Firing up again

FIRING UP AGAIN She cast a thoughtful gaze across the lake, across the lily pads lying on the surface of the water. It was a restful scene, colourful, yes, but the colours of this huge array of variegated blooms were not at all gorgeous - jonquil yellow and icing pink and, of course, pristine white with a heart of yellow. The leaves or pads were more intense, a deeper, more assertive green. But Vanessa knew deep down that even the greenness of the forest, as opposed to the brittle, sometimes dried-out pallid silvery green of the bush, could threaten. She was dressed as usual in a murky blue blouson with puffedout waist and loose sleeves and three-quarter length slacks. Her long sandy hair was pushed up in a bun, some strands of which floated down onto narrow shoulders. In effect, there was something of a French air about her appearance. It came as no surprise when passers-by, giving a knowing nod at her canvas, were heard to murmur ‘Monet’s lilies’ or ‘The Japanese bridge at Giverny’.

Her right hand poised to apply a dab of paint, she would lead with her right foot, standing at a forty degree angle from the easel, then move to a central position, squinting slightly. The palette was resting on a stand a little behind her left side.

Occasionally, a visitor was bold enough or just plain thoughtless to stroll up behind her along the raised grass pathway to the unobtrusive hide that sheltered her easel.

Vanessa was gradually growing used to these little transgressions now, tried not to be distracted or irked by gushing comments or silly questions about her work.

At times she envied the short, buxom woman in navy dungarees, who was working on the next embankment. Coralie was not only sociable but positively welcoming when two or three visitors stopped to peer at her canvas and hung around much longer than those who approached herself. These well-intentioned, often senior citizens, must have appreciated Vanessa’s preoccupation with the act of creation or possibly sensed her withdrawal, her refusal to make eye contact, focussing solely on some vague space on the horizon. Whereas Coralie, distinguished by a mesh hat in January when the flies were particularly annoying, would frequently take time out to go wandering along the Little Yarra trail in search of the resident platypus or crimson rosellas and sulphur-crested cockatoos flitting among the red river gums.

Way up to Vanessa’s left, extending across the horizon, rose the Donna Buang Ranges, whose gently undulating silhouette was usually tinctured in blue haze, impassive, densely layered with mountain ash as straight and tall as a ship’s mast, and as such their long trunks were used by the early British sailors whose vessels had lost their masts off the treacherous seas in the Australian Bight. Yet if she fixed her eyes long enough during one of her brooding sessions, her nose had acquired the habit of puckering as if at a sniff of smoke, or she heard a faint crackling sound that persisted into an eerie whooshing roar as she conjured the vision of a smoking furnace roaring down the tinder-dry slopes and eating into the valley.

Vanessa had always lived in a bush setting. Even as a child her first memories were of huntsman spiders ready to drop from the gloomy cobwebby cornices of the outside dunny and sometimes lurking in the corner of her bedroom; the fat old wombat trundling along by the creek on the outskirts of the small township; the spiky echidna making unhurried progress across the greens of the golf course when it wasn’t curled

up in a prickly ball; the tinny and scraping sounds of blue tongue lizards scrounging for scraps beneath the outdoor furniture and bric a brac on the veranda. In those days she used to get very upset at the sight of a bloody carcass of a kangaroo or wallaby or possum on the Grand Ridge Road when the family used to meander round the hills to Moe for Friday night shopping. Even cuddly koalas were rapidly disappearing in pursuit of the leaves of manna gums that their own colonies had denuded. As she glanced back on her teens, she was both surprised and saddened that she had become inured to so much road-kill. Habitats were being scythed down and gouged out as townships clawed at virgin bush. The shrinkage of her world was gathering apace.

One month before For two days Rocco had been surveying the skyline with mounting anxiety. A great deal of rain had fallen in the spring, which resulted in an abundance of new growth, an abundance of combustible fresh growth. These were high alert days. The CFA was busy constructing firebreaks, thanks to volunteers, park rangers and dozer drivers.

