A fire front is not just the line between the burning and the unburnt, it can carry over kilometres. Photo: AAP
I can still feel the anxiety and the trepidation of the unknown, of the approaching what if? It was a few years back when we were still living on 10 acres in the Macedon Ranges. There had been fires ringing the edges of the region. The wind had been kind to us up to that point, but as is the physics of that good fortune, one’s good fortune with the breeze is another’s misfortune and possible misery.
I had gone to the top of our hill to see if the naked eye could give me a better steer, a first-person account of potential danger. At the top, the horizon to the north was glowing red, right across my peripheral vision. It was in the direction of Trentham. The glow of the fires was like a red low curtain, hanging down over the countryside. From my position, a few kilometres away as the crow flies, it was like the night was being forced back up into the sky.
I knew this vision was being fuelled by a rage on the ground of burning; grass, litter, trees, all turning to flame then ash. I returned home. There was no advice for us to leave, we were safe, for now. The next morning I got up early to have a look at the outside world. Nothing had changed for us, but this. The lawn was strewn with dead embers. Luckily, in their travels from the fires the air had killed them off, and thus ignition wasn’t going to happen when landed. Still, a dread arose in me, for not having come close to fires before, this was a wake-up call.
I realised the fire front is not just the line between the burning and the unburnt, it can carry over kilometres, at a whim deigning one area to be safe and another a site for destruction. You see and hear of this all the time, how one property among a dozen might escape the inferno.
A week ago in the afternoon I received this text on my mobile: Bushfire Emergency Warning from FFM Vic. People in Bullengarook, Bullengarook, Bullengarook East, Gisborne, Lerderberg, Macedon should LEAVE IMMEDIATELY. There is a bushfire in Coffeys Rd, Bullengarook. Emergency services may not be able to help you if you decide to stay.
PLEASE HELP US CONTINUE TO THRIVE BY BECOMING AN OFFICIAL FOOTYOLOGY PATRON. JUST CLICK THIS LINK.
I had known there was a fire just a few kilometres away, but didn’t know the seriousness of it until this text. The advice to leave immediately was a shock. There was only a slight hint of smoke, and the smoke while changing the sun’s halo a slight orange was not obliterating the sky, and turning day into night. The advice was downgraded a bit later, and with the wind change the fire was now blowing away from us. We stayed.
The wind was both saviour and evil spirit in its caprice. The flames were heading north, which was pretty much what happened on Black Saturday in 2009. For every town and hamlet saved by the wind, another was lost. The consequence of this is utter devastation and the loss of life, sometimes many lives.
I can’t pretend to know the utter fear of a fire raging up the paddock to your home, of being trapped in a firestorm, of being lost in the darkness of thick smoke. And of surviving and returning to your home reduced to ash, possibly your pets and/or livestock gone, the life and memories gone up, literally, in smoke. The bleak prospect of having to start over from nothing. I do know the feeling of the knotted gut and the weight of deciding whether to stay or leave. Nature can threaten to turn your world upside down without a thought towards you.
I do recall as if yesterday being home that Saturday, and patrolling our 10 acres, hearing the crunch of lifeless grass underfoot, as the hellish winds sucked the life out of the land, looking for anything that could cause a spark to strike – can a shard of glass act as a spark inducer if the sun hits it at such an angle – and from then explode into a fire? I had placed our petrol cans in the – laughably – coolest part of the shed. We had two pine plantations, one each side of the house, possibly planted as wind breaks by the original owners, which in these conditions would have acted as if boxes of matches. They would have exploded. It was a constant fear, watching them bend in the wind, hearing a snap here and there. Hoping nothing could spark them. Buckets of water around the house seemed a futile gesture, but still we did it.
In the end, the fires moved away from us, and the fear subsided. It was then I prayed for those caught in the fire’s killing path, and for those who were fighting them, and I prayed for rain. And I started to breathe.
