Can you imagine a house simply disappearing? One moment it’s there, the next it folds in on itself, like closing one of those kid’s 3D panorama storybooks, concertina-like, and just disappears into a hitherto unknown abyss. Our house slides into an old gold mine!
Thank God we’re all at the supermarket. We turn into our street and confront a phalanx of emergency vehicles: cops; ambos; fire engines; red and blue flashing lights everywhere – the whole nine yards, as they say in the movies! We park and join the crowd, fifty metres back from the large hole that is replacing our house.
We muscle our way through the police cordon and identify ourselves. “Yep, we’re all here, we’ve been to the shops”, I tell the cops. There is an immediate and discernible shift of tempo, a collective relaxation of shoulders. It might’ve been imaginative, but my “Hang on. Has anyone seen Roger” sees those same shoulders stiffen again. “Our dog!”, I explain.
There is a chopper above. A TV camera is in my face and a reporter is insinuating herself into the conversation. “Do you know about the gold mine”, she asks, but before I can answer, follows up with “Who is Roger?” She is shouldered from the posse of Emergency personnel. I hear another question yelled over their shoulders. “Do you have any idea why?”
The ground burps. There is a tearing screech of tortured metal and then a thunderous crescendo as we see our neighbour’s house do a little shimmy, one side slumps, and then the house completes an ever so graceful slide into ‘our’ hole.
That gets everything moving. The next thirty minutes sees the whole street empty. The neighbours desperately collect a few valuables before we end up in the park at the end of the street!
Turns out Roger took off when things went pear-shaped. We reunite at the motel that night.
I reassure the family that everything will be OK. Probably false bravado, but I believe that this madness will somehow resolve itself. Maybe we will wake up!
We stay in the motel for several months. Bureaucratic prevarications are never-ending. We establish that the City Council knows of the old mine’s location. It also establishes that my work to restump the house has had no impact on subsequent events.
Letters arrived in the post advising that last century, the Council took the legal precaution to absolve itself of any possible repercussions from suburban development over the old diggings. They reassure us that they are here to help. Our legal class action confirms the efficacy of their earlier legal precautions.
Our group successfully challenge the insurer’s suggestion that the collapse is an ‘Act of God’, contesting that God never worked in the mine! They settle with a pittance, enough for us to build a Tiny House.
While the rug is effectively pulled from under us, we are survivors. We move to another town, well away from gold mining activity! We don’t reinsure with anybody. Stuff ‘em!