Four Fires

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Smoke report Mt Pilot. Bearing 220 degrees. Approximate distance ten miles. Location in the dry tributary which runs into Reedy Creek, near Hopeless Dig. Over.’ It’s how you’re taught to do it, each piece of information separate so it doesn’t become confused.

  Then Mt Stanley cuts in, ‘VL3FD Mt Stanley to VL3FD Mt Pilot. Affirmative smoke report. Bearing 340 degrees. Over.’

  It is nice getting the affirmation from Mt Stanley, it means I’ve got it right. The girl at the Forestry Commission repeats my message, which she gets correct. ‘Affirmative. Over and out,’ I say, feeling pretty pleased with myself.

  But the feeling doesn’t last long. I’m conscious that the Forestry blokes will all be out at the other fires and that we’ll have to call out the CFA volunteers and it looks distinctly like we’ll have to go it alone.

  I hope to God that Tommy isn’t in the pub, though with fire around he’s usually pretty good. I’m yelling at the radio operator at the other end, hoping she’ll hear me through the interference, the static is terrible. I’m busy plotting the fire on the map as I talk and check the wind direction. It’s blowing the fire in a direct line to Yankalillee, no mistaking it. I check again, trying not to show the panic in my voice.

  ‘This is Mt Pilot Tower to Yankalillee, do you read me?

  Over.’

  There’s crackle, then nothing so I call again. A faint voice comes through the static, ‘Go ahead, Mt Pilot.’

  ‘Fire in the vicinity of Hopeless Dig along Reedy Creek, 220 degrees, Mt Pilot Tower. The wind direction puts Yankalillee in its direct path, wind velocity thirty miles an hour,’ I shout, even though we’re taught to talk normal because that will cut through the static better, I’m that nervous I can’t help myself. There’s a lot of crackle and I repeat the message twice over until I finally hear, ‘Wilco, over and out.’

  Suddenly Bill Breadcake at Mt Stanley Tower chips in, ‘I see it, Mole! Good on ya, mate, the bearing here is 340 degrees.’ Then Mr McDonald confirms, ‘You’ve got it right, Mt Pilot, Hopeless Dig, we’ll need all the volunteers we can get, there’s River Red Gum right along that tributary, there’ll be a lot of fuel. Mole, there’s a fair bit of lightning around, you better come down.’ The amazing thing is that this all comes through pretty clear, which is the HF for you, sometimes calling in is terrible but the receiving can be clear as a bell.

  ‘Please, Tommy be sober,’ I beg aloud, looking to the heavens. ‘Mate, we’re all in a lot of shit, the bastard is heading directly for us.’

  I can hear the wind beginning to pick up as I get onto Bozo’s bicycle.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I reckon I’ve never pedalled this hard in my life, my legs are history by the time I get to the brigade headquarters and, as I get off my bike, I topple over. I don’t mean faint or anything, it’s just that my pins don’t want to hold me up. I guess the adrenaline rush is all but used up.

  John Crowe and Tommy are already at the bushfire station sorting things out and I give a sigh of relief when I see Tommy is sober. He watches me get up from the dirt, brushing my backside with both hands, looking sheepish. ‘Gidday, what kept ya?’he says. ‘Thought we’d have to leave without yiz.’ I can see he’s proud of me for being the one to spot the fire.

  I look over to where a bunch of kids are quarrelling about who is next to ring the fire bell, ‘Bell’s still goin’, calling fighters in.’ I grin, ‘You old blokes need a bit of time to get goin’. Did ya bring my overalls?’

  ‘In the ute,’ he says, nodding to the direction of John Crowe’s utility. Then he looks up at me real serious. ‘What ya reckon, son?’

  ‘It’s in among the River Red Gum, looks like a tributary of Reedy Creek, maybe two hours away, heading straight for Yankalillee, could be a big ’un.’

  ‘We’ll make a stand at Hopeless Dig,’ he says immediately, ‘be our best chance.’

  Tommy’s good like that, he’s known exactly where I’m talking about and sees the surrounding country in his mind’s eye. ‘Yeah,’ he says, spitting into the dust at his feet. ‘Reckon you’re probably right, there’s a lot of fuel in the creek bed.’ He goes over to talk to John Crowe, who listens then nods.

