G’day everyone,

Just thought I’d give you an update of where we’re up to in our lives since the fires.

After a frustratingly long and arduous process of choosing a display home to be built on the property, ‘meetings bloody meetings’ and contracts to sign, they’re finally at the stage of pouring the slab. I believe once the slab has dried, the frame and bricks will go up fairly quickly and the house will get to lock up stage in a month or two. Then things slow down a bit while they do the fit out.

We’re hoping to be in the new house by Mar next year…but it could be earlier (God willing). We’re taking responsibility for our response to what happened and will be installing three additional water tanks. One fed from the dam for, predominantly, gardens and fire fighting purposes (this is not drinking water), two to be fed from both the house roof and the barn roof. Our current water tank will be used, too, for the overflow from the house roof. The house tank and current tank are about 50,000 litres which will feed the barn tank, also (another 22,000 litres) which will be our main supply tank and will be continuously topped up by the other two tanks via pumps.

The barn tank is higher up the block which means our water will be gravity fed unlike previously, where our water tank was connected to a pump…which didn’t work, of course, when the power failed during the fire. In future, if there is a power failure, we will still have full-pressure water on hand no matter what happens with the electricity with over 20,000 litres of water available. Portable diesel powered pumps will be on standby too, along with a diesel generator to supply power to the house if the power was to fail. The portable pumps will be for pumping water from any of the remaining tanks or dam depending on what happens with the fire and whether we feel we can safely fight it and get the pumps set up in time. If we can’t set the pumps up in time or the power fails and the generator doesn’t work we have a final fall back. A fire bunker.

We’ve bought a fire bunker. It’s the size of a small room and is simply ‘craned’ into position. We’ve dug out part of the embankment close to the house to place the bunker, after which we will fill in any gaps between the bunker and the embankment with the dirt removed. The bunker will, then, be mostly underground. If it were to be placed above ground the manufacturer states it could survive temperatures in excess of 2,500 degrees for some 3 to 4 hours. If it needs to be used in the future, the door seals will enable quite a few people to survive without any extra air, for up to 5 hours. Given most fire fronts only last for minutes, not hours, and given our bunker will be 80% underground, we should be more than safe in the unlikely event of a similar firestorm.

The bunker is being placed just outside our garage so there will be a short dash of a few meters at the most, to contend with – if anything like this was to happen again. Having said that, most bushfires give you a few minutes warning so, dashing through flames should never be an issue.

Can I say that this fire was of a type and ferocity never before experienced. Could it happen again?…possibly, will/could it happen again? probably not…but we’re preparing in case the unthinkable were to happen again.

Interestingly, our block was assessed, using a Bushfire Assessment Standard (BAS) as 2nd lowest. What that means is our block is only considered to be slightly more a fire risk than a standard suburban house…go figure. And that risk was assessed AFTER the fires.

We had the electricity connected the other day, too. It’s going to cost us between $15,000 and $20,000 in power cables and the like. Thanks to the many generous donations we’ve received from so many people from across Australia and overseas, money is not an issue for us…thankfully. Our electrician is a great guy, too, so he’s keeping costs to the minimum.

The first building issue occurred the other day, too. We had a septic system installed. It was installed to the manufacturer’s specs. Then the building supervisor told us the tank is 20 cms too high in the ground. $2,000 later, digging up the septic tank and repositioning it, 20 cms lower, and we’re OK.

The next issue was the building supervisor telling us the cement trucks can’t get up our driveway to lay the slab. Given we’d just had our driveway graded and had over 120 tons of crushed rock laid and compacted, we were a bit gob smacked. A few days later, the supervisor said he’d visited the site and couldn’t understand why the cement trucks couldn’t get up our driveway…it’s seems they may have gone up the wrong driveway.

So, the good news is, the slab should be laid by mid Sep at the latest. Great. The barn should be up by the end of the month, too. So we should be able to ‘camp out’ on weekends to prepare gardens, orchard, chook pens and the like prior to moving in (Angie wants to have as much of the block looking good, as soon as possible).

We’re living in an Army married quarter at present which is great, warm in winter and a cooling system for the summer…we’re definitely better off than many others in our situation who are still living in caravans or makeshift accommodation. But, it’s not home. We can’t put pictures or paintings up on walls (fair enough I suppose given we don’t have any left!!!).

Life is going on fairly normally for us both. Sally’s going extremely well and is inspirational for me, at least. We have lunch together once a week and tomorrow night we’re all heading down to hear the Melbourne Symph play a new work written by a dear friend of Angie’s and mine featuring Australia’s finest jazz virtuoso, James Morrison. The composer has dedicated the third movement of this concerto to Greg. It will be an emotional event.

Angie’s still working hard teaching overseas students in the hospitality industry. She’s going to take a few months off next term to see if we can get the music business we’ve decided to set up, off the ground. Hopefully, by Christmas, we’ll have a number of ‘seminars’ set up and she shouldn’t need to go back to work. If it all turns to the proverbial, then, it doesn’t matter. I’m getting out of the Army in Feb (after 38 years) so a pension and lump sums should see us through for a few decades!!!

Graham and Angie.