And when he got over there to find that they weren’t there, it was like, ‘Oh God, where are they?’ What? We couldn’t see where they’d been, where the car had gone. At about, three hours later they arrived here at our place. They looked like cooked prawns.

They um, they drove through the fire and got stuck. They had to reverse out of the fire, a tree fell on their vehicle. They, um, you know, they they almost died that night. And we’re just so glad that they didn’t. And they, but they could have stayed where they were, but because the pump stopped, they just didn’t think they’d be able to manage. It’s a, you know, it’s a horrible, horrible thought to think that your neighbours might have died, you know? They could have, well could have. They just looked so, they were in shock. We were all in shock. We all just stood around, and just stared at each other. It was a awful morning. It was a horrible, horrible occasion.

But, you know, it’s a, it’s a definitely a journey and I’m, to be resilient and try and focus on recoveries, you know it’s it’s it’s hard because, like I said, we didn’t get any support from the government. And we felt pretty crap about it for a while, but then we just, we moved on. There’s no use, you know, worrying about that. It really made me angry because we, we did everything they wanted and they still, you know. What? Didn’t we burn enough? I don’t know. So now we’ve, we’ve actually had to, you know, we have used all of our savings to try and rebuild things and get things back on track. But um a lot of it we just won’t be able to do. It’s just not gonna happen. It’s just the way it is. We won’t be able to afford it.

So, you know, we just work. Then we do what we can. Work again. Spend it, keep improving things. Um, we’ll never be in a situation, we’ve kept our prepping up and we’d never put ourselves in a situation where we would be under threat of fire again because we just, we will keep our prep happening and keep doing it, uh, regardless… what year it is, whether it’s a wet year or a dry year, I still do it. I just keep doing it, um, you know, you just, it’s got to become part of your life because I think the way the world’s going, we’ve got to really try and get back to, to that simple stuff in life and actually it’s, almost comes down to a, your life or death. So, you really have to, to do as much as you can for yourself these days.

So, as the world falls around, you know, down around us, that just, um, I don’t know, we don’t want, we wouldn’t want to see that again. But I really worry about the Araluen Valley this year. Um, it still hasn’t burnt. That Berlang Range between Araluen and Krawarree and the, up to Majors Creek hasn’t burnt since nineteen fifty five. And, um, I think they want to be really careful this year.

When I went outside, I remember walking through the house and I went outside and I thought ‘Holy f**k, trees aren’t supposed to be doing that.’ And I was watching trees bowing and then actually going around in circles. Like, you’re kidding me?! And all I could hear was wind. I couldn’t hear trees falling because that was all just sucked up in the sound of the wind.  

It was, it was really awful. And then the aftermath. 

Interviewer: …from your higher point?

Yeah. So, when we- when it- like, the chatter around then you could hear, and Gordon’s wonderful reports on our local radio, um… We were actually up on top of our hill and we could see the two fire fronts coming very close to each other and then we saw them hit, and it was, it looked just like an atomic cloud, miles up into the sky, it was- yeah, yeah. It was something that you’ll never forget, having seen it. And it’s so, like it’s so difficult to explain to the full intensity of it, because there just aren’t the words.

Yes.

Aren’t those words.

Yes, yes. Yes. And what did you think at that time? Like when you saw that-

It actually felt like the world was going to end. Yep. Um, and because we knew that part of that fire had come across where the defence forces used to explode old ordinance, you started to think ‘Oh, is it something there that they’ve forgotten?’ And it wasn’t until it then came out about- again, over the radio with Gordon, about the two fire fronts meeting, and they gave a particular name to that cloud and-

Yeah, pyrocumulus or something.

Yeah and then you thought ‘Yep, nope, that’s okay.’ It’s it’s-

Yep yep. So it wasn’t a bomb exploding, it was actually-

Actually it was just generated by the two fires themselves.

And I just remember turning the corner, and the bitumen road, and the strike team leader who’d done a great job. He was just standing there pointing us in the direction, cos he’s like, I’ll meet you at the corner of such and such and and then you go up through there, into the gate, and chase, chase it down. So we’ve turned the corner and here he is, standing about from here, that rock away from big flames going, pointing at the trucks, pointing up the road. That’s the way I want you to go. 

Pointing at the trucks, yeah. 

And we look up and all we can see is flames. There is no road [laughter]. The road’s gone. The flames are 20, 25 foot peeling across the top of the road. So they’ve come off embankment on the other side and they’re just wshh like this. And he’s like, I mean, like do you- you what- you want us to dr- And the driver we had, I can’t remember, he was from, Clint, from Mount Egerton, he just put the foot down, just drove straight through it. But- 

Straight through that the wall of flames? 

