Nadine Williams

Demolition becomes Day of Drama

Day one of demolition of our Belair house began badly. We had taken a packed lunch to await the arrival of the bulldozer which was to begin to take down the house.  It was already a bare shell, stripped of its terra cotta tiles, skirtings and timber floorboards.  The Baltic pine kitchen, too, had been sold and the copper canopy stored for the new house.

It looked a sorry sight. Yet we ate red salmon and vegetable bake against the backdrop of four bare  cream brick walls and skeletal timber roofing. Someone had written  “I am a window’’.  As if it had a soul.

The house  once had a soul and was the hub of Olivier’s French family life. Only French was spoken here and it was here that Olivier and his late wife, Colette had raised their four children. It had been their home for 30 years before Colette’s untimely death in 2003.

It had been my home, too, since 2008 when Olivier and I married – and now we were demolishing  to make way for our dream retirement home. These bricks and mortar may well be about to bite the dust, but I know with one look at my husband’s pensive face that he carries in his mind a lifetime of happy memories. He smiles to himself and I ask “what are you thinking?’’  .

 “We had such joyful Christmases; Always on Christmas Eve, the European tradition. Until I met you, I never bothered with Christmas Day.’’ .

 “Someone would dress up as Pere Noel and at midnight would give gifts to all the family,’’ he says.

“By then the children were popping with excitement. ‘’   

We munch on my home-made red salmon and vegetable bake and finger bins from the Belair Bakery.  It is hardly the occasion for wine, as there is sadness at the feeling of loss mixed with anticipation for the new. So we sip apple juice.  And we wait until 2.30pm when the supervisor arrives.

Soon, there is a rumble down the street and the monster of destruction arrives on the back of a huge semi-trailer. The driver begins to manoeuvre the long cabin and loaded trailer – marked “Oversize’’ backwards up the 100-metre driveway.  It becomes stuck as a big gum branch blocks its path and the driver takes an hour trying to turn in the relatively narrow road. Suddenly,  the neighbours are on the street voicing their outrage because the truck’s front wheels have uprooted a shrub and run over ground-covers they have planted on the verge.

We both apologise, but this is a prize native garden and will be in the Open Garden Scheme next year we are told. Our neighbour, Nancy is not amused and her husband takes up her case in heated style. But the truck has now backed up the roadway which dips down into a dry creek bed  before it rises sharply to the house.

The monster of destruction, a huge excavator, looks like something out of War of the Worlds with its army tank-type roller wheels and raised toothy claw (grab).  I figure it is no place for a woman and I leave for the hairdresser leaving the men to get the thing off the back of the trailer.

When I return I am surprised to find the cabin of the truck jack-knifed across the driveway in the creek bed, the front fender jammed up against a tree; its wheels  embedded in dirt on the other side of the driveway.  Something has gone very wrong here.

“The brakes on the fully-loaded trailer failed to hold when the weight of the equipment on the slope lifted up the cabin,’’ explains Andrew, the supervisor.

“It slipped down the hill’’.

I look at my husband and we both simultaneously look down onto  the roof of our immediate neighbours below  and their new landscaped garden which abuts our driveway.

“It could have been a lot worse,’’ I say.

“I was on the trailer and had to jump off,’’ adds the driver.

“He jumped onto the roof of Andrew’s car and then ran alongside the truck to try and get to the cabin,’’ says Olivier.

“He failed, but jumped out of the way as the cabin careered into the tree.’’

The monstrous claw of the equipment had clunked down onto the front of Andrew’s car, damaging the front fender.  Not  only was he horrified by what had happened,  he was shaken from the thought of what might have happened had the trailer overturned to throw its load onto the neighbours’ roof.

Jammed into its jack-knifed position, the crane-like equipment had been offloaded.  The boss arrived and organised  chains and the monster hauled the truck back into alignment.

“I’ve had better days,’’ says husband and we get into our car and drive back to Hindmarsh Island.

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