Four Fires

by Bryce Courtenay

  The rural bushfire brigade has two tankers. Ford and Chevrolet ex-army ‘Blitz’ trucks equipped with four-hundred-gallon tanks and fitted with Grazcos Mk 25 pumps. The only problem with the trucks is that they are ancient, ex-army and petrol-driven so in bushfire conditions suffer severely when the petrol turns to vapour in the fuel lines and stalls the engines.

  I reckon this was one of the main reasons John Crowe got to be our fire captain this year. He can get the trucks going again quicker than most of us. He’ll use one of the fire hoses to cool down the fuel line and engine manifold and then tinker a bit and away she’d go again. It was always dicey and you don’t want a fire truck that you can’t trust, but what can you do? The government doesn’t spend enough on bushfire prevention and we just have to do the best we can in the volunteer brigade. The urban brigade that looked after the town had these smart Austin tankers that worked a treat, but of course that had nothing to do with us.

  Then there is the usual stuff to be maintained, none of which has changed a lot. The thing that worries Tommy a lot is the maintenance, which he reckons isn’t as thorough as it could be. He’ll go around himself on a Sunday to try to do something and he’ll find a battery is flat in one of the trucks or it won’t start for some reason or another. He’ll get John Crowe in to fix it, but he always says there should be a weekly maintenance roster. Yet no one seems interested and nobody ever thanks him for his opinion or his efforts on the occasions that we do meet.

  The equipment we have are knapsack tanks, hand pumps and fire brooms, which are beaters made of leather or canvas, you had to know how to use them or they’d spread the fire faster than put it out. Tommy would also check the fuel tanks and rope-start the two BSA motors on the pumps to make sure they were going. Sometimes they’ll start with the first pull of the rope and, then again, sometimes you’ll pull and pull and the buggers won’t start and you can’t help thinking how would it be if this happened in an emergency.

  We’re all volunteers in the rural brigade except for Nick Reed, the CFA regional officer who came in from Wangaratta the second Saturday in November to say that the long-term weather forecast is for a very hot summer with heatwaves in January and February. He said it has something to do with a thing that happens in South America which raises the temperature of the Pacific Ocean and causes drought and heatwaves in Australia.

  None of us could quite understand what he was saying and I don’t think Nick could either, because he read a lot of it from a paper he’d been sent by CFA headquarters. Anyway, he warned that the fires might be worse than normal and to have everything in tiptop condition, which is a bit of a laugh when you think of the age of the two trucks.

  Like I said, John Crowe has been elected fire captain because of the two old tanker trucks. Tommy, who knows the most, could never be our fire captain because of his drinking and his record. John Crowe is pretty good at it anyway and has lots of experience and everyone’s confidence, especially since he’s gone into transport and become a bit of a businessman. A mechanic at the shirecouncil depot is one thing, the owner of a trucking company is quite another, even if it’s only two trucks. Out on the location of a bushfire, him and Tommy will work together. They always have and together they’ll get the best results with our volunteer firefighters.

  Being a volunteer firefighter is the one thing in Yankalillee that sort of evens things up for everyone. Sure there’s still quarrels but there are whole families who dedicate all their spare time to the needs of the brigade and raise money in raffles and bush dances and fetes and some have been doing it for generations. Without the women helping, not just catering, but manning phones and directing fire information from one place to another, I reckon we could never exist. Mrs Barrington-Stone says it’s yet another example of how country women just shut up and get on with it. If you’re in the volunteer brigade, people reckon you’re fair dinkum because it takes a fair bit of dedication but I reckon they don’t give the women the respect they deserve. Even Tommy, as the real maloney, is respected in bushfire circles for his knowledge and because he’s a third-generation firefighter.

  It’s weird how that happens. He’s highly respected at a Saturday morning meeting and when out fighting a fire, but come Monday or the day after the fire, he’s a dero and crim for the rest of the week. I must say it hasn’t rubbed off on me, though. People have always been real nice and point out to visitors that I’m a fourth-generation firefighter and haven’t missed a fire call since the first one I went on with Tommy, John Crowe and Ian McTavish for my socalled rescue of Mrs Rika Ray. When you’re out fighting a fire, religion doesn’t come into it, you’re just a bloke doing his best for his community.

