by Madison Hovey
Up until five years ago, Victoria’s approach to bushfire risk management was irrefutable.
The community partnerships that were responsible for the upkeep of land protection were severed after the government’s failure to prevent the deaths of 800 people across the Greater Bendigo region after another devastating return of what appeared to be the ghosts of the 2009 Black Saturday fires.
All government building interventions were eradicated with the introduction of these fires and new laws were implemented around home insurance, land-occupancy and building homes in high-risk fire areas.
As a result, no living human being was allowed to build in high-risk fire zones. Extreme protective measures were in place to ensure optimal safety and harsh consequences were enforced for those who ignored the law.
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I didn’t think they would actually take us away. Ripped from our beds in the dark of the night. Jolted out of sleep like a fish out of water. I was certain they would give us back almost immediately. An ill-conceived prank that was destined to turn sour. Fake news. Empty government threats. TV movie. Ray Bradbury sort of stuff.
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We’d spent the better half of a decade saving up for what we thought would be the perfect home. Rainforest-esq backdrop, birdsong, acreage for days. Three bedrooms, two lounges, study, wine cellar. We sacrificed getting married. It was either a fifty-thousand-dollar wedding or our own home. We could ring our own bells and call it a wedding in our backyard sometime down the track. No venue fee—certainly no fifty-percent deposit to secure it for the coming summer. No need to decorative florals when we have a landscaped backyard. No need to call the neighbours about noise of the party.
We could save money on what most people would sell a kidney for. With our own home our options felt infinite. They were once, weren’t they?
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They don’t send letters, just food and cleaning supplies. There are no keys to open the doors or windows. I never see anyone drop the items off, but they are always waiting for me in a box in the kitchen when I wake up. A personalised delivery system, better than any Hello Fresh or Marley Spoon. I’m sure they are watching me from the windows. Sometimes I swear I can see a diminutive green light blinking at me above the kitchen sink. I’m sure of it.
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Whose idea was it, anyway? Did you lure me into thinking that we both needed to live amongst greenery in a high-risk fire zone? Like the time you talked at me for so long about how you wanted a Jeep because they just looked so cool that in the end it was just easier to buy you one so you would shut up about it.
When we first met your parents, they told me about the way you used to cry if you didn’t get your way. They said that you would rip parts of your hair out. That you would stomp muddy footprints across the carpet—purposefully muddy. You’d go out the back, turn on the hose, rub your feet in the dirt, walk inside. They told me about how you once threatened to set the house on fire in protest of them not letting you have a sleepover at Freddy’s. They said that you went as far as to light a match and shake a can of hairspray. They laughed a lot when they told me that story, but I just thought about all the times you’d shout at me about the slightest inconvenience.
The story doesn’t sit that well now. Does it?
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I’m certain that I have found a way to lessen the sentence. The inky thermometer on the wall rises each time I do it. The throat of the sink growls as it inhales garlic skin and banana peel. It hums as I pour the coffee grinds and week-old salad dressing into it. I’ve started giving it everything. Leftover spaghetti bolognese, the mouldy avocado that sits uneaten in the fruit bowl. My scraps in exchange for my sunshine. Give back, get more. I’m sure that was what they said to us when they took us away from our home. Wasn’t it?
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I don’t want to sound petty for thinking it, but I can’t help but to consider that you were aware that this would happen. That you had seen the adverts, the TV warnings, the letters and blatantly ignored them all. That you knew what BAL, BMO and land buy-back meant. I never thought twice about taking charge of construction, I was happy with interiors. Japandi. Coastal. Boho.
I flaunted my signature on every paper like I was ready to give my life away. If I had made choices about how thick the concrete slab was, whether we were using glass wool for insulation or whether we were opting for cypress over ironbark, perhaps I would have seen it coming.
You always got to choose, and for a long time I thought I was content with that.
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There are so many things that bother me about the situation we’re in. For instance, when they have decided that we have learnt our lesson, do we get to go home? Will the building restrictions still be in place? Will our home still be standing? Will we?