Straight through the wall of flames. And we’ve- we’ve- so we’re on the back. I’ve got um, I had the branch, and it- and I just as soon as I see- has seen going for it, like, oh we’re on. I’ve just pointed the hose straight towards the flame so I can hit it as soon as I can. So I was hitting it 10 metres in advance. So, so- 

Were- were you directed to do that? 

No. 

You did it yourself. 

Yeah. Well that- well, that’s- and, and they do- that’s what they teach you, you know. 

Yeah. 

You don’t hit- or you do hit the flames off the side of the truck, 

Yep. 

but you want to hit ’em in front of the truck, 

Yep. 

so it takes the heat off the cabin. You know, as you’re going past it. But this was next level sh*t. It was um- yeah. And my- then my initial thought was What? We’re really-? You really want us-? Okay, well that’s what we- that’s what we do.  

Yeah. 

And just managed to sort of knock it to the point where, you know, we all just buried our heads and we burst through the other side. And we ca- and we, you know, it might have been 20 metres or whatever it was, um, we’d come out the other side. And how we didn’t head on with another truck I- was- cos you could not see your hand in front of you. And then we’ve- we’ve come out of the smoke, we see the gate, and then we’re just in and we’re just chasing it. We’re just chasing it around paddocks, back and forward. It was like you put it out here to turn around and start again. Um, but that was, that was probably the… not scary, it’s the most intense. 

Absolutely, absolutely. 

But, um, anyway, we stopped it. We stopped it from jumping the freeway. 

Absolutely. And when, um, when the um, the bomber was um offloading, oh [laughter] I call it the bomber, the plane, the plane was offloading all the um, the pink retardant, on the um transmission towers, on the top of Budawang, I was watching that and I had memories of New York and all sorts of things. You know, sort of triggering.

But I~ yeah, I watched the um the fire crawling over that range and moving from the um seaboard side across into um the valleys on a, on the western side. Hm. Yeah, so I could see all of that happening. It was like a, a wild beast moving backwards and forwards. Like a dragon. You know, with fiery breath. Clambering all around. So yeah, in the end there was fire from many, many different directions. But like I said, didn’t actually come to my place. Thanks to all the people who fought, fought the fires.

Interviewer: You know what’s amazing about the Mongarlowe story? I just find it so moving the way, so my understanding is that the strategy, and you’d know more about this because you were at the meeting, but the strategy essentially was to set up a massive containment line. And to try and hold back the fire as much as possible and steer it around Mongarlowe, which essentially…

You, that- that’s- that’s the plan. And the same thing happened in the Canberra fires. But when you have a fire with fire tornadoes and the fire front spetting, um spotting 60 kilometres ahead of the fire front, a little fire break which is, you know, maybe a couple of road widths wide, is not gonna hold back an inferno like that, for long. But it actually allows uh routes of escape, it allows um, vehicles to work with fire that emerges uh from forest into more open country, so, there were lots of um strategies, but they were being tweaked all the time because a lot of people who’ve been fighting fires all their lives said never in their lifetimes have they fought fires of this severity. Never have they seen, um, you know, a fire truck flipped by wind, created by um, fire, fire convection currents. I mean, you know when you look at that footage from the Community Under Fire, and think about the intensity and ferocity of all of those um natural forces at play… yeah. We’ve- a lot of, lot of lessons were learned. And we’re still learning.

It think it would have been about 4:30, 5 o’clock in the morning and I sort of looked out from the ensuite window and I saw a light and there was a gentleman. He was, all these trees along the Trentham road, well, there was, how can I say it? There was trees everywhere. The whole road, virtually half the road was almost, maybe the whole road was completely blocked with trees. And this gentleman who happened to be picking up his daughter from, from a dance, in Kyneton, was going home. And with all these trees, they fell all around him and he got trapped. He couldn’t move. So I looked out there and I look, I said ‘Oh is it, lights over there.’ So I didn’t take much notice for the first time. But when I got up about an hour or so later, I looked out there again, and the lights were still there. That, and I said that got me a bit curious. So I got dressed, went for a bit of a walk and he, he was sitting in his car for virtually about three or four hours, during the storm, with all these trees all around him. So… 

Were you able to help him? 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we got him out. We- we had to get the chainsaws and cut a few trees out of the way for him, move them out off the road. And a few of the locals had Bobcats and they moved the trees with Bobcats with the big heavy ones.  So he ended up, you know, they both, they both were okay. The car wasn’t damaged. They were just trapped between all these trees that, that fell all around them. So…  

How was he? 

Sorry? 

