Refocusing on the present, he says, ‘I’ll come back for the horses and goats. Let’s just get the hell out of here before it’s too late.’ We continue down the side lawn—it seems like a very long walk. Meg stays with us, bent old legs pumping: no way is she going to be left behind. We reach the post-and-rail front fence, which is still on fire. Sean kicks out a section with one swift boot, and it crumbles: we are on Deviation Road. Keeping clear of the huge fallen tree, we make it to the other side and onto the grass verge on John’s front boundary. We can’t get to a gate and John’s steel fence is the next obstacle. If we can get over that, we’ll then have to skirt the pine trees behind their house, which are now ablaze.
Sean reaches through the mesh and starts trying to wrench the fence open with his bare hands—rigid steel mesh, stapled with heavy-duty connectors. But he does it! I’m dumbstruck and wonder where he’s dredged up that strength from. I get through the opening; he carries Meg and puts her down on the other side. I look back over my shoulder to see our house fully alight. From this perspective, it’s starting to throw out an intense glow. ‘It’s gone. Just don’t look. It’s gone,’ he says dejectedly. I feel like our world has gone mad.
We walk down the blackened grass of John’s paddock and head towards the house. I spot John near the concrete water tank at one end of the house, madly hosing and whistling as hard as he can. ‘He’s stressing about you still being across the road,’ Sean says. Running towards me across the paddock now is Brad. He’s dropped what he is doing and is racing flat-out towards me. ‘Aunty! Aunty!’ he yells over the wind, and crushes me in a bear hug, just about lifting me off the ground. ‘I thought you were a goner.’ He is shaking from head to foot, in shock. ‘Not me, buddy, but the house certainly is,’ I tell him. ‘I’ve never been so glad to see somebody in my life,’ he declares.
John looks up, waves nonchalantly and keeps on hosing and whistling, the generator at full crank—it is the only thing keeping the water pumps going. The pine trees are glowing and swirling in the wind, Julie’s prized garden is smoking and wilting, the stand of bush further down the property is flaring and candling. The thick smoke obscures everything else.
We put Meg into the laundry with Jazz and Harley, and fall through the French doors into the family room. Brad and Mike stay outside with John, tackling the flames. Carissa bolts off the couch when we come in and can’t decide who to hug first. ‘You’ve been gone so long,’ she says. Her words tumble out: ‘I’m so scared. I didn’t drop Jazz on the way over. The others wouldn’t follow me. I thought I was going to die on the road, so I just had to keep running. I could feel the fire on my back. It was burning my hair.’ We just keep hugging and reassure her that we’re all going to be fine.
Julie and Sarah are bustling from room to room, checking under doors. On patrol. Now is not the time for a full debrief. ‘Hi Jane,’ Julie says, before beetling back up the hallway. I let rip a nervous laugh—it’s as if I’ve just ducked over for a coffee, she’s so calm and collected. But I need to take a breather, unscramble my thoughts, find out where Tania is. Carissa tells me she’s still in Arthurs Creek. Thank God for that. ‘I was on the phone to Mum while the fire was outside,’ Carissa says. ‘Everything was glowing really red. I told her you were still across the road and that Sean had gone to get you. She just kept yelling at me, “Where are they? Where are they?”’ I try Tania’s mobile number and can’t connect, but I send a text message anyway in the hope it will reach her. I have no idea of the time: the smoke is blocking out what little light there is left. Sean has gone outside again and I assume he’s with John, continuing to damp down the burning garden. The pine trees are a huge worry.
Julie and I swing into practical mode. The local maps are still spread out on the dining table. From the information we already have, we try to determine where the fire front might have gone and how much territory is still under siege. Julie puts her hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s terrible. Your house is gone,’ she says.
It’s starting to get dark and the searing heat is bit by bit reversing into a weather pattern that at least feels comfortable. ‘That southerly change didn’t cool down the fire or drop its speed at all,’ I say.
