My aunty Kitty, my dad’s younger sister, had a middle finger with a strangely shaped nail like two rivers converging into a central maelstrom.
I adored her. She returned that love a hundred fold. Her home was in every way different to my childhood home. Her sofa, she covered in thick, clear plastic. All the better to not get ciggie burns or stains from Uncle Bill’s work clothes. I never had any real idea as to what Uncle Bill worked at each day but his overalls were spattered in a rainbow of paint colours and grease. Uncle Bill wasn’t really my uncle.
Aunty Kitty’s first husband, my real uncle, died of cancer. He called me Tuppence and, even on his deathbed, at about 35 kilos, he managed a smile and a barely whispered ‘Tuppence’ to me. I loved the bones of Uncle Arthur. Uncle Bill, although likeable enough, was irritating, loud, quite deaf and ‘watered’ the lemon trees when the call of nature fell upon him. The resulting crop was massive and juicy. No way would I ever try one of those large yellow orbs, however. Uncle Bill was also kind, generous and boyishly loving. And he doted on my aunt. So, not a bad bloke all in all apart from the toileting habit.
As well as the plastic sofa covers, Aunty Kitty used to cover her TV screen with sheets of coloured cellophane. As the whim took her, she taped up sapphire blue, emerald green, ruby red or yellow. I’ve never come across the accurate descriptive word for the yellow. Being my favourite, I did try and work out the exact colour but never could quite hit on it. That yellow cellophane filled me with a feeling the other colours didn’t even touch on. The yellow was definitely my favourite.
It also prompted my love affair with Greece, and lemons – despite Uncle Bill’s predilection. One summer evening, my mother and Aunty Kitty sat in Kitty’s cramped, spotlessly neat kitchen, newspaper lining the bench ready for peeling the spuds for tea, drinking a glass of Blenheimer. Or sipping a cup of tea. More likely the wine – a cavalier name for what was inside those casks. I sat in the lounge watching a programme on Greece. My love affair with everything Grecian sprang to life.
I knew, even then, that one day I would travel to those craggy, dry shores edged in turquoise and deep sapphire blue. The antiquey, magic yellow hue of the cellophane gave words and names like the Acropolis, Dionysus, Athena and Odysseus a magic that coursed through my veins. I was hooked.
In January this year, I sat on my bed, leaning back on pillows, reading a fantastic book (The Heart’s Furies by John Boyne if any of you are interested) and suddenly the light altered dramatically in my room. A yellow hue cloaked the white walls and coloured my verandah through my French doors. Trees took on a mythical, unnatural colour. The colour deepened, second by second, saturating the sky and everything around me. Immediately I was back in Aunty Kitty’s lounge, seated on her plastic-covered sofa. It was an eerie, apocalyptic feeling observing the outside world change.
The bushfires.
My heart ached for Australia. If this was what we were seeing from the fires raging and destructive, imagine what our ‘neighbours’ over the ditch were seeing and feeling. I had to get out of the house and shake an eerieness creeping in. Heading for the beach, I saw people coming out of their houses to stare at the sky and check in with neighbours that all was safe. Unlike in Australia, where people and animals and homes and villages and suburbs were dying. Words have no meaning around the level of destruction.
Will Australia ever be the same? We can ask why did this happen. Why didn’t Scott Morrison, PM, act with more leadership and integrity. On and on… but right now, we need to put those questions and judgements aside and concentrate on helping in any way we can. Praying, donating, whatever.
Some time has elapsed, some rain has fallen (bringing its own set of problems along with its aid). I am grateful my Australian friends are safe. My heart breaks for the animals lost. For the pain Australia will feel for ever over this catastrophe. Like with the yellow cellophane, there really is no word that can name what has occurred.
Our lives move forward into a new year but let’s not stop helping that ravaged landscape and its inhabitants in whatever small or large ways we can. Don’t let out of sight, as the pictures of great orange flames and burned koalas and kangaroos lessen, become out of mind.
I’m hoping for a wonderful 2020 and to live my best life. Join me? (DEIRDRE THURSTON)
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