How was he? 

How was he? 

He’s sitting in the road with these trees falling all around him, feeling a bit trapped! 

 [laughter] Yeah, well, well he, he uh once I think all these trees fell around him, there was no no there were not too many more could have fallen near him.  So, he was quite sober. But uh I did ask him to come inside with him and his daughter to sort of give them a cup of tea or something like that, and, but he, he sort of declined. He just wanted to get home.  So we just sort of quickly got him out and I think even when we got him out of the Trentham Road, I think he was, he had to stop somewhere else other than Little Hampton, cos Little Hampton had a few trees down.  

So he couldn’t have gotten very far.

So I don’t think, I don’t know if he got, how far he would have got that day. 

Well in the morning we went to check on the elderly neighbours next door, with the dogs, just to make sure they were OK. Although I knew there were no trees close to their property and their house is built very well, better than ours. But we went just to see how they were, and the wind was still very, very, very loud. And when we were just leaving their place and I was putting my shoes on the balcony, I think I had my back to the street and our place, and I thought I heard a crack and a thump, but I wasn’t, I wasn’t sure. There was so much noise. There was so much noise. And that was still at 10 or 11 o’clock in the morning. 

And then we came back and a massive tree had come down that we’d just walken under, 20 minutes before. And that scared us cause we could have been under that tree and myself, my partner and our dogs could easily have been squashed. It was very, very close. But to give you an idea how loud it was, I didn’t know if I’d heard it or not. And I didn’t know if the tree had been up or not when we walked around. And I looked at photos on my camera just to confirm, because it was that loud and it was only 20 metres away and it was a massive tree. And it came down, yeah, and I didn’t know if I heard it, [laughter], or when it had happened. So it was quite disorientating. 

When we got the page at about 11AM on the 26th, um, we knew we had our backs to the wall straight away because um the location that was provided um meant that it was going to take a little while to get there. And during that time, it’s, the fire itself if it’s cranking up, it’s not gonna sit around and wait for us to get there. It’s gonna charge on.

So, we had issues of response time where actually to get from station to the location and that was, that was the best part of three quarters of an hour, before we were actually anywhere near getting on site. Um, it’s, in, there’s fire trails to gain access to the area. But when we arrived there, the strike had originally occurred on the western side of um North Black Range Fire Trail. And uh it had already spotted across to the eastern side. So it was, it was already spreading.

We had about half a dozen tankers on site at that time. But the biggest limiting factor that we had was access around the fire. The intensity of the fire at that stage we were already getting flame height five, six metres high. Um the dryness of the fuels was extreme. The quantity of fuel was also extreme. And we had very little water. We only had what we were carrying. We did find one small dam up there which was on the northern edge of the fire at that time. We’d gone through the fire line, and out to the other side, and already it had covered probably about, in that stage, probably about three hectares. It doesn’t sound much, but when you’re in a heavily forested area like that with very little water, you’re virtually against it right from the get go.

Now we did find a small dam there that we could draw some water from. But it was never going to be enough. And once it jumped across onto the eastern side of Black Range Trail, we had an escalating wind from the northwest northwest. And so it was, it was pushing it fairly well eastward. So it was getting well beyond where we could even run hose lines to even try and knock it down. And even if we could knock it down, it was keeping it down.

So, it was already spotting ahead of itself, which meant that yeah it was a futile effort to try and do it with the resource that we had on the ground. We ideally would have been awesome to have ge~ had air support. There was no air support available.

To get machinery in there was always gonna take a while. Access was either through the what’s called the, the Mulloon Fire Trail, which is the road that links from Bombay through to Hoskinstown through Forbes Creek. Or from Forbes Creek side coming in. From the Forbes Creek side, there was a small bridge there which was, which had a weight limit. And so you’re, you couldn’t get anything more than a fire truck across it. Like bulk water carriers, no. Too, too much weight. Couldn’t get across.

So the turnaround time to even leave the fire ground to get water supply in was going to be about an hour turn around for every truck. If that was the case, cos of just where it was, um the remoteness of it. And meanwhile it’s escalating, so from the initial attack which we made, um, which was a, a pretty solid attack with what we had there, it was never going to be enough. We just didn’t, didn’t have a chance.

So we had to withdraw and then effectively from there on we were in a, in a defensive mode very quickly. So, defense meant we had to get machinery in there to try and cut in some fire breaks, to be able to have containment lines where we could actually get onto it to try and contain it. But it just kept pushing and pushing. So I know on the, on day two, well we tried to get dozers there day one. And there was a couple of issues which occurred with getting the machinery in on site, which meant that no machinery actually commenced work until the second day which was, which was the Wednesday.

