Jessica – “ I’ve been living in Middle Pocket, I moved there from Rosebank. Lismore’s been my home for a very long time and I moved up to be closer to work and the beach. I had an urge to go away for the Solstice and went up to visit my uncle and I have no mobile reception there so am cut off from the digital world. I went into town yesterday and looked at my phone and the first thing I see is a message from my housemate saying, “pray for us! our house is burning!” and I found out they narrowly escaped with their lives. They think it was an electrical fault and my room was the last to go.
There was this chain of events that happened like they stayed up and watched Jurassic Park and their son was scared so they left his door open. If it had been shut they may not have been able to get to him. The dad just woke up and thought that someone was in the kitchen burning something and then he saw more smoke and yelled to get out. Even the dog was asleep and normally he’s a barky dog. It was all so intense. It was 4am yesterday morning.
We’ve lost everything. Ive still got a storage shed full of crap but I’d brought all my good stuff with me, all my singing bells and bowls, antique saxophone and expensive recording guitar and recording equipment, my computer with all my songs on it and poetry, none of which was backed up so it’s all gone. They lost all their instruments and they have a computer business and lost all their computers, clothes, the lot.
They have this beautiful property, it has 50 acres with a stream and they wanted to open up to community and have events there, grow things and create community and connection with the land. The land’s all still there and they have 2 children including a one year old son, they’ve lost all medicines, everything.
When I got here last night I crashed at my boyfriends house and I just felt this ecstatic release that we were all still alive. Things could have gone so differently. Now to rebuild! Any help anyone can offer will be greatly appreciated, they need cleaning up as well, the more the merrier, anything! love, gratitude, energy even and if anyone finds a beautiful tortoiseshell cat around Middle Pocket I haven’t found my kitty yet so she’s the only one unaccounted for. Her name is Zanzibar.”
If you can help in any way they have started a FB page x