The very next day I was on a plane, winging my way across the Tasman to Brisbane where my grandparents would be waiting for me.

‘Don’t worry about school,’ the parents told me. ‘We’ll sort it out. Think of this as sick leave.’

Whatever. Too hard to think. I didn’t even know what I thought about being parcelled up and posted to another country for however long it took to cure me of bursting into tears anytime anyone looked at me.

Wretched counsellor. I was fine until she got stuck into me.

I slept. We landed in Brisbane. Somehow I found the strength to get myself off the plane. The temperature in the airbridge was warm. It was late in the evening. The day at home had been colder than this. Warm was nice.

Grandy and Nana Lilith hugged me, collected my bag, stowed me in their car and didn’t bother me with talk. I was grateful. I slept again, only waking up when Nana Lilith put her arm around my shoulders. ‘Come along, sweet girl.’

I unscrambled myself from the car. Even in the darkness I could tell we weren’t anywhere near their Sunshine Coast apartment. ‘What? Where?’

I was looking at a house raised above the ground but not in a scary way. It had big windows and wide verandahs. It looked friendly.

‘We thought you’d feel safer away from tall buildings,’ Grandy said. ‘We’ll stay here in the country for a week and then we’ll decide what to do.’

They tucked me into bed in a room with a ceiling fan. When I woke up the sun was hot.

The grandparents had food plus a heap of tourist brochures spread out on the table. ‘We’ve eaten,’ Nana said. ‘Help yourself.’

I made a sandwich – tomato, cheese, ham and pickle. Then I made another one. ‘This is so good.’ I hadn’t relished my food like this for months. Maybe this holiday – sick leave – wasn’t such a stupid idea after all.

‘Where are we?’ In the middle of nowhere, by the look of it. All I could see was farmland and a few houses in the distance.

‘We’re in the Lockyer Valley.’ Grandy slid a map across the table. ‘See? Here.’ He pointed a pen at a spot, then moved it to a circle labelled Laidley. ‘That’s our nearest town. We’ll go there in a minute to stock up on food.’

I felt myself relaxing as we tootled along country roads into Laidley. I felt safe, this place felt safe.

Even when we got back and I noticed some of the trees near the house had trunks blackened by bush-fires, I didn’t panic. Nana saw me looking at them. ‘I don’t think we need to worry about fires right now.’ She pointed at the sky, where thunderous rainclouds were already drenching the far hills.

The storm reached us not long after. I ran outside onto the lawn, whirling and dancing in the sluicing rain. The grandparents laughed and videoed me. ‘Put that on Facebook and you’re dead!’

So everything was going brilliantly, even when a couple of days later Grandy announced we were going to a lake in search of fauna. I thought about it for half a second. Snakes, scorpions, poisonous spiders – whatever. I’d survived thousands of earthquakes. A bit of wildlife wasn’t going to faze me.

We left early because my grandparents didn’t know how to lie in bed and laze in the mornings, so I was still mostly asleep when we got to the lake.

‘Where’s the fauna?’ I couldn’t see anything flying, running or swimming. ‘It’s too early. All sensible fauna is still tucked up and snoring.’

Grandy pointed at the middle of the lake. ‘How about that?’

‘It’s a swan, Grandy. Swans don’t come under the heading of exotic fauna.’ Actually, it was a pretty weird-looking swan. I glanced at the grandparents. They grinned back at me – the sort of grin that said they knew something I didn’t.

‘What?’ I took another look at the fauna. ‘Hey! That swan’s a pelican!’ I instantly forgave them for the early morning. A pelican! How cool was that!

Nana started walking. ‘I reckon that clump of white birds down the end on the shore are probably pelicans too. Worth a look, anyway.’

It wasn’t the most picturesque walk I’ve ever been on. We had to walk down a muddy track dodging thigh-high weeds but not to worry – we were on a pelican hunt.

‘Yep! Pelicans!’ A whole bunch of them – twenty at least. Every now and then one of them would tip his head back and clack his beak in a huge yawn. Go, pelicans!

We couldn’t get really close because a sludgy stream got in the way, but I didn’t mind. It was just fun standing there watching them do nothing much – until I got to the stage of wishing they’d get active. Time to go. I turned around. The grandparents were halfway back to the car. Between me and them was the wasteland of weeds. Snakes lived in undergrowth like that. Poisonous spiders, scorpions and stonking great lizards. Huh! Wildlife I could handle.

I got back to the grandparents with a huge grin on my face. ‘Fantastic fauna, Grandy. What else have you got?’