Wednesday’s operations then consisted of endeavouring to cut in some containment lines, which were restricted by terrain. In other words, it was just too steep to be able to put a line directly around it. Um and there was probably some questions about some certain tactics that could have been implemented, but that was, um, a case where the containment lines were trying to be put in so you could backburn. Tactically backburning to try and contain it within the area that it was in.

I could actually just feel this tremor inside me. I was really… it was scary. I didn’t… I didn’t really like being on my own. But it’s the aftermath of that because I don’t like the wind at all now. If I’ve got an appointment and it’s a really windy day, I cancel the appointment. I say “Oh no, I’m feeling a little bit more comfortable- I need to stay home today.” 

And that’s been two years? 

Yeah. 

Mum and Dad were sort of just doing their thing down the farm and cleaning up and pottering along and, I think you never kind of think it’s gonna happen to you.

So, you know, they were doing all they could. And I ended up going down what was it, a week before I think, just to help get big, help Dad do big stuff. And they were planning to defend, to stay and defend Dad said ‘Oh yeah, we’ll be fine,’ you know, ‘It’ll probably just go past us,’ and all of that. And then the RFS came down, the Araluen guys, and basically just said you need to leave cos it was coming from both angles. We had the Deua River fire and the other one coming down the hill so we were kind of in the middle of the two and just not knowing which direction it would actually hit us from. They said you need to get out. Like you need to pack up and not stay and defend, cos Dad’s knees were gone. Mum’s back was gone. Dad wanted to stay and defend. I went, well, if Dad wants to stay, then I’m gonna have to help him. And then Mum was like, ‘Well, if you’re gonna stay, I’m gonna stay.’ [laughter] So it just turned into this whole thing of do you or don’t you?

And then when the RFS came down and said, ‘Nup, we recommend that you go,’ um, yeah, we kind of had planned to pack everything up on, I think it was Thursday. I think it was a Thursday. Anyway, I can’t remember what day. So we’d planned to, yeah, my brother was gonna come down and, from Canberra, and we were gonna, you know, pack up, get everything out, bring it all up to my house in town and then still go back down and check on the horses and the chickens and stuff and put sprin~ we put sprinklers on the house and all of that, got it all sort of, did what we could, cleaned up around the sheds, put Sisalation all around the house and just did as much as we could possibly do to sort of protect it.

And then yeah, one of the Araluen guys came down at two o’clock in the morning the day before we were sort of gonna casually pack the cars up and get stuff out, and said he could see it over the next valley from our top hill. So one o’clock in the morning or whatever it was I rang my brother, and said we can see it, from the top hill. And so he jumped in the car and raced down and we literally just packed up, got everything we could, packed it all in the car and then Dad and I kept going, we went down morning and afternoon for the two days after and we were down there the morning that it hit as well, and kind of just getting any extra stuff that Mum would give us a little list, and go, ‘Oh, I forgot to get this,’ and ‘I forgot to get that,’ and yeah. And then went down in the morning, put the sprinklers on and it hit that afternoon. So. Yeah, full on. Like it was hard. But I don’t know, I’m~ I’m pretty, pretty positive person. I kind of just go, well, what do you do? Like, it is what it is . And as devastating as it is, it’s happened and there’s not much you can do about it. And Mum’s very posi~ Mum and Dad are positive as well. Mum’s, she got all of her precious stuff out and you know, the, like, Dad didn’t get his drones out and things like that. And he kept talking about that. It’s like, ‘Well, you got out though, Dad’ You know? So that’s the, that’s the main thing. All these things that you’ve gone and bought and, it’s all just stuff, you know? At the end of the day, it’s stuff, and they’re safe. They got their precious things, the family history, all of that kind of stuff that’s irreplaceable, out, and you kind of just, it is what it is.

Mum’s always, Mum always sort of said, you know, ‘We had forty great years down there, in the middle of the bush, with no neighbours, living the dream. And for the last forty years there’s always been that threat of fire could come through and that’s the risk that you take living in the middle of the bush.’ So, you know, it was either gonna happen or it wasn’t, and it did. And, they had forty years. You know, we had a great childhood down there and, learning to drive tractors and, you know, all the fun stuff that you get to do on a farm. So yeah, is what it is. What do you do? It’s done.

