A friendship ring has given Raelene and Victor Gill a link to the past as they look to a future in their new home at Steels Creek.
By Kath Gannaway
RAELENE Gill can’t explain why she kept a small lump of molten metal … she just felt it was special.
It was.
The lump of what she and husband Victor thought was melted brass from their bathroom taps, turned out to be gold.
Raelene said it was one of a few bits and pieces that Victor found while they were cleaning up after the devastation of their home in Steels Creek on Black Saturday.
The family drove out in three cars and have no doubt they would have died had they stayed. Their daughter Kylie was one of the last to make it out along Steels Creek Road, driving through flames. Raelene and Victor had to head out to Melba Highway along Hunts Lane, and it wasn’t until late on the Saturday night that they were able to make contact again.
When they were able to return, they did what many did, sifted through the rubble for anything they could salvage.
“Victor found his father’s watch, burnt beyond saving, and the small lump of what we thought was brass from the taps near where the bathroom vanity used to be,” she said, looking out across the recovering valley from the windows of their new home.
The nondescript lump of metal sat outside on their only surviving structure, a brick barbecue, for a year after the fire.
“Victor jokingly offered it to the plumber as payment of the plumbing on the house, but he declined,” Raelene said.
After they moved into their new home she took the lump inside and placed it in her dressing table. It sat there for another year before Raelene acted on a nagging feeling that there was more to it than drips from their taps.
“I finally decided to take it to the jewellery shop at Chirnside Park and explained the story to a very nice lady at the shop,” Raelene said.
Sure enough, an examination revealed it was gold, weighing 7.3 grams, enough to make three rings.
“I realised then it must have been my friendship ring and earrings melted together,” Raelene said.
Raelene and Victor had been dating for just three months when he gave her the traditional friendship ring in 1973.
“It has very special meaning,” said Raelene, who just after Christmas picked up the reincarnation of what had initially been, and is again, a symbol of their hopes for the future.