  The men are beginning to come in fast now, utes lined up. Most are already in their overalls and broad brims, many bringing their own shovels and rakes. We never have enough of these in the fire shed, some have their own knapsack tanks and hand pumps, they don’t trust the maintenance crew (don’t blame ’em). Several utes and a couple of four-wheel-drive, ex-army jeeps are towing a furphy, bringing their own water supply. Be great if every ute was towing one. The messenger’s jeep is standing by with its engine running, Hugh Spencer, the driver, standing next to John Crowe.

  Everyone knows his team and they wait for their mates to arrive, anxious to get going. No point in hanging around when there’s an angry fire coming your way. It’s usual to send a scout out in a jeep to check the extent of the fire and confirm its whereabouts, but that can take anything up to two hours. Often, with a midafternoon fire like this one, the fighters only get to the fire just before dark. Fighting a fire at night is an even more dangerous business and John Crowe decides to wait no more than another half an hour for everyone to assemble.

  John has complete faith in Tommy and he knows that I also know the area, the chances are we’ve got the location exactly right. Besides, it’s already been confirmed by the Mt Stanley Tower. He’ll leave the map reference with Mrs Thomas, the switchboard operator, and Marg O’Loughlan, the ‘hello girl’ at the telephone exchange, for any latecomers and for the Eldorado mob if they come in to help. Both women will be staying on duty until the last ember is out and they probably know more about the communications needed to direct a big fire than we do.

  Mrs Thomas and Marg are just two of the remarkable country women Mrs Barrington-Stone often talks about who don’t expect any praise at the end when us black-faced firefighters come in exhausted and get all the pats on the back.

  It’s the same with the Red Cross Catering Group and the CFA Women’s Auxiliary. Nobody ever stops to think that they’ve been up eighteen or twenty hours fighting the fire as well. I have to admit I didn’t think about it until it was pointed out by Mrs Barrington-Stone. It’s always women who make the sandwiches and the hot soup and cups of sweet tea, grill the snags, take the messages and coordinate the various brigades.

  Then there’s the wives of firefighters left on lonely farms who have to care for the kids and dogs, the stock in the paddocks and, if they’re in the path of the fire, prepare the house and stay put until the fire has passed over or organise the evacuation. It’s only when you start to think about all this that you realise there’s more to fighting a fire than smacking its bum with a fire-broom.

  We hear the cop-car siren, which means Big Jack Donovan is on his way. I reckon we should have a siren instead of a bell as a fire alert, an air-raid siren like the ones you hear in movies of the war when the Germans bombed London. They sound like there’s a real disaster on its way and it could be the end of the world and you better get ready to meet your Maker. Any bell sounds like a church bell even though the fire-station bell has a different sound and you can’t mistake it, but it’s still a bell. You know what I mean? Bells don’t sound urgent enough. Or anyway I don’t think they do.

  When I hear the bell at St Stephen’s going for Mass on a Sunday morning, I imagine Father Crosby standing outside the church in the dawn light. There’ll be frost on the bit of lawn and he’ll be in his soutane ringing the bell for early Mass, unshaven, bleary-eyed, with a hangover from too much altar wine or from drinking someone else’s whisky. He’s probably still got his pyjamas on underneath his smelly soutane and his balls will be freezing, like ours are most winter mornings doing the garbage. Meanwhile, all the old biddies in their scarves and woolly underwear and knitted gloves are making their way across town to the church. If you ask me, the church bell�
��s about the leasturgent bell you can possibly think of for something like a bushfire that could be threatening the whole town.

  Big Jack’s job is to direct the traffic if there has to be an evacuation of the town and he will already have phoned Wodonga and Wangaratta in case he needs extra police to help him, though Chiltern will get first pick. He is also in charge of the St John Ambulance and the Red Cross emergency units and, if things get really out of hand, he can ask Mr Sullivan, the prison governor, to bring out the prisoners to help.

  We can take six men on the back of each old ‘Blitz’ fire truck and two in front. It’s a helluva squeeze and a big load, what with knapsacks and fire-brooms and a big pile of presoaked hessian bags and the tanks carrying four hundred gallons of water. We never get much above twenty miles an hour out of them, which is enough to stay ahead of a bushfire on an open road but in rough country it can get dicey.

  Anyway, it doesn’t get you anywhere in a hurry, that’s for sure. Then, if we reach any sort of incline, we all have to hop off and walk.