  Because it’s the school holidays and the fire danger is so high, I’m helping the Forestry Commission to man the fire towers, the one I told you about earlier on Mt Pilot. It’s a ten-hour shift and I’ll come straight from collecting garbage and a quick plate of porridge. I make myself four cheese sandwiches and hope there’s a couple of apples around and take two big bottles of water. I’m doing my matriculation this year so I probably won’t do fire-tower duty later in the summer so this will probably be my last bit of fire-watching for the year. Of course, if there’s a fire that threatens your town, even in the middle of the exams, you wouldn’t worry too much about your matriculation, would you?

  Bozo’s put together another bicycle and made this kind of basket on the back where you can put your things. The tower overlooks a large stand of Scribbly Gum, Eucalyptus haemastoma, on the slopes of Mt Pilot.

  It’s called Scribbly Gum because it’s got this yellowish, whitish and sometimes grey bark and has what looks like a little kid’s scribbling all over it. Bozo’s bicycle is fairly hard pedalling, but Mt Pilot isn’t a huge mountain or anything, just the highest hill around with good sighting north, south and to the west. Hard pedalling or not, it’s better than walking in this heat, I can tell ya.

  I take a book along. I don’t know if that’s allowed, I’ve never asked, but it gets pretty boring in a tower for ten hours at a stretch and I’ve become a bit of a reader over the years. The one I’m reading at the moment is by Alan Moorehead and it’s about fighting in Egypt. I’m very interested in military stuff, wouldn’t mind being in the army, though Tommy says I’ve got to be fucking crazy, over his dead body!

  When I ask him why, he says, ‘F’chrissakes, look at me, will ya, Mole!’

  My hope is that some day Tommy will tell me about what happened to him in Borneo.

  I’ve searched the library and nobody has written a book about being a prisoner of war in Borneo. Maybe they have but it’s not in the Yankalillee library and Mrs Botherington isn’t going to ask Melbourne, not for the sake of a kid. I thought of asking John Crowe to pretend it was for him but she knows he only reads books about nature and she’d be suspicious.

  I haven’t stopped trying to question Tommy about the war, though every time I bring it up, he says, ‘Let it go, Mole.’ He’s not cranky or anything, just won’t talk about it. Once he said, ‘That’s another life I want to forget.’ It was like he was saying he didn’t want to live through it again by telling me about it, but you can sense that he hasn’t forgotten and that most of what’s happened to him and why he is how he is may be because of the past. I mean with his shoulder and jaw, and one eye missing, how’d that happen? He’s never said, was it a bullet or what?

  With the experience I’m getting working for the Forestry Commission, Mr McDonald says he’ll be happy to recommend me for a job when I’ve finished school. He says they’re looking for bright young blokes they can send to university, because forestry is becoming more of a science. But I dunno, I’ve seen what Sarah’s been through to get a university education and I don’t think I’m up to it. Probably haven’t got the brains anyway.

  This is also Sarah’s final year at university. She’s kept on being brilliant. Meanwhile, Morrie’s just become a doctor for the second time.
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  Mike is thinking of going to London, but I’ll tell you about that later because we’re all worried and not sure he should do it and Nancy starts to bite her fingernails whenever the sub ject comes up. She can’t tell Mike he can’t because he’s been away in Melbourne too long and has his own life to lead and is no longer dependent on us. But she doesn’t want him to go. She wants to know what’s wrong with what he’s doing now? Him and Sophie are going really well, especially the Suckfizzle label for kids. But all Mike says is, ‘Mum, I’m a glorified dressmaker, no one will take me seriously here until I’ve been overseas and come back as a designer.’