Containment lines were laid down in excess of thirty kilometres. People living in the catchment area of the Maroondah Dam were reminded to upgrade their fire plan, clear dead leaves from gutters, cut back foliage and long grass around their home, listen to regular updates on their local radio station, check on the nearest assembly point or emergency accommodation. There was a stern warning that anyone caught lighting fires on days of total fire ban could face a prison sentence. Yesterday, when the sky turned a startling orange fusing with purple, his wife had driven off to her parents’ three-bedroom brick property in Warburton. .

So on this particular day, February 7, 2009, Rocco was studying the grey-to-black clouds of smoke billowing across the foothills of Donna Buang that ran parallel to Woburn Springs, and with any luck bypassing the small township. Exhausted from lack of sleep and nerves highly strung, he breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Several neighbouring families had already thrown together some serviceable clothes, basic provisions, pet cats, dogs and caged cockatoos and decamped to distant family or friends or hunkered down in a city hotel. Others like himself were keeping regular vigil, but now that danger seemed to be passing by they were drifting back indoors to put their feet up in front of the tele.

Except that Rocco was stewing. Never before had he sensed that his whole livelihood was at risk. His whole life’s work. It only needed a few stray embers to blow over his bush garden and his adjacent studio with its wooden beams, doors and staircase would instantly go up in smoke. And if that were to happen, his house would instantly crumble into a heap of ashes.

Breaking into his thoughts came the sound of barking from the front yard, unfamiliar at first because so frantic. Chezam, his black and white-ruffed border collie! ‘That’s odd,’ he thought. ‘That’s not like him. Normally, he’s pretty placid.’ Hurrying over to the entrance, he glimpsed through the side windows the terrifying sight of tongues of flame jumping the crest of foothills.

‘Bloody hell, the wind’s changed direction!’

Dashing through the thick open doors of the studio to the front entrance of the house, his worst fears were confirmed. The front line of the fire, suddenly a wall, was already scorching a path down the slopes. Immediately he rushed over the road, yelling out, ‘Fire, for god sake! Drew! Pete! Let’s get moving! Fire!’ Clubbing doors, knocking windows, all the while screaming ‘Fire!’ ‘Let’s go!’ ‘Get out quick!’

As soon as people streamed out, panicky, casting a horrified gawk at the ridge of blazing hills, there was much shouting, toddlers crying, babies howling in the tight clutch of terrified mothers, menfolk calling for calm, urging attention to their own contingency plan, Rocco raced back inside, so relieved that his son was safely studying mineralogy in Ballarat. Thank god Nick’s well out of it!

With over three hundred paintings and sketches and one hundred sculptures, most of which were stationed in the mazy thickets of the garden, what in heaven’s name should he tackle first? Making a hurried round of his studio, he snatched at his own personal favourites, such as the Mary Lisa, that bore a close resemblance to the Mona Lisa, save that he had wooden knobs placed at both sides of the frame to twiddle Mary’s eyes up and down, one at a time if you wished. Then the portrait of his wife, Vanessa, painted a dozen years ago in the pre-Raphaelite style, her reddish mane of hair surmounted with coronet and Celtic headband, her medieval robe of gold and white samite given a luminescent sheen.

His wistful contemplation of Vanessa was jarred by the continual barking of his dog pacing back and forth with a skip on the turn in the street outside. He grabbed at half a dozen paintings and raced them out to his car. Chezam was already waiting on the passenger seat, his breathing heavy, his tongue lolling out, his eyes searching for some sign from his master. ‘We’re really up shit creek without a paddle, old boy.’

Unceremoniously, Rocco bundled up another dozen canvasses, but as he glanced up the slope towards the foothills he saw outlying houses already smouldering. The acrid stench of smoke caught in his throat.

