Over the last few days as I watched the fires in Victoria, memories I’ve tried to block out return vividly. Panicked voices on the two-way radio. Pets locked in the bathroom. Woollen jumpers pulled on in a hurry. Blinking back tears as I packed childhood treasures, joining Mum’s wedding albums in the car. Powerful winds. Smoky air, suffocatingly thick, breathed through a damp towel. And the roar overhead when it finally came, spot fires fluttering down from the sky, an eerie calm descending in its wake.
There’s a roadhouse on Albany Highway, 328km south of Perth. It’s fairly nondescript, the kind of place you’d blink and miss as you drove past. Less than a kilometre inland is Tenterden – a handful of houses, a tennis club, church and a town hall. The day after Boxing Day 2003 was hot, heat like the inside of an oven. Families were home waiting out a harvest ban. I was 15, on school holidays with my sisters. At about 1pm power lines near the highway clashed, igniting crop stubble below. A fire burnt ferociously through the dry paddocks across 15,000 hectares, killing two women on a neighbouring farm and severely burning another man. Our farm was one of the worst affected. We lost 1,300 ha, 3,850 sheep, 90km of fencing, three sheds and an old house. Our house survived but the hardest part was watching Dad. Everything he’d worked for was gone.
It was a surreal and sickening experience. Afterwards I remember sobbing quietly as I drove with Mum and my grandpa, inspecting damage and putting out small fires. Dad was further away volunteering as a firefighter. I didn’t realise, but Mum was unsure he’d return. Later, he told us he drove across paddocks using wire cutters to get through fences. At one point he jumped into a dam as the fire went overhead. Later that night I stood looking at the Stirling Ranges and they were lit up, as if aglow with the lights of a distant city.
The days and weeks that followed saw endless sandwiches and dinners arrive at our house. The front garden was packed with utes and cars. That’s country people for you, they have an innate ability to support those in need. We got through it with family, friends, psychologists and each other, but for years afterwards I struggled to talk about it. I acted out at school. Eventually I went to a psychologist. It’s important to talk about these things. Ultimately it was time that healed the wounds.
I never imagined I’d survive a bushfire. When you see it happening to others you’re so removed from it, the situation seems impossible. The most frightening part about fires is how unpredictable they can be. Have a plan and make a decision early, to stay and defend your house like we did, or go. My parents had mowed the grass, planted deciduous trees around our house, had firefighting units and soaked the garden and wooden fences with sprinklers and hoses. Small things, but it’s ultimately these that saved us.