In Somerset Street, Defiance Amid The Ashes
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday January 21, 2003
Their treasures are gone: a famous painting, a cellar of fine wines, a shelf of basketball trophies and a cat named after a teenager's favourite rock band. They have lost so much, but the residents of Somerset Street, Duffy, are defiant.
``This house will rise again, and when it does we'll rename it The Phoenix," says Judy Forsyth, a nurse, as she surveys the wreckage of No.64, the house she shared with her husband, Malcolm, and two teenage children.
Mrs Forsyth cracks a pained smile as she invites visitors to step into her lounge room. Quite simply, it is not there. Her husband talks wistfully about the 1987 Grange Hermitage that had been in his cellar.
He still cannot get Saturday's fireball out of his mind.
``It just came so fast it was really scary. You heard a roar and you tried to stop it but you knew there was just nothing you could do."
Across the road, at No. 79, John Templeton wades and stumbles through the sooty wreck of his house, deep in discussion with an insurance assessor. A year-long project to extend his home was completed just eight weeks ago.
A few columns and some twisted roofing are all that remain of the rumpus room built to house his teenage son's beloved sound system.
The Templetons were in Sydney at a funeral on Saturday. Now they have lost everything, except Nirvana the tabby cat, saved by thoughtful neighbours.
``My wife passed away five years ago after a long illness," Mr Templeton says. ``All of my son's memories of his mum and her personal effects were in that house."
Jonette and John McDonnell, of No.77, were also out of town, picking up their daughter, Siobhan, 27, from Sydney Airport after a holiday. When they got back their grey-brick home was razed.
``In my mind I can walk myself through every one of these houses and every inch of our place," Ms McDonnell says. ``Now I look at this scorched earth and I just can't equate it. It's surreal."
The McDonnells have lost the fruits of three lives spent wandering the world: Turkish carpets, Chinese jewellery and New Guinean tribal masks were fuel for the destruction, and valuable artworks, including an original work by the pop-art master Roy Lichtenstein, are ashen memories.
Carmel Jarvis, 57, and her husband David, 59, sit in their darkened house at No.81. When they evacuated on Saturday they expected to lose everything, but their home remains pristine, despite the destruction around it.
``You just have so much survivor guilt," she says. ``You still have your house but you are consumed by grief for other people. We've lived here for 25 years, and the homes of so many friends are just gone."
© 2003 Sydney Morning Herald