‘Time for one last trip,’ he told himself. ‘Bugger!’ His own house lay in the direct path of the fire. No time for messing about. He snatched up, almost losing hold of, a dozen drawings and paintings, stood with an armful for a split second. He couldn’t cram much more into the boot and back seat. Not without more careful arrangement.

Then ‘Eureka!’ he yelled. ‘The kiln!’

He bustled over to the kiln, clattered the pile of frames onto the floor, wrenched open the oven door and shoved his most treasured possessions into its mouth, stacking them upright as best he could, notwithstanding the vague notion that this final fling of desperation was futile. Then charging back through the house to his car, wildly revving up, he vroomed off to the designated overnight shelter in Gallipoli Park. The following day, Sunday, he too would be evacuated to Alexandra.

The Black Saturday fire raged through the township, destroying over four hundred homes. Properties incinerated included the primary school, the police station, the Westmoreland Hotel. For three weeks the fire burned and smoked through many a long night. The smutty faces of the fire-workers, many of whom hailed from distant

parts of Victoria, were creased with sweat, fear and fatigue, before the fire was brought under control and the water-bearing helicopters stopped flying, apart from those on reconnaissance.

Rocco was chafing to return to what was no longer his home but the destroyed relics, daring to hope that something, no matter how small or trivial, might be salvaged. But the township had been declared a crime scene and closed off while Victorian and Federal Police recovered bodies and conducted investigations. When finally he was permitted to set an unsteady boot in the ruin, March 23, he suddenly found himself trembling into a fit of bitter weeping. All around this flattened, grey, deserted landscape hung the mere shells and struts of buildings more often than not bent or twisted and the hollowed-out blackened bodies of cars. He had feared the worst, but the confrontation, the realization, the enormity was unbearable - the structure of his house, the very skin and fabric of his home, reduced to rubble, a ghostly grey rubble reminiscent of a nuclear winter, save a scatter of upright terracotta statues still standing defiant, several burnished with smears, some of his most delicate, most vulnerable but beautiful figures smothered in ash. Had there been a patch of solid earth in the vicinity, he would have fallen down and given in to blubbering. All he could do was stare in horror at his beloved creations, till his fixation dissolved in disbelief - the warmth of their frozen smiles was clearly evident; their attitude of defiance in the face of mass immolation.

At least I have been spared a few gems, he thought. My professional life has not been completely in vain. I’m bloody lucky to have salvaged a handful of souvenirs to take away. No, I can’t come back, I can’t start over, build it all up again. Not now that I’m middle-aged, broke, utterly stuffed.

‘Hey, Rocco mate, some of us blokes ‘ere jes wanna lend youse a hand.’

Rocco turned round to face three familiar neighbours and a couple of guys he didn’t know. Shrugged his shoulders. ‘Bloody good of you blokes, but it’s all gone, mate.

Every fucking thing. I’m gutted.’

‘Yeah, we know how youse must feel. We’ve all bin completely wiped out. Had the shit knocked out of us. We ain’t got nothin’ to save and there’s not much doin’ right now. Our wives and kids are gone to Alexandra. But we see you still got some o’ them statues standin’ and we know how much you done for Woburn, all them tourists you brung in.’

Over the next few days the five volunteers swelled to ten or twelve. Working in the wreck of the sculpture garden, they hacked away the tangle of branches, lugged away in twos and threes the fallen trunks and dead branches, gathered up broken pieces of statue, cleaned detritus from the ponds and the creek that ran at the bottom of Rocco’s garden.

In the studio Rocco was poking about through the ash and awkward knobbly things, occasionally stubbing his boot against a broken piece of sculpture, such as a three fingers of a hand or a strand of bent, sooty wire from one of his hanging mobiles.

Then, as he stumbled through to his studio, heart suddenly racing at the sight of a familiar object – there it was! The stolid shape of his kiln, albeit caked in some

grungy, molten substance. My god, the handle had melted away and the door was ajar! Again, his heart sank to his dusty boots. ‘Oh, god, don’t tell me I can’t recover something of genuine merit, something of personal value!’

