Sounds Disaster - Mothers’ Day 2012
On Mothers’ Day, 2012, we had an early morning phone call from our friend Marty Bond in the Sounds. He told us the very sad news that he had been woken at 5am to see our house in flames - “an inferno”. The local fire fighgters couldn’t save the house as it was so well alight when they arrived from a barge in the bay. They could only save the trees and prevent the fire spreading throughout the bus. This was a very emotionally upsetting day for us. All our Sounds possessions were gone :(
An arsonist with a long record of arsons, burglaries and theft had been sleeping in our house and decided to set it alight. He did the same with our garage at the top of the section. Our new neighbours, Nicky and Richard had their bach burnt down by the arsonist too. He was tracked down by the police and he admitted the arsons and was sent to jail. He was a mentally sick man.
The fire razed our house to the ground with only the 12 foundation poles left.
Our garage had our Triumph 2000 in it when the arson tried to burn it down. He set a fire close to the right front wheel of the car and it burnt a big hole in the garage floor. The tyre was burnt to the fibre inner and the car was completely blackened inside and ouit and immovable! We had great difficulty getting it out of the garage and up the drive.
The Triumph and John Deere tractor were completely blackened inside the garage.
With our house burnt to the ground and our car damaged badly we could have decided to sell up and leave all our memories behind. This wasn’t something we wanted to do as we both love being in the Sounds, in the bush and enjoying the peace and tranquiltity with our family and friends. As a result we started work on planning and building a new house and used our renovated garage to stay in while we did it. It was a new beginning for us.
You can see more photos of the damage done and our rebuilding of the new house in these albums.
