The Arsonist_A Mind on Fire by Chloe Hooper

Author:Chloe Hooper [Hooper, Chloe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780670078189
Goodreads: 40852949
Publisher: Viking Australia
Published: 2018-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Louise and Kazimir Sokaluk had moved to the Latrobe Valley early in the 1970s, hoping for a better future for their children. The government-owned coal industry looked like it would provide the security to raise their toddler, Brendan, and Jamie, his younger brother. Kaz found a job at the Hazelwood Power Station as a trimmer. It was dirty work, using shovels or rakes to keep the coal level on the conveyer belts, and cleaning up spills off the belt or dredger. But Kaz had known hardship. He’d immigrated from Poland as a small child, his family postwar refugees who settled near Lou’s home town north of Melbourne. The pay at Hazelwood was good enough for them to buy their own house, at a rate subsidised by the State Electricity Commission.

In those days, Churchill had a population of 2500. People were moving in from the nearby town of Yallourn, which was being razed for the coal underneath. In Yallourn, in winter, a fog full of coal dust would lift at 11 am then descend again a few hours later. In summer, you couldn’t take your baby out in the pram for some sun: the brown particles fell on everything outside, and settled inside on food and furniture.

In Churchill, though, the air was clean and the neighbourhood was full of other young families with small children. You didn’t have to lock your doors. Kids played outside and only returned when the streetlights came on.

The Sokaluks had a third son. Money was tight, but it was the same for everyone. Around the street, those with television sets would move them to their front window and their neighbours would join them in the garden to watch programs together. Local women steadfastly baked and fundraised for a swimming pool, but, lore had it, their money went to the production of the Big Cigar. So instead, people took their kids swimming in the power station’s pondage, a 520-hectare, man-made lake filled with coolant water. Waste heat kept the pondage at a bath-like forty degrees.

By the time Brendan reached kindergarten age, his mother knew that he was different to other kids. He started school with limited speech and was unable to control his bowels. Doctors suspected he was brain-damaged after a long and difficult labour. Lou, who was then working full-time in a Morwell factory making electrical equipment, took her son regularly to speech therapy. She wondered if it helped. At school, unable to easily communicate, Brendan found it hard to learn to read or write. Other children scorned the boy. He grew to prefer his own company.

His mother tried to find ways to include him in the town’s life. She took him to soccer lessons, where before long he was surrounded by other children who were all kicking him. No adult intervened. It was as though no one knew what do and so, in their awkwardness, did nothing. Lou took Brendan back home, but with limited activities available for kids in the town, they returned the next week.

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