When he ventured his hand, though, crouching down, he was stunned. He found himself stroking the smoothness of glass beneath a gritty dusting of ash. Amazed when he tentatively eased out the foremost frame and found the painting very much intact, the edges of canvas alone singed.

Days later, when explaining this miracle at the office of his insurance company in Yarra Junction, he learned that while the temperature of the inferno was estimated at 1,000 degrees, glass does not succumb to heat until the temperature reaches 1,500.

‘But you can’t exhibit these,’ declared Vanessa on her first visit to this ghastly scene of grey desolation. ‘Not until you find some means of getting rid of these sooty stains on the glass. They violate the effect.’

‘Not at all,’ Rocco said. ‘These scorch marks form an integral part of this new creation, a re-creation. What’s more, a symbol of our own resurrection. Besides, they really tell you something about the work itself, its history, its provenance. Then there’s the contrast between the sense of threat and the random nature of the unknown on the one hand as opposed to the more formal design, good humour, garish colours or just the aesthetic charm of the original.’

‘What a presumptuous rationalisation!’ said Vanessa, indignant that her husband was so accepting of a disaster that took away the lives of thirty-four people whom they both knew, decent people who contributed much good feeling to their tight-knit community.

‘I know how you must feel, darl, but . . .’

‘Do you? Do you really?’

‘I witnessed the horror too, the pain, the suffering, the sacrifices people made, but you can’t keep re-living the nightmare. Otherwise . . .’

‘But that’s just the point, isn’t it? You want to stay here and try to reclaim the life that we lost. You can’t merely patch up the eighty pieces of work that have partly survived or been reduced to a smelly rubble of broken parts.’

‘I have to, my pet. These artworks were born out of my soul. I feel as never before that they are part of me, part of my character and as I gaze at the lopsided mischievous smile of a woodsman suddenly appearing amongst the bush, separated from his body and multi-coloured folksy dress, I recognise not just a piece of sculpture but a friend whose presence I treasure, so there’s nothing for it but to fit the pieces back together again.’

‘Rocco, this bloody fire may well have set our marriage back many years. I cannot stay here. I really cannot. Just take a good look around at all this ugly devastation.

You can’t possibly live here, let alone work.’

‘Just give me a few weeks to sort through stuff, figure things out.’

She shook her head in dismay. ‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing. All this dreadful mess, this catastrophe, will take years to fix. If ever.’

Rocco sensed that his wife was correct, couldn’t blame her common sense. As she drove off to seek refuge with her parents, he felt a great pang of regret. But he could be an obstinate mule, even if it risked his marriage. Somehow what lay in front of him was unfinished business, might never be finished business, but he would give it his best shot and, who knows, review the situation in a couple of months.

‘Crotchety’ and ‘cranky’ were her mother’s favoured words for describing Vanessa’s mood as she wandered listlessly around her parents’ third of an acre block in Warburton.

‘Aye, she’s a right pain in the arse, lass,’ said her father, unconcerned as he browsed the Herald Sun before the daily constitutional around his allotment. ‘With a face like a yard of tripe.’

Vanessa was vexed that she had done nothing to resolve the impasse in her marriage.

Her head was throbbing with it. Nor was there any outlet for her frustrations in her social network. All her friends had evacuated Woburn Springs. Obviously, the Saturday ritual of netball, barbecue and tennis was dead and buried. Nor did she have the slightest desire to paint, but driven to distraction by her mother’s suggestions about how she might usefully employ her time, she scrimmaged easel, palette and paints and decamped to The Lotus Pad. For several years she had run a modest sideline in watercolours, painting decorative still lifes for small, independent art studios in the Yarra Valley that catered for the weekend tourist trade. But when she resumed the usual spot at her enclave, her mind wasn’t on the job. So laboured and mechanical was her technique, so uninvolved, so easily distracted by passing prams and wheelchairs, so distant that the end product was lacking vitality. The notion that she needed some sense of continuity, given that she had separated from her husband, albeit in a temporary, somehow indecisive way, proved fruitless. How so? Didn’t Monet paint time and again the same water lilies in his pond at Giverny?

