For all its beauty and benefits Australia can present some serious challenges for those who live here.  This big brown land is vulnerable to years-long drought followed by devastating floods, throw in the odd cyclone, then go back to interminable drought.  And then lay over the top of this the worst four letter F word of all time – fire.  Australia does fires better – or worse – than anywhere else on earth and this summer huge swathes of the country have been decimated by its relentless and unforgiving destruction.  And we should know because amongst many hundreds of thousands of other Australians we’ve become a victim of fire this summer.

The summer fire season is getting longer each year and this one started back in September as fires spread across multiple states, including in the national parks just to the west of Sydney. The fires were usually started by lightning strikes which found ample fuel in dead foliage, leaves, grass, trees and bushes that had gone brown and lifeless due to the prolonged drought.  We started hearing about over 200 fires in NSW alone, most out of control, many burning property and homes as they swept through rural communities.  And Sydney, a city of five million people, now had a ring of fires all around it.

By mid-December we knew our beloved property in the Wolgan Valley on the western side of the Blue Mountains was in danger.  They closed the valley to everyone except residents, such was the imminent threat of fire and the road being the only way in and out of the valley.  I went to the property on 17 December and saw the destruction already wrought – fires had swept through the gap that connects the valley to the outside world, the land and trees all blackened.  I cut down trees that were near our shed and partly-built home (which did not have any insurance because it was not at lock-up stage yet) and ran the slasher on our tractor over all the nearby dead grasses.  I wanted to minimise as much fuel as possible for an approaching fire. 

On Thursday the 19^th I returned alone for another day trip, again to check on the place and take further precautions to protect our property. I worked all day to clear the land and make the place as fire-proof as possible but the fire was approaching on the escarpment to the west and from the north.  There was more work to be done before the fire arrived and I used a neighbour’s Wi-Fi to call Julie and tell her I was safe but I was planning to stay another night to further shore up our defences. 

 

 

That evening around 8pm the fire crossed a neighbour’s property to our north and began its relentless sweep across our 200 acres.  I drove out to the site and stood in horror as our beloved property burned, there wasn’t a thing I could do.  The dead grass burned quietly but a fallen log or a cluster of trees would light up the early evening darkness and made for an eerie and somewhat scary scene.  I shed my first tear.

Here’s a video I took of that first encounter… 

First encounter with fire

That night I woke every hour to check on the progress of the fire, conscious it was slowly moving towards our house.  The smoke was thick and the noise from the fire – who knew fire was so frighteningly loud – was like a crashing train as it raced up the thickly wooded escarpment walls.  It was an awesome, if not totally destructive and intimidating, display of an unstoppable force.

The next morning was cool and calm, thick smoke hanging over the valley, the fire slowly burning through the leaves and ground cover on the ridge in front of our house.  I devised a plan to use the fire trails on our property as natural fire breaks, clearing ground cover around them, hoping that the fire would die when it ran out of fuel.  I had already loaded our 200 litre water tank that we use for spraying blackberries onto the back of our ute and filled it with water from the dam.  My last line of defence would be this water and I knew I wouldn’t have time to fill the tank a second time.

But I was naïve.  The fire toyed with me for a short while, resting up against my fire breaks, waiting for the wind to change which it inevitably did, and then easily jumping the containment line, embers flying over my head and landing on the other side to continue its onward journey.  Two hours of back-breaking hard work in searing heat with my metal rake was all for nought. 

Here’s a short video of the fire after it jumped my containment lines.

The misbehaving fire

I retreated to the open paddock in front of our house as the fire made its way up the grassy slope.  I drove the ute along the fire line, jumped out and grabbed the sprayer to put out the fire in long sections.  Then I would jump back in, drive along the line again, jump out and spray another section.  I thought I was winning until I looked around and saw another wind change had started the fire up again and move closer to our house.  Within seconds the fire was getting too close – the ute and I hurried off to safer ground.  Another battle lost.

Here’s a video of me prematurely celebrating stopping the fire.

As it happened, on the previous Wednesday the National Parks fire service drove a bulldozer twice around our house, shed and dunny, creating a five metre wide containment line that proved to be too much for this surging grass fire.  And so with my supervision and occasional assistance the fire finally died a natural death at the wide containment line just short of our house. 

Out of food and past my self-imposed deadline to leave the property and return home, I spent the afternoon holding the fire at the tree line on our western side.  As the wind died and the smoke settled I joined my neighbour Justin – we had been checking on each other all day as we each defended our homes with minimal equipment – for a beer on his veranda and a quick call to Julie.  Yes, I was okay but I needed food and help.  She and Zach agreed to come up the next morning to help out.  The fight was not over yet as we still had our southern – and most vulnerable – side exposed to the relentless fire. 

All through the night I listened to the frightening sounds of fire nearby, the crashing trees, the crackling heat, the relentless sound of burning undergrowth.  There’s nothing like sitting up in bed and seeing flames less than 100 metres away to keep you awake.  By morning my escape path was still clear and by 6 AM my rake and I were back on the fire-line, waiting for reinforcements and planning my next flailing efforts at stopping the fire. 

When Julie and Zach arrived shortly thereafter, complete with heart-felt hugs and much needed nourishment, they told me the plan had changed and they wanted all of us to leave the property.  The temperature and wind were expected to rise dramatically that day, we were surrounded by fire, we had inadequate equipment and had done everything possible already to protect our home.  After we cleared a few more trees and took further steps to safeguard our house and shed we reluctantly left the property and hoped that the fire gods would be kind to us.  We deserved it.

Two days later, on 23 December, Julie, Will and I returned to our property, fingers crossed that our house and shed would still be there.  And thankfully it was, the fire having jumped the wide containment line but finding very little to burn near the house it died just a metre from the back of our shed.  Our dunny (drop toilet) was completely surrounded by fire which even crawled under the walls and burned some of the wood pieces inside.  Luckily the sacred throne was saved, as if by divine intervention, and we live to sit again.

Since this day Julie and I have been in mourning for our beautiful property, black and cindered that it is, lost of all its green, its bush and small trees, larger trees blackened or fallen where they were incinerated, untold animals perished, birds gone.  We know, as everyone reminds us, that the Aussie bush will regrow, and we look forward to watching that happen.  But the loss of towering trees, some of them hundreds of years old, the forest of black stocks, fences burned, gates fallen without their posts, green gullies charred, a black carpet of ash covering the ground, it’s all been overwhelming. 

And yet, we are relieved and grateful the outcome wasn’t worse.  Our structures are safe and we are safe.  We know that thousands of Australians up and down the coast are in much much worse situation than us, many of them having lost everything.  We can not fathom the pain they are suffering.    And the loss of life seems to grow every day.

The work at repairing our land has already begun.  Will and I spent an afternoon putting out the fire buried deep underground in our log bridge, thankfully that critical structure seems to have been saved.  We have cleared probably a hundred or more trees that have fallen – and continue to fall – across our roads, we have counted the damage to our fences and gates. 

We have roamed our paddocks, our bush and our forests to take a measure of the beautiful destruction of the fire.  And we look forward to completing the construction of our house, turning it into a home so that we can move in, at least part-time, and watch our land regenerate, regrow and repopulate with all the familiar animals and birds that we love so much. 

Some bird life has already returned, there is a friendly mob of kangaroos that join us twice a day around our house because it is a rare patch of unburned land and we’ve even seen a few wombats that must have burrowed deep and survived the flames.  Life goes on and we’re looking forward to it.