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I never had what you did when I was growing up. I came to this realisation when we visited your parent’s house for the second time. They asked me about where I was from and if I went home often. When I told them that my parents weren’t around anymore, I heard them gulp. The silence around the dinner table allowed me to hear them swallow their saliva and clench their assholes against the Provincial French Dining chairs we were all sitting on. I noticed your mum catch your eye with a nervous glance and I remember her telling me that one day I’d have a home of my own. You winked at me when said that.
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They shouted stuff at us when they ripped us out of bed. I wish I’d taken the time to write it down before I forgot it. Sometimes I think I can hear them when I drift off to sleep.
‘900,000 hectares burned. Where were you in 2026? Have you no respect for the law?’
No matter how hard I try I can’t remember. I haven’t got the faintest idea.
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I’ve almost convinced myself that you did this on purpose. That there was no government response to rebellious thirty-somethings buildings outside their means and ignoring construction restrictions. Just like that time you told me we were out of boysenberry ice cream, even though I found you bent-double over the freezer at midnight scoffing it like a feral possum. Maybe this was your plan all along. Maybe you just wanted the house all for yourself.
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Most days I struggle walking around this tiny house. It feels like my feet are too heavy to carry me. I’ve got nowhere to be and nothing to do. I walk into one room and circle back out of it like I am a CD with a thousand scratches, skipping and hopping back into a chorus, then the bridge, then the chorus again.
Do you do the same where you are? Do you? Most days I struggle walking around. Got nowhere to be and nothing to do. Do you do the same where you are? Do you?
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Something strange happened today. Most days I stand by the kitchen window and see nothing, so I was sure my mind had tricked me. I was trying to propel a spike in the thermometer by tipping coffee grounds into the sink when I saw it in the distance through the blue-white checks of the kitchen curtains. The amber of the flame burned into the sky as if it was trying to leave a mark. It remained steady, a reminder of what was fighting against us, what was keeping us apart. A lime-coloured balloon above it, collectively harbouring half a dozen people. There it was, floating inexorably skyward as if its home was heaven. I belted my hand against the window until it turned blue. They didn’t see me and the glass didn’t break.
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I am fairly certain that eighty days have passed and in these eighty days I can’t remember if I told you that I was sorry. We shouldn’t have done it and I know that I didn’t suggest it, but I also know that I am partly to blame. Sometimes, when you don’t know where you start or finish, these decisions make themselves. If we had both signed the floorplans then maybe we would be here together and then I would at least know where you are, and you would be able to tell me that I did see a hot air balloon out the kitchen window and that it wasn’t a miracle or rescue resource. You’d tell me that real people have jobs, and some of these real people jobs involve navigating a hot air balloon for loved-up couples and sunrise proposals.
Remind me again why we never got married?
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Perhaps one day there will be no need for tiny house prisons for felons and other neanderthals. Maybe our taxpayer dollars will be spent living abroad—in outer space or under the sea. Maybe in the future we will ride on the leather seats of new-wave Harley Davidsons and glide insistently upwards into the sky. We’ll drive through a McDonalds on Mars and pay for our McChicken’s in moon dollars. We’ll revolt from the Earth in the same way the Earth revolts from us.
Fight fire with fire.
In the future we’ll examine the tarnished black ash of burnt space toast and wonder where the sinking feeling comes from as we scratch it off into the bin. In the future, we won’t need to feed our kitchen sink compost as a part of our own daily sacrifice. We’ll skate around the rings of Saturn just for fun, instead of watching AFL and pretending that we like it. Maybe in the future, when we’re tired and old, we’ll relocate to Serenity on Saturn and live out our days playing a space version of lawn bowls and watching four o’clock movies.
Perhaps it will be here that I’ll think of you and wonder if you made it out of your tiny prison, and whether or not you went back to live in the house we built together in Kinglake.
Perhaps it will be at Serenity on Saturn that an image will flash at me while I sleep. Blue-white checked curtains, sink incinerators, triple insulated windows with hidden cameras, sustainability thermometers. Perhaps I will wake up with a yearning, a hole in the pit of my stomach, a word on the tip of my tongue, and I’ll begin to question whether I ever belonged anywhere else.