  The main bulk of the teams will go ahead in someone’s ute, which is much the better way to get to a fire. They’ll all have filled up their knapsack hand pumps, which will last them until we arrive. Driving the two ex-army ‘Blitz’ trucks, the Chev and the Ford, is important, but no honour I can tell you. You’re the first to leave and the last to arrive. They only do about four miles to the gallon so you have to take extra petrol as well.

  Tommy drives the Chevrolet because he’s doing a favour for his mate, and the other truck is driven by Whacka Morrissey, an old-timer who knows its ugly ways. Both trucks are manned by Catholics and Nancy says that’s because the Protestants are not stupid enough to be caught in the two slowest vehicles in the bushfire brigade. She may have a point.

  We’re all standing outside in a widish circle getting a briefing from John Crowe. There’s five brigades in the Owens Valley Group. There’s Yankalillee of course, then Wooragee, Bowmans–Murmungee, Gapsted and Mudgegonga, altogether about three hundred volunteer firefighters. There must be over two hundred already here and the others will turn up pretty soon.

  John Crowe clears his throat, he’s got a big voice that carries so nobody has to draw that much closer. ‘Well, boys, this has all the makings of a big bastard. Nick Reed has just phoned from Wang, there’s fires reported bloody everywhere. Chiltern bush is up in smoke, threatening the town, that’s where the relief brigades are heading from Wodonga and Wang. I told him we didn’t know the extent of the fire Mole’s reported and we’ll give him a bell if it’s bad.’ John Crowe laughs, ‘He said he didn’t like our chances, there’s fires at Mount Buffalo and the Myrtleford boys have got their hands full. Bright’s got the same problem and we can’t expect any help from the Forestry boys, they’ve got more than they can handle as it is.’ He looks around, taking in most of the circle. ‘He’s got Eldorado on stand-by, but we can’t count on them, they may be needed elsewhere. Looks like we’re on our own, it’s volunteers alone for the time being at least.’ He shrugs, ‘Don’t need to say much more, you all know the drill. Anyone here that’s new?’

  Two blokes put their hands up. A young bloke from a farm near Allan’s Flat, who gives his name as Lindsay Jarvis, and an older bloke, Michael Mooney, a Collins Street cocky who’s big in insurance and has bought a place near Myrtleford and is probably going to prove to be more of a hindrance than a help. Tommy sighs next to me, nobody wants to have to keep an eye out for a rookie. All of us have read Mooney correctly, or anyway, we reckon we have and so there’s no immediate volunteers. Inexperience is one thing you don’t want fighting a bushfire.

  ‘Righto, we’ll take Mr Mooney,’ Tommy says, breaking the ice. Tommy doesn’t want the poor bloke to be standing there like a shag on a rock.

  Quick as a flash Alan Phillips from the Wooragee Brigade says, ‘Old Merv O’Hare carked it two nights back, we’ll take the young fella.’ There’s a bit of a laugh among the men, Alan isn’t known for his subtle approach. The Jarvis family are well known in the district and they’re all bushies and he knows this well enough, he wouldn’t have a bar of the Mooney bloke on his team. If the Jarvis boy proves a keen youngster who can take orders, he’ll stay with the Wooragee Brigade permanently.

  ‘Okay, boys, let’s be off then, we’re heading for Hopeless Dig.’ John Crowe tells us to meet half a mile across the bridge over Reedy as most would know roughly where it is. He says all this matter-of-fact, like it’s a cricket match or something.

  It all sounds pretty reasonable, like we’ll just go in and douse the flames. But it ain’t. Fires don’t work like that, even small ones. With fires things change so quickly, you’ve got Plan A all worked out and next thing you have to change everything, and not to Plan B because you can’t anticipate what that is. Firefighting is about quick judgement coming from experience and that’s what makes a good fire captain, some bloke who can call a fire more or less right. Nobody gets it exactly right.

  With John Crowe and Tommy both on the job, I feel a lot safer. To be in Tommy’s team, even though it’s on one of the fire trucks, is a great honour. I haven’t always been with him because he wanted me to gain experience with other teams, he still thinks that maybe one day I’ll be the real maloney. Now I’m with him and it’s good because I’ve never fought a fire that could be as potentially big as this one.

  I’m excited, of course, fighting fires sort of gets into your blood, but you’re not stupid enough to be disappointed if it turns out not to be as bad as you thought. There’ll be three hundred fighters out there before long and, if Eldorado joins us, that’s another fifty. It’s not very many if a bushfire gets out of hand. Everyone knows it’s up to them to do their best.

