has been seriously unwell, and continues with his cycle of treatments and brief periods of rest in between. As we were sipping our cups of tea and nibbling our chocolate chip biscuits, Fred disappeared to her bedroom to get something and came back shouting, dangling a dead mouse by the tail. She was not at all distressed. Excited yes, 'I have NEVER seen a dead mouse in my bedroom EVER before!' But utterly unfussed. Even while rushing her off to the bathroom to wash her hands (while Martin quickly flung the dearly departed into the far off bushes), inwardly cringing, I couldn't help marveling at her moxy. I'm not sure I could have responded with such scientific interest, without a glimmer of squeamishness or fear.

2. Today Fred wrote a song. She wrote. Both words and the notes, indicating where the pitch rises and falls. The words are 'Fox Mama Love. Fox Dream Dog'. They are my favourite words, it is my favourite tune, and she is my favourite instrument.

3. I was relaying this story to Martin today about parents breaking the news to their little boy that Steve Irwin, his hero, is dead before he starts school and hears about it during ruthless playground talk. And got tears in my eyes during the retelling. Fred has been playing with her 'After the Disaster' colouring book. 'Draw something you wish you had taken with you.' The other day she said, not angry, just in chitchat at the table as she and Una drew, "I'm going to kill the whole world. The whole world's a burning fire. The whole world's a death machine." Last weekend we went down to the beach to stay at my sister-in-law's holiday house and Una thought the reason we were visiting them there and not their usual home was because their house had burned down. Suddenly the house next to the shop is for sale, while other houses have been quietly taken off the market. The neighbours across the road are separating, not just because of the fires of course, but it's unsettling in its timing. Martin has joined the CFA and spent last Wednesday night running around in the dark wearing reflective orange pyjamas and forgetting people names. It's been raining and raining and raining, and the sunflowers Frederique planted last November - finally - have bloomed. The roads are still closed.

Before I go to sleep at night I think about them all, especially the families. When it rains, I can't help but open up like a flower, the children take off their clothes and run outside and play in it, Martin and I sit on the veranda to drink our tea and listen to it rattle the tin roof. But there are people 2km from my house living in tents, huddled beside their chimneys, which is all that still stands of their homes. Where do they go when it rains? How are they keeping warm now that the weathers setting in?

Fox Mama Love. Fox Dream Dog. It sounds like an incantation. A spell against the dark.

More Photos

Summer is officially over, but we are reminded that fire season isn't. Tuesday is now being heralded as the worst day since Friday and schools may close again. To say I am sick of it is an understatement. Clouds have sat grey and swollen, low in the sky, all day. We have waited anxiously for them to open. Everything is so parched and dry. Tuesday isn't going to be hot, but they are expecting winds at 150km an hour. Weather. All this weather and no rain.
These photos were taken by Martin yesterday just up the hill from us, about five minutes drive away. I hasten to add that from our house we can't see any of this, we still have green bush across the road. It is utterly unbelievable to me to think: walk down to the road and turn right. Cross the bridge. Walk another five or ten minutes and there's this, the world deprived of colour:


The road past Mitten's Bridge is still closed. Martin went through with friends to help them clear their property and pick up the oddments that survived, a kid's playgym. A letterbox. Bits and pieces.
This last one I took in our front garden on the evening of Sunday the 8th. The whole garden glowed radiant orange red. It was the most terrifying beauty I have witnessed.

not quite normal

I have signed on for sessional teaching at Melbourne Uni this year. I will be teaching two subjects, 5 classes a week, one called Novels and the other Reading Australian Writing, both 3rd year Creative Writing subjects. I am really looking forward to it, though it means a third day of creche for Una (which she will love) and before and after school care for Fred, hopefully she'll enjoy that, though I think she will be tired and g-r-u-m-p-y when she gets home, and there will be days I'll hardly see them. Logistics aside (the scheduling has been a nightmare). I am excited about going off to work like normal people with my bento box and my clear delineations between work and home, though of course I'll still be writing noggles in all my spare time (hahahahahahaha). It's only for 12 weeks, though there will probably be teaching opportunities for semester 2 as well. I have conquered my residual fear of driving on the freeway (well, it's more a fear of merging) and even fluked (utterly) a parallel park on a main road in Carlton with traffic streaming past. Friday is my one year anniversary of being licensed to drive.