‘Coffee in town,’ Nana said. ‘Then we’d better go back and put our muddy clothes in the wash.’

Yeah. We were a bit grubby. Quite grubby, actually, but when we got back to the house there would be running water in the shower and a washing machine that worked.

The coffee, when we found a place that was open, was good and so was my hot chocolate and the croissants with apricot jam. We drank, ate and drove back to our house before the sun was properly out of bed. But that was my grandparents – got to be up and doing. Couldn’t lie in bed half the day, especially not when there was mud to be tramped through and pelicans to be found.

Grandy shoved our grubby gear into the washing machine and set it going. I scrubbed the mud of Australia off my shoes and propped them up on the verandah to dry in the sun. Give me mud over liquefaction sludge any old day of the week.

‘How does the idea of a proper breakfast appeal?’ Nana asked.

‘Eggs? Bacon? Tomatoes?’ Oh yes, that appealed all right.

She laughed and told me to bring the eggs.

I grabbed them out of the fridge and the house started to shake. No! I dropped to the floor, scrabbled my way under the table and cowered, shaking harder than the house could ever do.

Grandy appeared beside me. His arm was warm across my quivering back. ‘Lyla – honey girl, it’s okay. It’s not an earthquake. It’s the washing machine.’

I shook my head. ‘Stay down. Stay under cover. Please, Grandy – don’t die. Don’t let Nana die.’

But all he did was go on about washing machines. The shaking stopped. Nana Lilith’s voice came from somewhere above me. ‘I’ve turned it off, Lyla. It’s okay. Come on out.’

Together they hauled me to my feet. I was so ashamed. ‘Sorry. I’ve never freaked out like that before. Not even for the big ones.’

They sat me down on the sofa. ‘Listen, darling,’ Grandy said, ‘this place is on stilts. It probably shakes in a high wind too.’ He got up. ‘I’ll make you a drink. Lots of sugar in it for shock.’

I hid my head in my hands. ‘I feel so stupid. I’ve never been like this at home.’

Nana put her arm around me. ‘Darling girl – think for a moment. At home you’re always expecting the next quake. It doesn’t surprise you. But here you weren’t expecting the house to start shaking.’

It sounded logical, except that she didn’t know how unpredictable the world could be. She didn’t know how things could change in seconds and then never settle down.

I was so tired. I stood up and walked to the window. I should have brought a tent. I could sleep on the lawn and it wouldn’t matter if the ground went nuts.

There was a kookaburra on the power line and wallabies hopping around under the trees. I wanted to feel excited about seeing them, but I just felt tired.

The grandparents put me to bed and I slept until the heat of the afternoon woke me. I was hungry. That had to be good. I wouldn’t be hungry if I was dying.

Grandy gave me a hug when I tottered from the bedroom. ‘Food for you on the table, Lyla. You want water, tea or fruit juice?’

‘Juice, thanks. Hey, what’s with the packed bags?’ Their cases waited by the door along with a box of groceries. ‘And where’s Nana?’

Grandy pulled out a chair for me. ‘Eat. We’re going back to Brisbane. We’re going to stay in the house of some friends – single-storey. They’re going away, so it’ll just be us. And their dog.’

I started piling stuff into a bread roll. ‘But why? I mean, here’s great.’ But I knew. You couldn’t go around having full-blown meltdowns and expect your grandparents to ignore it.

‘Your nana is organising counselling for you. Can’t do it from here. No internet.’

I dropped my head into my hands. ‘I don’t want to go to counselling. Bloody counselling made Mum and Dad send me over here.’

He came and sat across the table from me. ‘Well, honey, I look at it this way. When I was working, if I got a piece of equipment that had a massive blowout, then a few days later it had another one – I figured I’d better get the whole thing overhauled.’

‘I’m not a machine.’

May as well not have said anything, because he kept on with the gosh-awful analogy. ‘Of course, I always had a choice – fix it or keep on using it till it completely wrecked itself.’

I pushed my plate of untouched lunch away. ‘Grandy, I don’t want to go to counselling. You have to go back into all that stuff. And I don’t want to. It’s too scary.’

I’d never noticed what a kind face my grandfather had. He was an expert at looking kind, sympathetic and determined all at the same time. ‘It’s not so hot being in your head right now, though, is it? And how are you going to live the rest of your life if you can’t go up in a lift or cope with the heap of other things that might trigger the panic?’ He slid the plate back to me. ‘Eat up. Nana will have things organised. She’s got contacts in the counselling world.’

I ate, hoping she wouldn’t be able to get me an appointment before I was due to go home. Waiting lists and all that.