We stood on a nature strip in Northcote, on the night of Black Saturday—back when we were still comfortably unaware of the fires. I remember looking at the clock many times that weekend— the digital figures embedded in the dash, the shiny numbers of my phone and the scratched face of my brother Will’s watch— but I can’t say what happened when, not even to the hour; there are just two days and they are Saturday and Sunday, the seventh and eighth of February. And although Saturday was black for others, for me, Sunday was the real day of no colour at all.

So, whatever time it was, standing with Will that Saturday evening, maybe 6pm, perhaps later, it is easy enough to remember that the sun was still in the sky. The hot gusts of February wind had eased and a few heavy drops of rain fell over the faded blue bonnet of the car, splashing colour back into the tin. We stood there on the nature strip long enough to hear the most recent weather report run through the stereo and to find comfort in the hum and drone of ABC radio.

I noticed a few things alongside my brother Will on that night of the fires. At only seventeen his strides covered double the distance that mine did, as we walked along that Northcote footpath towards my auntie’s house. I noticed that his hair had grown long, that it almost touched his shoulders and that the blanket of freckles covering his skin had gotten darker from the sun— dense patches of pigment had bloomed over the backs of his elbows, his neck and across the backs of his hands.

Looking at my brother made me realise why my father had sometimes joked that we were never made for Australia. I remember my back blistering from sunburn some years, the sprawl of tiny bubbles bursting under the weight of my t-shirt, usually making the polyester blend cling to my skin. Even the sticky gel from my mother’s aloe vera plants couldn’t help me then. My father would sometimes get me to soak in the bath those summers. He’d run the water cool and deep. And, despite the discomfort I was in, I remember being excited; baths were rare, especially in summer when the water tanks were low. I would wait in the tub for what felt like hours—my baggy t-shirt and shorts slowly lifting from my softening skin to float all about me like a big, strange fabric jellyfish.

My mother had always struggled in the heat too; during the warmest parts of summer beads of sweat sprouted up all over her forehead and upper lip and her eyeliner melted down into the smile lines of her eyes. She had come straight from work that Saturday night, February seventh, still wearing her shire badge and a stiff lanyard around her neck. She wore a tie died dress too— black with big white loops covering her body. Later, when my mother found out it was the only piece of clothing she had left—that everything she’d once owned had turned to the softest ash you could imagine—she did not complain. She replied calmly to anyone who apologised. Usually it was a softly spoken sorry, sometimes it was a sorry in whisky form or in gifts of donated towels, nail clippers and boxes of glassware, sometimes boxes of cutlery and second-hand shoes. After a quick blush; a little embarrassment at the flood of generosity, my mother would say, “We are the lucky ones. Don’t worry. Really.”