‘You’ve always said that if anything came up from the south, through the national park, we’d be in for it,’ Julie says. But now she’s worried that another front might whip back on us from a different direction. We’ve given up listening to the battery radio for now. No point: we’re still in the middle of a hellfire, with nowhere to go. Quite rationally we discuss the fact that we are going to be here for some time, and we start to sort out food and water supplies. It’s a natural instinct for both of us to plot out the catering requirements, keep our group of people calm and, of course, as safe as possible. I’d kill for a cup of tea, but instead we are drinking litres of water. There’s no power for cooking, but there’s plenty of tinned food and the thawing freezer offers up loaves of bread. ‘At least the dogs are going to be well fed,’ Julie says. We are prepared for a long, long night.
‘There are trees down all along the road,’ I tell Julie. ‘Sean said on the way over that the Smiths’ house has already gone, but he couldn’t see as far as Number 1. We’re pretty much trapped here.’ Power lines are swinging in the wind. Julie and I flop on the lawn in front of the house again and examine the state of affairs. Food is sorted; water is sorted; people can sit down and rest, regroup. The situation of our neighbours is unknown: the Chandlers managed to call Julie to say they’re alive but ringed by fire and fighting it. Our mobiles are ranging in and out of network coverage. We check intermittently but desperately try to conserve battery power. What lies ahead can’t be fathomed.
It suddenly occurs to me to ask, ‘Where’s Bertie?’ John and Julie’s much-loved black cat and our three dogs probably aren’t a good combination. Sure enough, Bertie’s retreated under a bed. But at least he’s been accounted for—he’s part of the tribe too.
Julie tells me how Carissa was the first to get here from Number 59, collapsing through the door. Terrified, breathless, still clutching little Jazz, she told John and Julie how she’d got to their gate and kept screaming at the others to follow her. She asked John if we were all going to die, and he told her she wasn’t going to die as long as he kept whistling. ‘At the gate she looked back over her shoulder,’ continues Julie, ‘and saw Sarah knocked right off her feet by the blast of the fireball.’ Scrambling to get Sarah up, the others had momentarily panicked and dived under the pine trees. Carissa had to make the decision to keep going before she collapsed. It was a split second later that Sean ran into the others on his way across the road and led them to safety through the back door of John and Julie’s house. The garden was on fire and Harley disappeared in the smoke, doubling back to the house. ‘Brad, Sarah and Mike only made it to the house by seconds,’ Julie tells me.
According to Julie, Harley reappeared soon afterwards and ran straight to the whistling, hosing John. Sean had little choice but to get the group indoors and return outside to fight the flames with John while the firestorm played out its vicious dance. They received some protection from the clay bank at the back of the house, and the large concrete tank. Once the worst of the front had passed, Sean began his repeated attempts to get back across the road to find me, John hosing him down from head to foot beforehand.
‘I didn’t have time to notice what was happening outside,’ Julie says. ‘All I could do was concentrate on getting everything blocked up inside.’
‘Just as well, probably. You really didn’t want to see what was going on out there,’ I reply.
The enormity of what we are in the middle of is like a dream. We have all gathered outside, not sure where best to escape the smoke and confusion. John and Sean are still on constant alert outside, wetting down everything they can. There is no concept of anything beyond our immediate environment and the rest of the road. Julie is stressing about our other neighbours. Next door, the Cahill family are all there—the parents, two adu
lt sons, and an adult daughter, her partner and one-year-old baby boy. Julie spoke to them earlier, before the flames hit, and suggested mother and baby come across the road just in case anything got out of hand. It’s well and truly out of hand now.
Miraculously, Julie’s landline is still working. Neighbours are trying the 000 emergency number constantly, but can’t connect. Julie’s ringing around to see who might need help. We can’t leave, as there’s no way off the property, but people might be able to join us in this safer haven if they can get through or across the paddocks. The bush surrounding the Chandlers is burning fiercely; they only have one way out and it’s blocked by fire. Nobody answers their phone and we figure they’ll be outside putting up the good fight—we convince ourselves that’s the case. I’m worried about our next-door neighbours, the Smiths, and the tenants at Number 1. The Smiths have always vowed to leave in the event of a fire, because of Dionne’s chronic asthma and their concern for their children’s safety.