Speaker 1:  Well, I think it was a centrepoint for everyone, like all the surrounding- and it not just with Flyers, just in general, you know you’ve got your surrounding districts of Araluen and Majors Creek and Mongarlowe and Nerriga and all of that, but Braidwood is kind of the centrepoint for all of those little mini communities out there. So it was kind of where you could come to find out what was going on and where it was and what was happening. And, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yes, it’s funny because I’m going to talk about after the fires and when we had that afternoon tea thank you, that we couldn’t invite everybody to cause of COVID, but it was so lovely to see everybody feed in from all those places, Mongarlowe, Araluen, Nerriga, they all sent representatives and it was lovely. That was one of the nicest afternoons. It was just seeing everybody just talking about their experiences and it was the first time that we’d got together, ’cause everything had been stopped for COVID. So every time that we tried to do something, it was stopped. So that was the first gathering and it was just such a lovely thing to see all these people come in. Like, it’s probably like old-fashioned days, you know, when these come in from their- with their horse and sulky and they’d come in and they’d all meet and have a cricket match or a dance or something. And everyone just got to talk about their experiences and they had photographs up that had been displayed and everyone had a lovely afternoon. And I thought, isn’t that what it’s all about? We all, you know, we all walk to the beat of the same drum, when it all comes down to it, you know, we’ve got our little communities that feed off the big one, but we’re all part of the big- little ones are part of a bigger one. You know what I mean? It’s-

Interviewer: I love that.

Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it’s- And it used to be like that, like when my grandfather was young and- they used to have cricket matches and there’d be Charleyong and there’d be all these little places, Majors Creek. They all had their own little cricket teams and they’d all go around and you know, and it’s, I think it’s going back that way a little bit.

Speaker 1: And they’d have events in town like the Heritage Festival and things like that that, you know, everyone would come to town for it, for the show…!

Speaker 2: Oh well what about that-

Speaker 1: It’d be a- If you missed that day, you’ve missed the whole day of the year! You’ve missed everything!

Speaker 2: If you missed the Show, you might as well forget the rest of the year! You didn’t see anybody! And it’s been sad ’cause we haven’t had the show now this is the second year, and sad because I was helping sort of a little bit with the heritage thing that was going to happen, it was gonna be amazing. There’s so much work went into that. And we’ve had to can that, which is sad because those were all also thank yous to all the people that contributed to the fires. So hopefully we get to do the one at Nerriga which will obviously be on the 27th. So that might be, I think Phil and Sarah will really be looking forward to that. We’re going to make a point to go because I think we all need to help each other as communities, big or small, as we did through the fires. And that’s what we did. We try…

Speaker 1: And keep that support happening.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And don’t forget about your friends and your neighbours just ’cause they live, you know, out at Nerriga or Krawarree or wherever.

Speaker 1: And you don’t need a disaster to keep that communication happening either.  

Speaker 2: That’s right. That’s exactly right. 

Interviewer: Do you feel like the community’s recovered, more or less, by now?

You’d say in terms of clean up and infrastructure and all that it’s finally stopped. Like, well you know, my block’s still trashed but, um-

Okay

But I think it’s more like, we might have moved on from it, but we’re scarred from it, if that makes sense.

Mmm.

Yeah?

That’s a really profound thing to say. We’ve moved on from it but we’re scarred from it.

Yeah, do you know what-?

That’s so beautiful. Can you explain that in some ways or…?

Well, people still mention it, you know, and it still comes up. And I think it had an impact on people that was, you know, obviously there’s positives about community and everything, but I think people with the negatives and the, the impact it had on them has left something behind that they’ll never, never truly forget or get over.

Yeah.

Um, it’s probably a generational thing. I think people might let it go.

Yeah. So do you think just the fear of what happened or the extent of the damage or the, you know? What-?

I think it gives people a bit of a more of a respect for storm. Like everyone’s got a respect for fire, yeah? But I don’t think they had a true respect for storm.

Probably because they’d never seen anything like that, before.

No, no, and you, you know, you get a fire warning that’s, that’s pretty clear to say, you know, extreme, moderate danger, catastrophic. And you go, okay, we’ve got X amount of winds, we’ve got X amount of temperatures. You can actually get some sort of a, you’ve, you’ve got a feel for a sense of-

What’s coming.

What’s coming. Whereas when a storm warnings comes out, turns around and says highwind warnings are going to impact this area and, you know, they’re not localised.

No.

Like even now to read the weather, you know, you read the weather and it says it’s going to be 16 in Trentham and it says, um, wind and- er, snow above the- on the ranges and stuff. And they’re talking about, you know, Mount Buller, and, you know, it’s not, it’s not localised. But I think the warning system’s probably, you know, part, it’s part of that, but it’s also part of people goin’, ‘Oh yeah, nah, oh yeah, it’s a storm.’ But, you know. Some people think twice about getting on the roads now when, when it’s a storm like the way it was, because they know how dangerous it is.