  When I’m up in the fire tower reading away and stopping every once in a while to scan the horizon and take the measurements for the log book, wind directions, relative humidity, cloud condition and the temperature, Anna Dumb-cow-ski will come into my mind. I can’t help thinking about her and that she’s somewhere in England with Crocodile Brown and won’t be studying for her matriculation with our class this year. I try to imagine what she’d be doing. I mean Crocodile Brown isn’t a very interesting bloke and he must be at least thirty-five years old!

  Everyone thought Anna would be one of the top students in the state, like Sarah was, and now look what’s happened. Perhaps Crocodile Brown, being a teacher, will see she goes to school and does her final exams in England, though it would be pretty weird, I mean, you know, with him doing it to her and her being a schoolgirl in her spare time, wearing her sports uniform. When I think about all this, I get this big, almost physical, shock, I just can’t believe she was on with Crocodile Brown all of last year.

  Nancy says that with this weather, anything could’ve happened. It’s the heat and that bastard Chicka Barnes that’s turned Anna’s mind, the poor girl, coming from Europe originally. Maybe Chicka Barnes, yes, but the bad heat only really started in November and Crocodile and her must have been on together long before that.

  I sit there looking over the Scribbly Gum thinking, unable to get Anna out of my mind, not only the lust factor, which I admit is always there when I think about her and her being so beautiful as well, but also her, little Anna Dumb-cow-ski. Sometimes sitting alone in the tower thinking about her, I have to whip the old man out to get a bit of relief. But Anna’s more than that, it’s her, she was about the nicest girl I’ve ever known. Everyone loved her, grown-ups as well as us kids and she was going to be the head prefect and everyone thought she was the perfect choice, the best any of us could remember. I’m sure she could’ve done better in life than old Yellow Teeth, Crocodile Brown. I keep asking myself why, why, why?

  Tommy and me went out on Saturday. Despite the heat and it being blackfella weather, Tommy wanted to check on the combustible fuel that’s lying about within a large stand of Mountain Swamp Gum, Eucalyptus camphora, growing at the base of some hills about eight miles from town. Later, if we’ve got time, we’ll also check the Eucalyptus camaldulensis, River Red Gum, running along a dry watercourse into Reedy Creek. Tommy says a fire starting here among the bigger trees and running along the dry course would be just about the worst thing you could imagine happening. There’s tall grass on either side and what with pasture improvement the fire danger is way up. The gully would be like a lighted fuse heading up towards the town and the grass fires would be like a pincer movement on either side.

  Yankalillee is set among the hills so that fire can travel at a fair pace. It’s been months since there’s been any rain and the natural fuel in the two forests we check is that dry, it cracks like a rifle shot underfoot. It’s been like this since Christmas. The grass in the open country and on the north-western hillsides is completely cured, all it needs is a spark and it will go up in a huge swoosh, then practically nothing will stop it. Tommy reckons the grassland carries about one ton of fuel per acre but the fern gullies and the western slopes of the hills carry as much as three tons. The two forests would easily average ten tons per acre as well as the burning bark that can be carried away in a convection column sometimes for miles to start new fires. It’s the worst imaginable situation. We get home and Tommy goes straight off to see John Crowe.

  For once in our lives we know everything’s ready at the fire station because we’ve been through all our drills last Saturday and checked the gear. I know it sounds silly but I even check the rope on the fire bell, which you can hear all over town and every firefighter knows its sound. When that rings it’s never good news. Fire bell’s only rung for one thing, fire. Once a group of yobbos rang it in the middle of the night and Jack Donovan somehow got a hold of them and they got three months on the hill. There can be no mucking about when it comes to fire.

  Well, the weather yesterday cooled down a fair bit and was down to eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit with a light north-westerly blowing, which sounds pretty good after the heat we’ve been through. But if you’re an experienced bushfire fighter, a cool day in the middle of a heatwave is not necessarily good news.

  So last night, as usual with periods of high fire danger, Tommy and me listened to the national weather report on Bozo’s radio and what we heard filled us with a sense of dread. There’s a cold front that’s made its way across the south-east of South Australia and is coming towards Victoria. ‘Oh shit!’ we both exclaimed.