Things are still not normal in St Andrews, though I think we are all getting used to the relief centre, the quietness of the roads, especially on Saturday mornings, the constant activity at the CFA, the posses of vans - Bigpond, Parks Victoria, travelling in threes and fours, one identical car after another shooting past as I walk up the main road after dropping Fred at school - and of course the police road block. At first I found their constant presence comforting, though alien. The world had changed and I needed these things to be here to mark its borders and to help interpret the new order of things. I am still appreciative of their presence and their hard work, but I am very much looking forward to the seasons changing, the Saturday market returning, to things getting "back to normal". As I write this I fully know and embrace how lucky I am that there is such a thing as normal still for us, that many people will have to rebuild normal from the ground up and then live it for years before they recognise it.

I also know it's not safe for us to just 'get over it' (as if we could), the season isn't over yet. There is still smouldering behind containment lines, and we are still surrounded by unburnt bush. There have been more fires on the eastern edge of the city and in the middle of the state. As the temperatures are set to soar again on Friday, we're thinking about school and creche and wondering how much we should disrupt our routines every time there is a fire danger day. It's not an easy decision to make, not as easy as I thought it would be immediately after the fires where we declared we'd be driving out every total fire ban day. The fire season stretches long into the school year, at least one month either side, more like two as summers get longer, in 2005 there were bushfires at Wilson's Prom in April as the result of the loss of containment of a controlled burn in unprecedented hot weather. This choice may be taken out of my hands, the Department of Education and Early Childhood are deciding tomorrow whether or not schools will be closed. Luckily Martin and I are both home on Friday. This sort of closure will only get more complicated for us, and will prove almost impossible to balance for some families. Sadly, I wonder if this will end up discouraging people in urban interface like us to send their kids to the local, that's already a bit of a problem here. I know it seems ridiculous to be thinking about the inconvenience of disrupting our routines even if there's the slightest risk of tragedy in light of the awful tragedies, and yet this is where we live, where we spend our everyday and participate in our most ordinary of activities.

Not to end on a sad note, here is a list of things that are making me happy:
*Watching Fred blossom into reading and writing. She came to me before with a jumble of letters, and as I tried to decipher it she showed me the words she'd copied from the subject reader for Reading Australian Writing: 'Nobel Prize'. And, yeah, I could kind of see it, despite the errant F and the fact that the Z was an S.
*Eating a bowl of soup while I type made by Fred with little help from me, with basil and chard from the garden, cherry tomatoes, salt, pepper, fresh ginger and other spices. Actually, it's delicious, a lovely light summer broth with fresh ingredients.
*Marmalade cookies, light and airy, dipped in cold milk.
*A home day with the girls, Fred's last Wednesday at home before the normal school week commences. I feel a touch nostalgic, this is Martin's first week back at uni and my last day at home with both girls under these ordinary circumstances. They've had the odd fight, and for the last hour Una has been bursting into unexpected tears, but for the most part they've played beautifully together, spending most of the day indoors making rockets out of cushions and chairs, doing puzzles, cooking and playing Mums and Girls, Cats and Girls, Girls and Babies etc.
*On Monday (a tense total fire ban day) madly refreshing Twitter as people offered hilarious play-by-play commentary on the Oscars.

Heaven and Earth

In the last day or so, Fred has been asking about God again. Who was the first person? Did God make the trees? The rocks? The road? Do you believe in God? Please, Mummy, please, please believe in God. It amuses me that she is still using the female pronoun for God. I don't think I'll ever quite know where she got the idea that God is a black woman (the prep teacher is quite sure it wasn't her), but I am never going to say anything to disenchant her.

I am trying to field her questions with dignity and respect, without actually betraying my own agnostic-leaning-towards-atheist views (I am not anti-religion, I just simply can't believe that God exists. A shame, because I quite like the idea of church.) She first began asking about God last year when her Papa was in hospital and we passed a room set aside for quiet prayer. She has seen her Papa radically decline (and improve and decline again) in his health, and for a small, deeply empathetic child who has just started to get her head around death and thinks she can fix everything 'all on her lone', this has been a distressing experience. As soon as we began talking about God she latched onto the concept whole-heartedly. For a child who believes easily in fairies and vampires and fairytales, God is no challenge. The basics of God are more plausible and simpler to grasp than science - we evolved from monkeys?! Mummy and Daddy made me how?? - and I guess that's some of the appeal of God for everyone.