At first she made painstaking copies of the lilies in front of her, as was her custom before the ravages of Black Saturday, slightly adjusting the angle of her easel to register the subtle changes of light.

‘Very pretty,’ said Coralie in a sardonic tone, sneaking up behind her along the embankment, ‘but you’re capable of doing better than basic exercises. You might as well use a cheap camera if all you want is straight replicas. This is what the ships’ artists used to draw on the eighteenth century voyages of discovery, but they were

recording botanical specimens for Joseph Banks. You haven’t been signed up for Mother’s Day cards, I hope.’

‘You seem to go to the opposite extreme,’ retorted Vanessa, stung by the criticism.

‘Your work is obviously a pastiche. I certainly can’t see any representation of flowers or exotic trees. Even your mix of colours seems hopelessly out of place here.’

‘Good-oh,’ chimed Coralie, cheerily. ‘Have you heard of Moreau? Gustave Moreau?

Late nineteenth century. I adore his oeuvre. You know, arcane symbols, dark planes of purple, bizarre animal figures of some primordial past,’ ‘I don’t understand your stuff,’ said Vanessa. ‘ It’s creepy and weird. Why such an unappealing rash of purple?’

‘Pursuit of the rational is so dry and old hat. I take risks. I love the dark purples of Moreau, the fantastic perpendicular architecture often backlit through arches trailing fanciful flowers. So I attempt something similar with the Aussie bush. You know, tree trunks lying cross-wise to each other, suggesting the holy rood. The quirkiness of a platypus flying through the branches at twilight with a golden moon, silver stars as an angel’s halo, ruby gems in the burning sunset. Unreal, eh?’

‘Unreal, exactly. So what do you suggest?’ she said with a hint of sarcasm.

‘Why not scumble the paint? Remember how Monet pastes splotches of white paint for his lilies as they catch the light to leave an impression of them dancing on top of the water?’

No, she’d already said goodbye to Monet. She wandered back along the grass track over the dinky three-arched bridge past the banana palms to a major display - the two thousand year old perky pink Oga Lotus or Ancient Lotus, reputedly the oldest flower in the world, situated in the Japanese garden characterised by its own bold red bridge.

But it was the hothouses that had begun to fascinate her at The Lotus Pad. In particular, the Victoria Cruziana, a giant water lily from South America. It resembled a green custard tart with an upturned edge and a leaf span one and a quarter metres in length. She heard a guide declare that you could place a baby, perhaps three, on its leaf and she or they wouldn’t sink. Then there was the Giant Crocodile Plant, which you must not touch because the veins of its leaves could rip through your flesh like the snapping jaws of a crocodile. ‘Red in tooth and claw’, someone had said about Nature. Another reason why she hadn’t worn red for five years.

Rocco’s first port of call was his insurer. Fortunately, the house was fully covered, but he had not been able to insure the studio because it housed a kiln. Secondly, one of the four habitable houses in town offered him a room close to his own domain, so that he could rummage through the wreckage. Next, as he pushed through the trail in his sculpture garden, he discovered that some of the half-buried, half-broken statues could be restored. For instance, the head of the beautiful Lady of Shallot seated in the canoe on the further bank of the creek that marked the boundary of his property lay on the creek’s bed, presumably snapped by a falling branch – and there were plenty of these about, some lying cross-wise upon others. It was a comparatively clean break,

but no glue would do the trick. Never mind, a local craftsman advised resin. Once that reparation had been made and he’d touched up the bright colours of both head and dress, he removed the mud, water and leaves from the upturned canoe, stabilised its position and set up his beautiful maiden smiling in her rightful place, dignity restored.

Every day Rocco made a point of walking this tortuous, winding, obstructive trail to reassure himself that this crazy quest for rehabilitation was underway: he had only to cast tired, itchy eyes over his serene maiden of the creek.