  The good thing so far is that we know where the fire is coming from and that it’s following the dry creek bed. As yet it hasn’t hit the open grassland that’s stacked with highcombustion fuel. It’s midsummer and the grass is up to your knees and sometimes well beyond, and all of it tinderdry. If the fire stays the way it is (fat chance), we can fight it on a fairly narrow front and concentrate all our efforts in more or less the one place.

  The big problem is that this is a eucalyptus fire and that can travel fast. What we’ll be looking for is a break in the trees growing along the creek, some area where the creek bed is bare of any growth for maybe a couple of hundred yards. What we’ll do then is back-burn the grass beyond the line of trees on either side of this bare strip a hundred yards or so and hope that the burnt ground will halt the fire spreading into the grassland beyond. Also, the hope is that the gap in the creek between trees will be extensive enough so that the fire can’t jump the bare earth and connect up with the trees on the other side.

  If we get that lucky and the fire doesn’t get into the grass and doesn’t jump, three very big ‘ifs’, then we’ve got a real chance. The chances of finding a break in the tree line with bare earth in between is not zero but we’ll be bloody lucky if we do. Yet that’s what we’ll be looking for.

  If the River Red Gum stretches uninterrupted along the creek we’ve got Buckley’s trying to stop it until we get to the gorge just outside of town. Even then we’d be in trouble because the gorge runs right through the centre of the bushland reserve, which carries a lot of big old eucalyptus trees and there are houses right up to the edge of the reserve.

  There are two major types of bushfire, a forest fire and a grassfire. What we’ve got on our hand so far is a forest fire. A grassfire is probably the more dangerous because it can change direction on you in a second or combust behind you and trap you, but it’s fairly slow, travelling around seven miles an hour. A good forest fire can go twice that speed, which means if we can’t stop it somewhere along the creek, it could be on the outskirts of Yankalillee in less than two hours. By my reckoning, the fire is approaching at around six miles an hour with wind gusts of about thirty miles an hour. It doesn’t sound fast but over rough terrain the two fire t
rucks will have a lot of difficulty staying ahead. We try to keep the Blitz trucks together, it’s safer that way, what with the vaporising always being a problem.

  Since the fire trucks are so slow, John Crowe goes ahead with the teams in the other utes and we follow behind. The story of Hopeless Dig goes that a bloke named Simpson found a gold nugget worth a thousand pounds there in 1865 and sparked a bit of a gold rush to the site. The creek must have been running that year because the miners set up camp beside it and chopped down all the trees and dug up the ground so thoroughly that not even the River Red Gum came back. Except for a little alluvial gold panned lower down in Reedy Creek, Simpson’s site was as barren as a nun’s tit and yielded not an ounce of gold and so was named Hopeless Dig. Had Simpson been around, the mob would have strung him up on the spot since it was clear that he had found the nugget elsewhere and was protecting the original site. However, by that time, he’d already cashed in his nugget and bought dry goods and was last reported to be running a store in Gulgong, New South Wales, where gold had been found, and was making a packet.

  We get to Hopeless Dig at half-past three, about half an hour after the utes carrying the other firefighters. Tommy’s guess is right and it looks pretty good, the fire is less than an hour away and the old gold diggings carry a bit of low bush and a few isolated Red Spotted Gum, Eucalyptus mannifera, a small, stunted tree that grows in really poor soils and in gullies and is easy to cut down with an axe or saw. With the old digging and a fair bit of soil erosion, all the topsoil has been removed so the River Red Gum have given it a big miss, its seed carried by the wind over the gap to continue along the course higher up. The gap without any meaningful trees is over a hundred and fifty yards long. All I can say is that Tommy’s a bloody genius.

  The boys who’ve arrived earlier have formed teams and constructed a trail. Trail-making is real hard yakka and is an attempt to create a section of cleared ground similar to a dirt track. The other name for it is ‘making a firebreak’. Working smoothly, the leader of a fire crew heads off, removing a narrow strip of all vegetation, with the rest of the team following, chipping and raking and widening the trail. They chop out all the low scrub and rake the debris from the forest floor, alternating the lead every few minutes so that the bloke in front gets a blow. We have to hope the trail is wide enough, there’s no time to keep at it, the approaching fire is already too close. So John Crowe spreads the men out along the newly made trail and, facing into the wind on the edge of the trail, he gives the order, ‘Light up!’