We've had the conversation enough times now that I answer fairly automatically, sometimes not even listening to my own answers. Even so, I was not prepared for the way this conversation would go:

'Did God make the trees?'
'Some people believe god made the trees.'
'Did she make the rocks?'
'Yes.'
'Did she make the roads.'
'Well, people believe God made people, but people made the roads.'
'No,' she says emphatically. 'God made the roads.' (I guess roads are as concrete and permanent as rocks to a five year old.)
'Oh,' I say. I'm bored of this conversation and always mildly irritated when she asks me a question then contradicts the answer. If you already know, then why ask, smarty pants? I look out the car window. We're curbside, in the suburb of Dandenong, waiting for Martin who is test driving a small blue manual car. A waterpipe has burst, and I am watching clay-coloured water bubbling up from the gutter. It's making me feel sick and uneasy because there are still fires in the state and suddenly this seems like water that should be somewhere else, doing its job, instead of gurgling uselessly onto the road in the middle of industrial estate.
Perhaps reading my mind, Fred asks me: 'Did God make fire?'
My attention snaps. Warily, I answer: 'What do you think?'
'No. God didn't make fire. I think the bad man that is god made the fire.'
For some reason the conversation stopped there. Maybe Una interrupted us, or maybe Martin came back. Maybe Fred or I changed the topic, someone suddenly bleated for a drink or a fizzy-good (the fruit tingles I carry in my handbag as emergency bribery on long car trips). I can't remember.

I have been nutting Fred's response out since. Does she mean the devil? I can't imagine that she would have any concept of the devil, but this bipolar schism intrigues me - the good and wonderful black woman God who made the world, a malevolent male entity who is also God and made fire. Or does she simply mean humans, people, does she have an insight into fire that I wouldn't expect her to have, that sometimes they are deliberately lit? Likely I won't ever know the answer to these questions. It's worth pointing out here (many Australian readers will know already) that there is a high profile religious nutter who claims that the bushfires were God's punishment following our recent laws decriminalising abortion. I'm not going to discuss that here, except to say that I am utterly certain about one thing: Fred's god would never do that. Fred's god loves children, loves the world she has made, and all the dead become angels. Fred's god is the only kind of god I have patience for.

Sometimes I think if the little local church next to the school still operated I would take Fred. The idea of driving into Panton Hill to go to church feels, on a purely selfish level, too intense, too much of a commitment. But I feel I want to give her the chance to develop this interest in spiritual matters even though her views don't match mine, and I would like her to have access to a different world view than my own: for I know there are more things in heaven and earth than can be dreamed of in my philosophy. For the moment, all I can do is answer her questions as honestly as I can, and know that this is part of how she's working out the nature of existence. Maybe, after all, she can teach me something, if I sit quietly and listen properly.

Update

We came home on Sunday night, and things are still tense out here. We took Fred to school on Monday morning, and it was a very small and solemn collection of students. The prep teacher is stuck on the other side of Kinglake, but safe thank goodness, and so this week it looks like school is unlikely. Many people are still out of the area, and sadly some of the families have lost their homes. We've talked to our immediate neighbours who were home on Saturday night and we are so relieved we weren't home. The fires were close, they could hear the fire front approaching, gas bottles exploding, they lost power - it all sounds truly frightening and we were the lucky ones. We are poised to leave at the first signs of a resurgence, our car is packed. We are also prepared if we get caught by surprise, because you can't take anything for granted. As I write this I can hear Martin walking around on the roof. There are some areas still smouldering and there have been a few flare ups. Our smoke alarm went off at 2.30am and we are still recovering - it took Martin and I a long time to get back to sleep after Martin checked the CFA website and went outside to see if he could smell smoke (he couldn't - the girls slept through it all. They take after my father who slept through a window falling in on him when a bomb dropped close by to his home in the war).

It is strange out here. On the one hand we are barely affected, our house is standing, our neighbours are alive. And yet only 1km or so up the road, houses were lost and lives were destroyed. There have been deaths too, but the information is confusing and chaotic, mostly rumor. We've heard some terrible stories, stories that I can't bring myself to write down. We still have a police block on our road and we have to show ID to get back in. I find their presence both mildly alarming and curiously reassuring. As long as the police are here everything is all right. We drive past the CFA, the army trucks, the police mobilising where the Saturday market usually is. It's like living in another country. The girls are on edge like we are, though it's hard to know what they're taking in.

A helicopter goes overhead, reminding us that the state is still burning. Not far away, Healesville, Yarra Glen... It's not over.

We're Safe

We weren't at home when the fires hit St Andrews, and we haven't been back since. Things sound pretty bad up there, though our house will still be standing, the fire didn't get quite as far as the township (though it got pretty damn close - we were saved by the wind changing - the people of Kinglake weren't so lucky). We still don't know the extent of the damage, but we know houses have been lost, people have died and others are still missing.

My love goes out to everyone who has been affected by the fires, especially in our wider community of St Andrews and Kinglake.

I will post more about this later, but I wanted to drop by and let those of you who knew about the fires and didn't have another way to contact me that we are well.