Life goes on

It’s October and the granite headstones rise from the charred surrounds of the Thursday Island cemetery.  Charcoal crunches under the sturdy sole of my Keens walking shoes.  There’s not a blade of grass in sight and the only leaves are those on gum trees which by a miracle, have not been razed by the fire.  The few remaining clumps of leaves are a vivid russet, crisp and shrunken and hanging stiffly at awkward angles to the blackened boughs.  There is death at every turn.

            Rewind seven months.  By the end of the wet season in April, TI is weighted under thick grass and verdant foliage that veils tree branches.  Gravestones on the slope are hidden by thick guinea grass, two metres tall.  The air is humid and redolent of new growth; rich, earthy, sweet.  Then the south-easterly wind, or sager, returns with a vengeance after five months’ absence.  Every drop of moisture is leached from the soil and sucked from the trees.  Leaves turn a sickly, pale khaki. The grass becomes coarse and patchy and the groundcover shrivels like old skin to expose topsoil.  The fine, brown dust invades my joggers or coats my thronged feet. The wind is unrelenting, like lashings of a whip; it is dry – so dry it stings my throat.  The gusts scatter dry grass, leaves and twigs that attach themselves to my legs or tights or find their determined way under my shirt.  I feel like I am being clawed by nature.  By late September, the landscape is brittle and dehydrated; a tinderbox.

            Late September is the start of the holidays.  There’s not much to do on the holiday.  Kids get bored   It’s no coincidence that bushfires ignite at this time, year after year.  By day, scarlet flames engulf Millman Hill then Green Hill then Rosehill then the scrub behind TAFE then the cemetery.  The shiny red fire truck is nearby and the blue boiler-suited figures of the auxiliary fire fighters, the firies, dot the smoky landscape as they desperately try to back burn.  There is property to protect: houses, the TAFE, the fuel storage at the power station.  As one fire burns itself out, another erupts. Ash settles on TI like grey confetti and the pool is full of charcoal shavings.  Streaks of purple grey smoke are whipped to the northwest by the hot, violent sager.  By night, I am woken by the deep hum of the diesel fire engine as it passes, rising to a crescendo and fading into the sager.  The firies are responding to another call-out; another deliberately lit inferno.

            Our house is on the windward side of TI so we are protected from the fires, until…

            Fire starts on Horn and smoke is blown across the channel to TI and into our house.  But the wind drops on sundown and the haze, illuminated by fluorescent lighting, settles for the night.  I lie in bed, inhale the thick, burnt-wood smoke and imagine I am sleeping by a campfire.  This goes on for a week.  My children start coughing and complaining of dry, itchy eyes.  I make lemon and honey drinks and eye baths of warm salty water.

            By early-October, there is nothing left to burn on TI and what was scrub or forest is now ash and charcoal.  There is space to walk and no scratchy grass, no lecherous twigs.  It is a relief. I explore the slopes behind the cemetery and admire the headstones that were hidden by the guinea grass, now majestic as they rise from desolation.  Eerily, they are unaffected by the fire as if inured against the ravages of time.  I recall the ghostly images from the 2009 Victorian fires; single houses standing inexplicably in black paddocks, once suburbia. 

            I trek over the barren slopes. Clouds of ash float with each footstep.  The white marble grave of a young girl, like an island in a sea of black, bears a mark of grief; a dull tinsel wreath, red, pink and silver.  The granite headstone of a father is laden under artificial blossoms, faded by time to pale purple, pink, orange.  And a lone frangipani tree blooms with snow-white and yellow blossoms that contrast with the thick leaves of the deepest green.  The wet season rain is a couple of months off. But when I stand in the silence and gaze at the black earth, pinpricks of green have started their journey heavenward, despite the dry. 

Life goes on.

Straight after the fire.

Two weeks after the fire.