Wye?

I've never been a fan of Christmas Day, growing up in our family wasn't 'very merry', and this year I had rashly tweeted on Christmas Eve, at 10.03 PM, 'joy to the world! ~~ it's almost over for another year.' I wasn't to know that in less than 24 hours everything would be turned on it's head, a bushfire would sweep through Wye River where I own a property.  I would spend a large part of Christmas Day with my partners family in Sydney glued to my iPhone and the Fire Ready app in particular.  if you haven't got the Fire Ready app on your phone, load it now.

It was in the afternoon that the warnings started, with a sickening post Christmas lunch lurch I read that it was too late to leave Wye and Separation Creek, a smaller hamlet just over the hill from Wye.  The iconic Great Ocean Road was the only road into and out of town and it was now closed. The fire would burn right down to the beach, leaping over large sections of the road. By 10.30 at night the ABC predicted that a total of 60 houses had been lost.

By Boxing Day that number had risen to 116, 98 in Wye River and 18 in Separation Creek, or Sep as the locals call it.  I would wait over 24 hours before hearing that my house had miraculously survived, while others on the same street, more exposed to the bush, had burnt.  Other home owners would wait longer to hear the fate of their homes.  Twitter hashtags #vicfires and #wyereiver both a blessing, the source of unofficial confirmation, and a cause of more stomach lurching: one tweet from a local, 'Riverside got hit hard'.

During the days after the fire I spent an obsessive amount of time on my phone.  While mobile technology has gifted us with applications that literally save lives, that same technology has hatched a fixation in times of crisis on a live stream of comment, photographs and videos, calling out for own raw contributions to the feed.  TV seems, and is, staged in comparison.  My neighbour posted a photo on Instagram of his house on Christmas Day with the fire clearly visible over the rooftop; someone took a photo from the inside of their car as they left Wye with the fire closing in on Separation Creek, a dog's face in the passenger seat oddly reassuring; and Mashable Australia helpfully compiled some of the Christmas Day social media activity on one page.

The most important, and the most astounding outcome of the Christmas Day fire was that no one lost their lives.  There was no better news than that.  The house I've owned for less than a year and the first house I've ever purchased, made it.  I have cherished memories of the times I've spent at Wye River: the view from my deck 2 weeks before the fire; our dog Nero passed out in the sun on that deck;  a family lunch the last time we were all together at Wye in October; a drawing of the 'Wye Beastie', a whimsical offering from a friend, now framed and hanging in the spare room.

A house is more than its contents, a house brims with memories, with the times we've spent in it with family and friends.  In the ten months I've owned that house I've shared it with loved ones and holiday renters I've never met.   The previous owner who owned the property for 19 years asked me to look after 'her'.  Her.  As a Buddhist I had to remind myself as this tragedy unfolded, that this was a perfect example of attachment playing out.  But there is little relief in acknowledging that in a time of crisis, or in its aftermath.  Our attachment to home, to place, runs deep and quick.