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Stacks/The Law Firm - Media
Firestorm survivors’ daily lessons in courage
16/01/2010
INSPIRED: Wendy van Buuren, left, with daughter Niki. Both suffered severe burns in the 2003 fires.
After 10 months in hospital, Niki finished her photography course and became a teacher.
Photo: ANDREW SHEARGOLD
Niki van Buuren is tall and stylish, still with that bone-dry sense of humour as well as a new love of teaching and, like most women, an enduring appreciation of a beautiful shoe.
‘‘Oh yeah, I love shoes. I’ve got too many,’’ she said, wearing a recent red-satin pair purchased from eBay.
She loves her job, teaching photography and graphic design at Narrabundah College. She moved out of the family home in Oxley last year. She still rides horses. And she loves her little Toyota Yaris, which gives her freedom to go where she wants.
All pretty unremarkable for the average 27-year-old.
Yet Niki and her mother, Wendy, are exceptional people.
Both were terribly burnt in the January 18 firestorm in 2003. The seventh anniversary of the disaster falls on Monday.
The van Buurens’ courage and tenacity post-fires has been inspiring. They appreciate people’s kindness, their interest in their welfare. But they never wanted to be the face of the firestorm.
‘‘I just want to be me. I don’t want to be associated with it,’’ Niki said.
‘‘You don’t want to be defined by it,’’ Wendy said.
‘‘Absolutely not,’’ her daughter agreed.
On January 18, they prefer to think about their friend who gave birth to twins on that date, rather than the fires.
‘‘We focus on that happy occasion on [an otherwise] really shitty day,’’ Wendy said.
Niki received burns to 66 per cent of her body and lost the tips of all her fingers except her right thumb.
Wendy suffered burns to 35 per cent of her body. They had gone to check on Niki’s horse Drew in the horse paddocks at the Canberra Equestrian Centre, confident after listening to the radio all morning they were safe to go there.
After the fires, Niki was in hospital for 10 months and has undergone more than 30 operations. ‘‘I don’t remember many of them. There’s been more than any normal person should have in their life,’’ she said.
After finishing her photography course at the Canberra Institute of Technology, Niki decided to continue studying to become a teacher, something she had never contemplated until then.
Wendy said given Niki’s injuries and people’s ongoing curiosity in them, she was amazed her daughter chose teaching as a career, because it meant putting herself front and centre of a group of people every day. Niki said, ‘‘It was more stubbornness. I wanted to prove to myself I can do this. It’s still a bit scary when you get in front of the class. One kid came up to me and said he did a school assignment on me when he was in primary school. He said he got an A for it. He was so proud.’’
There’s that sense of humour.
Niki says moving out of home was a big milestone and she’s enjoying it. ‘‘Some things were a bit of a challenge, like vacuuming. I swore at the vacuum cleaner a few times,’’ she said.
Wendy is back working full time in the library at the Australian Defence Force Academy. Like Niki, she is a remarkable woman, warm and ready to laugh.
‘‘It’s acceptance. You accept what you’ve got and you adapt,’’ she said.
‘‘The injuries were a life-changing thing for us and the only way you can deal with them is get on with it. You acknowledge your limitations and work around them because otherwise you would lead a very miserable life.
‘‘I was speaking to a counsellor who told me the ramifications after the fires seem like you’re facing Mt Everest but eventually they get to Mt Taylor size.
‘‘It never goes away but it does diminish in size as you adapt and get on with it.’’
Not that they have forgotten that day. The van Buurens are among plaintiffs seeking damages from the NSW and ACT governments in a trial due to start in the ACT Supreme Court on March 1.
Lawyer Mark Howard, of Stacks/The Law Firm Goulburn, is representing 96 of the plaintiffs and says the lack of community warnings will be central to their argument.
The van Buurens hope the case is settled quickly.
They say the impact of the fires has not only affected them, but also Niki’s younger sister, Danyka, who was hospitalised in 2008 with an eating disorder.
