Marysville burns

Marysville is no more. Last night we watched television footage showing our house in ruins. Marysville was our ``bolt hole'', the place we went to leave stresses behind and spend time together, doing the things that families do.

We had no television in our Marysville house. Entertainment was reading, playing cards, listening to music, talking and laughing together.

All our favourite CDs were there. That's where we had time to listen to them.

Our games, a few weaving looms, a spinning wheel, oil paints and acrylics, papermaking kit, card games.

It was where we went to do the simple things we struggled to find time for at home.
Marysville for us is the centre of happy memories but it wasn't our home. We haven't lost family members in the fires or our livelihood.
Many Marysville residents have lost both in the fires.
Most have lost their homes, not just houses.
Many worked in the town's shops and guesthouses, including people from nearby towns - Buxton, Taggerty, Narbethong, Grantham.
Some of those towns are now just names, their houses burnt, residents fled.
We went to Marysville for the town, not just the peace and nearby bush.

We loved it for the fresh bread at the bakery, the coffee and chocolate cake at the patisserie, choosing a bag of mixed lollies or an easter egg at ``Fred and Val's'', buying home-made jam at the monthly market.

My favourite cardigan came from the alpaca shop. I'm almost out of the rose-scented furniture wax from the shop near the Post Office.
The Post Office had a great selection of Shirley Barber books. I planned to buy some for my granddaughter. Where will I buy them now?
The bakery is still standing. But when will the customers come back? How many survived?
I don't know if my next door neighbours survived. Their house is gone. Their ski-hire shop was razed.
The church across the road is gone. The news bulletin said many people perished there.
I want to go back and rebuild.

A town is more than a collection of houses. I don't know how many familiar faces I will see again and without them the town will never be the same.

My parents had a fear of wooden houses and the bush.
I loved both.
People used to say Marysville had never burnt - not in the '39 fires, not on Ash Wednesday. It came close when a burn got out of control a few years back but the CFA soon brought that under control.
People thought the exotic trees would save the town. Deciduous trees don't burn like eucalypts, people said.
They were right about that.
Photos taken after the fire passed show exotic trees with green leaves, seemingly untouched.
Eucalypts look like black stubble.
But the trees didn't stop the progress of the fire. In the end nature was more destructive than people believed. And now many of them have gone.
Marysville died on February 7, 2009.

Whatever returns will be different.