Our tenants, a family with three teenage girls, who moved from the city because they wanted more space for their beloved pets, might have stayed because of the air-conditioning we’d put in the house. I’ve spoken to them about fire planning, but feel anxious about how they’d have handled this sudden onslaught if they were home. They probably wouldn’t have known what to do. I’ve assumed the Smiths have gone, and our tenants understood that they shouldn’t stay under such circumstances, but I should have followed through. I realise that’s a big flaw in our fire plan. It would have made sense to ask our immediate neighbours whether they were planning to stay or go on a 46°C day of howling northerlies. At least that way we’d know who to look for and who was safely away. ‘I’ll write that into my revised plan,’ Julie says, and I determine to do the same.
Right now, though, the reality is that we are sitting on a semicircle of lawn completely surrounded by fire. A ringside seat in the middle of an inferno, watching the distant glow of our burning house and hoping to God that four other families are okay. That hope is severely dented as we suddenly glimpse, through the smoke and dusk, headlights coming down the Cahills’ drive. ‘Please tell me they aren’t trying to get out,’ I say to no one in particular.
‘God, they won’t see the trees on the road. There’s zero visibility out there,’ says Sean, in horror. ‘The big ash that’s down—they’ll run straight into it,’ he adds.
There’s no way the Cahills can see us, no way to warn them. It’s like watching a horror movie as we see the car run up a bank at the end of the drive, headlights pointing skywards. But then it reverses back down and heads back to the house. We all slump with relief.
The incident leaves us feeling shattered and stunned. Nobody is saying much. Nobody is really processing much—it’s a case of just dealing with one issue at a time. We have no idea how long this fire is going to continue, how widespread it is and what degree of danger we are still facing. We take it moment by moment.
Sean and John continue to run the generators outside; our ability to keep the property safe depends on them. Sean has already been back across the road once to find the horses and goats, and decides to head there again. ‘They’re alive,’ he says. ‘I saw them in the paddock near Number 1. I’ll try and get them into the vegetable garden area, as it’s still okay. They were too spooked to come near it before.’ Julie and I start a practical list of things do. Energy, we all need some energy. We rustle up bread and jam, but nobody can eat—except for the three dogs, who are happy to scoff whatever’s offered. Harley is coughing badly. It’s a dry, hacking cough that is making him retch, and he gulps water constantly; he’s caught a lot of smoke. He’s also limping a bit. I check his paws, but can’t see anything on the black fur and foot pads. He’s just up for a big lick, cuddle and tail-wag. All the dogs are drinking water continuously. Julie resorts to handing around a large bowl of almonds. ‘They’ll give us some energy,’ she says.
The New Zealand contingent assess what they have left behind. Sarah had the foresight to grab her backpack containing her and Brad’s wallets, passports and airline tickets, but Mike is left without any documentation. They are still in shorts, sandals and T-shirts. Sean reappears from Number 59. The horses and goats are still upright, he tells us, but he thought they’d take fright if he tried to move them and that would be too dangerous, so he left them to it for the time being.
There is nothing we can do except wait, and keep patrolling and fighting whatever’s still burning or catching fire. The emergency services are going to have to cut their way in. We know our environment: the mountain must be sealed off from the outside world, with no easy roads in or out. We turn the battery radio back on and hear that there are reports of Kinglake being under fire attack. ‘What the hell?’ Sean says. ‘They’ve just found out? There was no mention of us before we got hit.’ Well, at least they now know we’re in big trouble, I think.
The darkness has come down like a blind. The atmosphere around us is eerie, the orange light from Number 59 still illuminating part of the road. ‘Those blue flames we can see are probably my DVD collection,’ Sean says somewhat cynically. The wind has died down a bit and now we can hear regular faint explosions in the distance. ‘Gas bottles going up,’ Sean says. The smoky air is still giving our eyes and lungs hell. We drag some spare mattresses onto the lawn so everyone can lie down. We can’t tell whether night has fallen or if we are still operating in a dark haze from the fire. The light is unnatural; the world looks unrecognisable.
