Rita vows to rebuild ... literally
SEVEN years ago in Glen Huon, Rita Helling built her own house. Today, that Bermuda Rd cottage is a charred, collapsed wreck.
Ms Helling, 74, left, was one of five homeowners to lose their house in the Riveaux Rd bushfire that has torn though the Huon Valley over the past month.
“It was pretty horrible seeing what a mess it was,” she said. But now she’s back — living in a caravan as she starts the rebuild she hopes to have done by Christmas.
SEVEN years ago, Rita Helling, who was then 67, built her house at Glen Huon.
Today, the Bermuda Rd cottage is a charred, collapsed wreck.
Ms Helling, now 74, was one of five homeowners to lose their houses in the massive Riveaux Rd bushfire that has torn though the Huon Valley over the past month.
“It was pretty horrible seeing what a mess it was,” she said.
“Ever since, you think of all the things that you’ve missed and the things you could’ve brought, and you didn’t.”
Ms Helling left her property on January 26, the day after catastrophic fire conditions were forecast, when firefighters visited and told her to evacuate.
She took with her important documents, a suitcase full of clothes, medication and few dozen of her favourite books. Everything else was lost when flames destroyed her house two days later, including more than 600 books.
“That was probably the most upsetting thing in terms of what I lost, because it was my whole life reflected in those books, and I’ll never get half of that back again,” she said.
“The books were sort of my whole history — I had some of my childhood books and lots from university. You don’t think it’s real when you’re told it’s time to evacuate. You think ‘OK I’ll go and then when it’s safe I’ll come back’.”
She said the fire and its huge, billowing smoke clouds was “really scary”.
“Bushfires now are just so unpredictable and fierce that it’s not worth staying and risking your life unless your property is really well defended.
“It is just a house after all. You might have put a lot into it, but it’s just a physical thing that can be replaced. It’s more upsetting seeing all the damage to the forest, because I’ve always loved living in the forest.
“It’s something alive, it’s moving and whispering and it’s just wonderful, so that’s probably more upsetting than losing the house. It’s very eerie now going through a burnt forest, it’s pretty bleak.”
Ms Helling, an adult educator, moved from New South Wales to escape the heat, fruit flies, white ants and a coal mine to build her Huon Valley house.
She plans to rebuild the exact same house on the exact same spot.
“I thought, ‘I built it once, I can do it again’,” she said.
“Now I can correct all the mistakes I made last time. There are always things I can do better — I made a terrible job of the plaster work. I had a little bit of help last time, just a couple of days, but this time, as a concession to my age, I’m getting a bit more help.”
Ms Helling said she felt energised now the fire had passed, and she could get back to “doing stuff”, rather than sitting around worrying at a friend’s place in Huonville.
“I’m a young 74 I suppose, because I haven’t given up yet and I still challenge myself to do things,” she said.
She said it took eight months to build her house last time, so she hopes to be back under a roof by Christmas. In the meantime, her insurance company has organised a caravan for her to live in while she builds an insulated shed to house her for the winter.
A somewhat silver lining has been that her garden — where she was growing a lot of her own food to be as self-sufficient as possible — survived.
Several large fires continue to burn across the state, including the Riveaux Rd blaze.
I thought, ‘I built it once, I can do it again’ ... now I can correct all the mistakes I made last time — RITA HELLING