  Today it’s hot as hell again, but the first four hours pass uneventfully. The temperature at noon when I do my routine measurements is ninety-seven degrees. The cloud cover is cumulonimbus, people call it cumulo around here but Tommy says we’ve got to say it right. The wind direction is north-west with a Force Three wind with occasional gusts to Force Four.

  These sudden gusts are what drives a fire faster and makes it unpredictable. There’s not a lot else happening but the interference on the radio is building, that’s always a sign that there’s worse to come.

  It’s been bad news from dawn when Bozo and me got up to do the garbage; already the wind was blowing hot and strong from the north-west. About half-past seven, when we got home from washing the truck at the abattoir, the ABC news predicted thirty mile per hour winds for northeastern Victoria and said that bushfires had started in the Chiltern bush overnight. They issued the usual high fire alert for the whole state, which was the same as they’ve done every day since mid-December. The Chiltern fires are not good news and Tommy looks at me and says, ‘London to a brick, it’s our turn soon, Mole.’

  The day starts with a clear sky the colour of pewter but around nine-thirty cumulo clouds begins to form in the west. I watch as the clouds grow up into their towering anvil shapes that you know come before a thunderstorm. What the cloud means is the atmosphere has become unstable, anything could happen. Hopefully it will be rain, lots of the stuff.

  The cloud doesn’t tell you too much either. For the past two weeks there’s been cumulus come up in the right direction for rain and there’s not been a drop fall anywhere in the district. When I get to the tower, I heard on the HF again that fires had broken out in the Chiltern bush during the night. About ten in the morning, the smoke from the Chiltern fires about ten miles off starts to make visibility difficult from the tower.

  After doing the noon schedule I call on 2792 KCS, which is Mr McDonald on the HF radio, and give him the report. He’ll call the brigades in the CFA region and pass on the information. The crackle on the radio is pretty bad so I can only just make out his return report to me. He asks me if I could give him any accurate information on the Chiltern fire and I say it’s hard to tell, the smoke is coming directly towards me and reading the distance is difficult. He says they hope the back-burn being set to the north of Chiltern will protect the town, but it’s a big fire, to keep my eyes peeled.

  I don’t need to be told that real shit could hit the fan any time now, the conditions are just about perfect for a bushfire of major proportions. With the bush at Chiltern already a big blaze and several smaller fires started in the district, our turn could be next. I scan the horizon with my binoculars and my heart skips
a beat, I think I’ve seen something. So I have a look through the telescope, which isn’t that crash hot, being war surplus and probably as old and worn as the Diamond T. The visibility isn’t good, maybe ten miles, not much more, but it turns out simply to be drifting smoke from the Chiltern fire or maybe one of the smaller ones, there’s nothing new.

  At one o’clock I check all my readings and see that the temperature has risen to 102 degrees and there’s a rapid fall in the humidity to nine per cent. The cloud cover is now beginning to really build up, though still slowly and there’s been a change in the wind speed.

  I start checking on the Chiltern fire and move around about ninety degrees scanning the horizon but I’m having difficulty penetrating the haze. There’s a fair bit of dry lightning around and I think briefly how lightning is attracted to the highest point in an area, which is the tower I’m standing in. It all seems okay but then I lower the binoculars a little and, there, to the south-east, I see the small unmistakable plume of new smoke.

  I know the area the plume is coming from pretty well, Tommy and I have passed through it often enough. By my calculations, the fire seems to be in the vicinity of a small tributary of Reedy Creek close to Hopeless Dig. Jesus! It’s about the one place you wouldn’t want a fire to start! I take the bearing which is at 220 degrees and, with my heart pumping, I get onto the HF.

  ‘VL3FD Mt Pilot calling VL3FD Yankalillee. Do you read me? Over!’

  ‘Yankalillee to Mt Pilot, reading you 3 by 4.’ It’s a woman’s voice. The girls at the Forestry Commission headquarters operate the incoming network.