Home, Sweet Home Again For Cassie
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday May 16, 1990
It was the haunting melody of a musical greeting card that almost pushed Cassie Kilby over the edge.
On Sunday, March 18, as the hailstorm was sweeping towards Sydney from the south-west, Mrs Kilby, 70, was relaxing with her daughter-in-law at the Lidcombe Catholic Club.
"When the storm hit, the water came flooding into the club," Mrs Kilby recalled. "I thought my home would be right."
It was not until she was heading back to her home of 40 years in George Street, Lidcombe, through the storm-ravaged streets of her neighbourhood, that she began to appreciate the extent of the devastation.
Almost every house in the street had suffered serious damage. The hailstones had destroyed her roof and had smashed her windows. She was numbed by what she saw.
"It was the following Tuesday before I began feeling anything," she said.
To add insult to injury, there, in the rain-soaked debris cluttering the lounge room floor, was a musical greeting card she had been planning to send to her niece.
"It was playing Home, Sweet Home," said Mrs Kilby. "The hide of it - I nearly tore it up."
The card, battered by the storm, continued playing, week after week. It played while the State Emergency Services workers covered her roof in tarpaulins and it played when rain storms sent more water pouring into her home.
Mrs Kilby hid the card in a drawer so she could sleep at night, but for some reason, she could not bring herself to throw it out. It played on while she spent days vainly searching the telephone directory looking for tradesmen who could repair her home.
"That was the worst part it - waiting for tradesmen," she said.
However, the waiting is nearing an end. Last week, more than seven weeks after the storm, the tilers finally arrived and replaced her roof.
Yesterday, as she was waiting for her garage roof to be repaired, that card was still playing its tune.
"I couldn't part with the card now," she said, promising that she would keep it as a memento of the 1990 hailstorm.
Mrs Kilby said she could not complain. "Everyone has been wonderful. The NRMA has been wonderful, my relatives have been wonderful and now I have a new roof which is worth more than my house."
And she still has the greeting card to remind her of Home, Sweet Home.
© 1990 Sydney Morning Herald