Heat Wave, Freeze Wave

I'm back home, as of last Sunday. Visitors arrived on Monday, stayed for two days and today is my first chance to blog. I'm as flat as a tack, forcing myself to write. I've lost enthusiasm for blogging, mainly, I think, because there's always so much else to do. I've chosen to continue, after thinking half an hour ago that I'd finish up. Don't buckle just yet, I tell myself.
I had to tell you this story. My visitor was Ian Sinclair*, whom I've referred to as Punjab in a couple of posts in the past. He lives in Canada, at Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory, near Alaska. He's back in Australia with his 7 yo son for a month's holiday, the main purpose of which was to visit his 89yo mum who lives in a retirement village in Frankston. It's been an emotional time for him. This was the last time he would see his mum, and he wanted his son Jethro to meet her as a boy old enough to remember.
Ian rang me on New Year's Day to wish us Happy New Year, and to say that he was coming to AUS. in March and he'd let us know when he had an arrival date, and when he thought he'd get to us. We heard nothing further, which is not unusual, he doesn't like timetables and just 'turns up'. I had no way of contacting him once he'd left. I couldn't find his mother's phone number in her remarried name of Cantillon**, because, as I found out later, she'd moved into a retirement place. So we went to Lakes hoping he wasn't trying to contact us while we were away, thinking that with Robbie home all would be jake.
Ian called in last Saturday. He'd spent the previous 3 days in the mountains around Big River camping at our old haunts and catching up on eucalyptus scented air. It was hot with near 40C maximums. He and Jethro coped well considering they came from the northern winter and temperatures of more than MINUS 50 degrees in January. Robbie told him we were away and he went to see his mum and returned on Monday evening.
Yesterday before he left we were talking about the March heat wave and the worry of bushfires. I'd just renewed the house insurance and mentioned that I'd meant to check the fine print to make sure our house was covered against bushfires, but forgot in the haste of the last minute. He said he'd checked his because despite all the ice and snow there was still a bushfire threat in summer as there was 21 hours of sun per day in summer, when sunny of course, and the surrounding pine and spruce forests dried out and were flammable because of the volatile oils.
Ian went on to say that insurance companies in Whitehorse have rigid conditions and are as tough as nails. You can't just go away on holiday and leave the house, without making arrangements with neighbours or contractors to inspect it every 24 hours, recording that everything is in order. For example, during freezing and thawing, water and ice is dangerous, pipes can burst and a basement or cellar can catch water and freeze, leaving it filled with 50 tons of solid ice. Claims of $50,000 or $60,000 are not uncommon, when automatic furnaces have failed to keep houses above freezing point.
There was a case recently, Ian said, where a family went away and a tap was left running slowly in an upstairs bathroom, the exact circumstances of which he was unsure. Whatever, the inlet to the tap didn't freeze, but the outlet pipe did, so the water banked up and overflowed and ran onto the floor and throughout. As it hit the gaps, where it would run outside in normal conditions, it froze, so the house slowly filled with water which slowly turned to ice. The house wasn't inspected regularly and filled with water/ice which, expanding as freezing water does, crushed everything and pushed out walls. The house was fit only for demolition, the returning family losing the lot.

* Ian Sinclair attended Mt. Waverley Primary school 1955-1961, as did brother Jod. Ian's younger brother Colin was in my year 1957-1963. Jod was looking forward to Ian's visit and had copied and framed a 4th grade photo from 1959 in which he and Ian were standing next to each other, and which he gave to Ian when we visited the farm Tuesday. Ian and Jod went to Syndal tech and were both in the railways as firemen (trainee drivers) in 1969 when Ian was called up for National Service. After a term in Vietnam, Ian was discharged in 1971, his two years NS completed.
He could not settle in his old job, resigned, and unable to settle into any employment, took off to the Kimberleys. He roamed Australia and Asia for many years, eventually in the company of a Canadian girl, now wife Elke with whom he lives at Whitehorse, in a house they are buying on three acres out of town backing onto pine and spruce bush. At some point he was granted a TPI pension for post traumatic stress and has resisted convention for 37 years. He spends much of the summer fishing and hunting moose. He turns 59 next month. He has another son, Cullen, who is 17 and was born in Nth Queensland.

** Ian's mum married Reg Cantillon, who lived about 5 houses up from us in Mt Waverley with his wife (who died later) and family which included twin girls who were in Ian and Jod's year at school. Their older brother who became a mechanic died as a young man when a car he was working on fell off the jack and crushed him. Ian's father died in the summer of 1971/1972 of a stroke while recovering in hospital from a minor operation. It was the day Garfield Sobers made his famous 254 for the rest of the world team against Australia. Ian told me this visit that he said to me while we watched the cricket, "Dad died last night." I had said, "Should you be here?" He remembered answering, "Why not?" Don Bradman said Sober's innings was the best he'd ever seen.