Thursday, January 20, 2005

Bushfire - Bugger !

Hi folks
Let me firstly say that we are all fine. The house is totalled but we still have all our machinery and sheds, might even set up temporary accommodation in the wool shed (always said I looked like a bit of a sheep with my hairdoo !).
The devastation around here is immense and it will be sometime before our beautiful area regenerates and is restored to its original beauty. It was heartbreaking to see the dead sheep on the side of the road and yesterday equally heartbreaking to watch them digging big holes to bury them all. I passed a property that was spreading hay for their animals and saw the horses, cows and sheep running full pelt for the food. That is a really big problem here as 95% of the food for the livestock is now toast. It looks like a great big brown sand dune around here. Another thing we have to be careful of is the still smouldering trees as they can fall over onto the road at any time. We had a couple of big trees go on the property yesterday.
We had the insurance assessor out on Wednesday and we sat him down on our outdoor table (that table is of a plastic nature and was about 4 feet away from our totalled camper trailer - d'oh, that would have been good to have right now - and the bloody table survived !) I said to him that I would love to offer him a cup of tea but I couldn't quite track down the kettle at the moment - see, I still have a warped sense of humour !
Please don't be sad for us, we have each other. The girl is having fun shopping with her Nanna getting new clothes and toys. Yesterday I went to buy a laptop from Truscott Hi Fi and the gentleman that I always see there when I buy things (my NEW stereo is trashed - bugger!) gave her a Hot Wheels laptop and a game for the PC. People are so kind here. I had a bad moment in K-Mart yesterday, standing in the aisle trying to not look at everything and all I wanted to do was close my eyes as everything I looked at reminded me of things that I did have. But that is the key to it all, they are just things and can be replaced.
At the moment, the company is putting us up at a Motel in Port Lincoln and we are treating it as a little holiday, poor Sarge though (our doggie), he is sleeping in the smokey smelling ute in the carpark.
Thankyou all for your kind wishes and I know you all want to help in some way, can you do this for us - keep on thinking of us and help us be strong.
Onward and upward, and on the positive side of all this, we will have a new home, collect new things, and above all, that stuff that we hoarded and didn't know whether we should keep or not... well, the decision has been made. All of our families have photos of us and the girl and my Mum has a video of her as a baby that I copied off for her - good idea !
Take care all of you !

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