By Seth Lukas Hynes
A catastrophic rainstorm swept through Victoria on Wednesday June 9, causing widespread flooding, power outages and (at time of writing) two confirmed deaths.
I fear this may sound flippant after such a tragedy, but last week’s Yarra Ranges blackout was one of the most stressful events in my life so far.
With no electricity, our house in Badger Creek was bitterly cold; we have a gas fireplace, but need power to light it and run the fan.
I fretted on what I would eat over the coming days; we have a respectable store of canned goods, but we could only eat so much of our fresh perishables before they spoiled.
With our landline phone running through our inert modem, and with Telstra mobile services down, we couldn’t make phone-calls of any kind for the first couple of days or learn about the outside world, save for snippets of detail from the car radio.
With Telstra down, so too was Eftpos; with the banks closed, I’m sure many people didn’t have enough cash at hand to buy supplies; with the petrol stations closed, driving further afield was a risky prospect.
I came to dread the night, when our cold house grew even colder, time stretched unbearably and we went to bed unreasonably early because it was too dark to read or do anything.
The situation felt a little like the onset of a war. If a coordinated attack took out our infrastructure, we would be plunged into a similar state of tense ignorance.
The overall mood was of listlessness and isolation, almost paralysis.
And yet, on Thursday, the first full day of no power, I made my mother laugh.
I made a ‘Damn it, Klaatu’ remark, which she found very funny.
Of course, this blackout wasn’t exactly like the events of 1951 sci-fi classic The Day The Earth Stood Still. There was no alien emissary behind the power outages; just the chaotic elements. The stilling was confined to vast swathes of Victoria, not the whole Earth. Mobile phones, tablets, laptops and devices with batteries still ran on their internal charge (although I’m sure that if smartphones existed in the fifties, Klaatu would have a way of disabling them).
The laugh I got from my Klaatu remark showed that levity was still possible under the circumstances, and from then on I found as many positives as I could.
I finished writing an article for my upcoming book, and my overall experiences formed the seeds for this cathartic article.
I took plenty of photos of the rain-drenched environment.
Badger Creek was higher, faster and louder than I’d ever seen it before, scouring away soft ground in some areas and forming new offshoots and ponds. I found an ironic “No Camping!” sign surrounded by near-ankle-deep water, and a displaced metal lawn sculpture that looked like a marooned robot. The grass on our property was seemingly combed all in one direction by the water coursing under our house on Wednesday. Waves from the bloated Creek section near the Healesville Sanctuary offices crashed rhythmically against the predator and debris-proof fence.
I came across a football tangled up in muck and plant matter, which struck me as a very Aussie version of how the fall of civilisation might look.
I walked to Healesville on Friday to perform reconnaissance: to see if anywhere had power, and to hopefully use the payphone to check on my no-doubt worried grandparents. Little did my family and I realise that while landline phones are generally powered independently of the electrical grid, a payphone still needs the grid to run. Still, as I walked to town and back, getting plenty of exercise and enjoying the weather as it shifted from an uncomfortably cold morning to a sunny and comfortably cold afternoon, I was able to tune out the local disaster for a couple of hours.
I cuddled our cats at night, which did them and me a lot of good. My family and I eating dinner together by candlelight had a certain rustic appeal. Many places in Healesville had diesel generators, which filled the air with an intriguing animal-like rumble. Having a hot bath and dressing in good clothes (my wardrobe is divided into good-quality going-out attire and scruffier at-home attire) restored some sense of normality. Entering Lilydale was like finding Shangri-La: I almost thought buildings in this region with real mains power and decent mobile reception were a myth.
The fact that our gas was working but little else reminded me of the 1998 Canadian dark comedy Last Night. The film follows several characters as they approach an undefined midnight apocalypse in different ways: an introvert must endure an awkward dinner party, his friend wants to have as many diverse and interesting adult experiences before world’s end, and a businesswoman is desperate to get home to fulfil a suicide pact with her husband. A charming motif concerns Duncan, a gentle gas company employee who spends most of the last day calling his customers to tell them that they’ll keep the gas running right to the end.
These experiences and musings kept me going, even as the powerlessness and despair of not knowing for certain when it would end threatened to consume me.
Rumours put the restore time at Sunday June 13 or Monday June 14, which was corroborated by the AusNet electrical service website, but an ominous statement from the privy local butcher put it at Wednesday June 16, which was devastating to hear.
And yet power returned to our Badger Creek neighbourhood, and much of the Healesville township, earlier than expected: around 5:30 pm on Saturday June 12.
I’m sure we were all immensely relieved as power finally returned to our communities.
I certainly was.
The long, distressing blackout was over, and I’m glad I had enough to keep me sane during the days when the Yarra Ranges stood still.
Of course, many regions in Victoria still lack power, and I hope their power is restored as soon as possible.