In spite of the devastation or because of it, he found his imagination beginning to form new alliances. Several of the old manna gums had lost heavy branches, some were uprooted completely. The shallow roots of their short, stout trunks make them particularly susceptible to violent conditions. From the base of one such rotting trunk lying aslant, he fashioned a huge terracotta hand of outspread fingers. In the hollow of another trunk he installed a mischievous dwarf in whose tiny mitt he placed a real but old mobile phone. Grotesque clay faces were moulded onto another trunk. In effect, the fallen trees offered him back his sense of fun.

He also decided to take photographs of the crippled sculptures before and after restitution and hang them enlarged next to the artwork itself. Some of these were unrecognisable beforehand, so badly mangled and trapped by falling branches. Those pieces with broken appendages often required replacement parts freshly fired in his kiln, thus preserving the original design.

After considerable reflection, he had to accept that the studio he had loved and worked in could never have the same blueprint. There was too little money, he wasn’t earning. He used thick wooden doors with a vague hint of the medieval bought on the cheap from Bunnings. By sheer fluke he bought the last available supply of sleepers. from the railway yards.

But how was he going to make any dough if he was merely restoring his old pieces?

Surely it must be possible to open the sculpture garden even if several figures were lying injured or dead and almost buried? Okay, so he could give talks to groups willing to listen to his personal account of the fires, his attempts to recreate his life’s work, take guided tours of the bush garden. He would offer discount prices for groups. He would establish his own web site and report on progress.

In less than a year Rocco re-opened the sculpture garden, already prim with splashes of pink and yellow amongst the young ferns and a host of cheeky alba. He built a rotunda at the entrance to the sculpture garden for visitors to enjoy their picnic lunch.

Reviews submitted on his website were most encouraging. His whimsical sense of humour - he frequently gave talks wearing an inverted handbag on his head, Tommy Cooper-style – appealed to many visitors who marvelled at the man’s’ stoicism. In spite of this horrible adversity, it gained him many admirers and a viable stream of cash. Five years after the fire, he was steadily gaining traction.

One weekday in September Rocco and Vanessa were driving up into the Donna Buang Ranges. The rainforest road was graced by mountain ash soaring sixty-five

metres into the open sky and myrtle beech some three to four hundred years old. The winter snow traverses were often impassable, but today’s spring weather offered a cheerful disposition and a gusty breeze that cleared the sinuses. There was no forgetting the Black Saturday fires of five years previously when they fell into a pit of despair: all those bare, blackened trunks, the dearth of foliage, the vast number of dwarf, spindly black trunks like columns of a medieval Moorish mosque and fallen timber barring access to the forest.

Just beyond the log dumps, the chain hire signs and the fire lookout, Rocco stopped the car at a lay-by to stretch their legs. While he was setting up the flask of coffee and chicken and salad rolls, Vanessa strolled over to the outer ring of the car park and peered into the density of the bush. She squizzed more closely at little splashes of brilliant green. To her surprise, she noticed down a gully a miniature forest of ferns newly sprouting with sawtooth leaves nestling amongst small boulders embossed with a fresh growth of moss.

Wandering further forward, she detected the tendrils of some tall, green-stemmed fungus, its pinkish flower encircled in its hung head. Just the kind of setting, she thought, where Rocco’s handcrafted maidens might go riding by. Or young water sprite lovers entwined in a solitary piece of white stone that even Auguste Rodin might have envied. Or a beautiful, lissom Asian girl, her back bent in elegant pose, her head resting on her knees. She recalled the Indian elder in orange dhoti who might be sitting in meditation beneath that snow gum yonder. Even a smiling sage perched halfway up a blackened tree, safe in his own nest. She was almost tempted to lie down by the side of a rock, put her hands behind her head and listen to the haunting melodies of Rocco’s burnished flute player.

Michael Small March 22-April 8, 2014