It’s strange, the sudden contrast between the deafening roar of the fire front and the sounds of its aftermath—now there is just a continuing crackle rather than incendiary blasts. All normal human-related activity has disappeared: there are no cars, no lights, only lines of fence-posts glowing in the dark, trees popping and spitting with flames. There is a wider, ominous gleam overhead, which lets us see beyond our property up to the Whittlesea– Kinglake Road. Houses are burning there.
‘It just keeps going,’ I say to the others. ‘Things are still catching fire.’ The monster remains hungry.
We put Carissa to bed inside. Numb and traumatised, she just wants it all to go away; hopefully she’s exhausted enough to sleep for a while. She lies down, but keeps her clothes and boots on. The rest of us stay on the lawn, taking turns to patrol the most threatening fire spots. The explosions are becoming more audible now, some close, some distant. Gas cylinders, cars, fuel containers—one bang after another, echoing and competing.
We matter-of-factly discuss what might be causing particular sounds. Trees are snapping and falling as the flames undermine them, some hitting the bitumen with a thud and others crashing in the bush. There’s a crazy move to count the number of trees falling in John and Julie’s stand of bush or landing on our road. There’s another sound too, that of buildings imploding—a hollow thump as a roof collapses and takes walls with it, then a muffled crash as the structure hits the ground. We’ve very quickly learnt to tell the difference between the noises of this night.
Suddenly there is a louder than usual explosion from the direction of the main road. A cloud of thick black smoke, with a menacing bright glimmer to it, spirals up and illuminates everything. ‘Bloody hell. That’s diesel and tyres,’ John says. ‘They’ll keep burning for ages.’ There are constant secondary explosions: drums of fuel being hurled, hissing and blowing out as the heat expands the gases to bursting point. I start to worry about the toxic smells. What are we all breathing in? Arsenic from treated pine, fuel and rubber, polystyrene, melted plastic and God knows what else that we are told lurks in buildings and can kill you. None of it smells or tastes good, that’s for sure. Our eyes are dry and painful. Sean is starting to cough and wheeze, and there’s nothing here for his asthma.
We go back to the interminable patrolling and waiting. Sean asks Brad to go back with him across the road for another attempt to confine the horses so they don’t run through the damaged fences and onto the road. He doesn’t feel confident about doing it, so I go with Sea
n instead. We leave John on fire patrol, still whistling, and head over to Number 59, already adept at skirting burning debris. The hole left by the uprooted mountain ash at the front gate is spewing sparks and smoke like a mini volcano. I don’t really look at the smouldering house. The water tank near the kitchen is still burning, outlined against the dark. We pick our way through to the vegetable garden. Sean does that adrenaline thing again, ripping the wire clothesline apart with his hands. He’s looking for something to make a temporary enclosure for the green oasis. Sheds and trees are still burning just across the fence on the neighbouring property—we’re going to have to patrol here throughout the night to keep the horses safe.
Sean goes into the dark paddock to find them; there’s still enough fire glow for reasonable visibility. Suddenly they loom up in front of me as he herds them in—our Clydesdale Eliza and Ricky, the black thoroughbred we adopted after he’d been found abandoned. They’re snorting and still agitated. Eliza’s white leg ‘feathers’, a distinctive Clydesdale feature, have been burnt off and she looks a little bald in that department; Ricky’s mane and tail are singed and he’s coughing. They come for a pat and are happy to be on unburnt grass. They appear to be walking okay.
Eliza doesn’t let the opportunity pass her by and heads straight for the cos lettuces in the vegie beds. The fact that they’re still there is miraculous. We laugh—she’s contentedly having a salad in the middle of a nightmare, her munching audible. She jumps at another explosion, but quickly returns to the succulent greens. Under normal circumstances it would be cause for immense horse-and-goat rage if any of them got loose in the vegie patch, but right now there’s little point in getting stressed about it.
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