Four Fires

by Bryce Courtenay

  We set fire to the low scrub, back-burning from the edge of the trail, which has been made on both sides of the banks. This is known as a controlled fire, or at least you hope it is. Back-burning in the heat of the day is taking a huge risk but we can’t wait for the temperature to drop. We are pretty tense, a single gust of wind can undo all the work and send the fire out of our control into the grass beyond and out of reach. The point is that Tommy’s picked the only real place we have a chance to stop the fire. If it doesn’t stop here, next stop is Yankalillee with a few farmhouses in the Woolshed Valley threatened in between.

  We back-burn as carefully as we can, hoping the wind won’t change direction. Several of us are beating out and dousing sparks that fly ahead of the back-burn, keeping the fire in more or less a straight line. We’re at it about threequarters of an hour and have barely done a hundred yards on either side of the creek when the fire is almost upon us. The radiant heat is already intense and we can feel the oxygen being sucked from the air and we know it’s time to pull back. So far our luck is holding. Although the wind is blowing almost parallel to the creek bed, the fire hasn’t blown sparks nor has any burning bark been caught in the convection current into the grass beyond the back-burn.

  We’re lucky in another sense as well. Soil erosion and past floods through the old diggings have had the effect of sinking the creek bed maybe a further ten or fifteen feet so that the River Red Gum canopy is only about thirty feet above the flat ground we’re standing on, with a few taller trees sticking out a few feet further. This means that the larger percentage of the trees are contained within the confines of the creek bed. It’s like the fire is burning in a long trough. The bad thing, of course, is that this narrow trough makes it like a flue, with the wind driving it forward, so the fire is travelling faster than it would in an open forest.

  Tommy pats me on the back and nods towards the fire truck, time to get the hell out. The utes are all beginning to pull back, nothing we can do now but hope the fire doesn’t jump the gap. There’s simply no time to cut a trail on the other side of the gap and back-burn.

  We reach the truck and Tommy is about to climb into the driver’s seat when he turns to take a final look and shouts out, ‘Oh shit, the canopy!’ Almost in front of our eyes the fire rises into the forest canopy. The River Red Gum has heavy twisting branches and a spreading open crown and once the fire reaches the canopy the updraughts and the convection current created by the fire has plenty of space to move through. The effect is a bit like a blowtorch, with the heat of the fire driving it higher and sending burning bark and sparks into the atmosphere to be picked up by the wind.

  All our work is for nothing. With the wind parallel to the flames, the burning bark and sparks in the air will jump Hopeless Dig without too much trouble, but worse than that, the convection sends the sparks every which way and high up into the sky so they’re going to fly way past the back-burn we’ve just completed and into the open grassland. Bark capable of igniting a grass fire can travel a mile or more ahead of the main fire and can start a new fire just about anywhere. We can kiss the containment goodbye.

  The thing about fires most people don’t realise is the noise. It’s deafening so even if you shout, you can’t be heard three feet away. You can never quite get used to the fury of it, it’s like a mighty roar of anger that just keeps going. I suppose flame is beautiful, the way it leaps into the air like it’s free to do what it wants. Other elements are also free and I guess the sea can be pretty awesome, wind too, and lightning, but fire has a mind and a determination. You don’t see it as a blind raging thing, which I suppose it is, but something that attacks and thinks and changes tactics. It has a malevolence that uses surprise, dirty tricks, cunning. You get to think of it as someone, not something, and it’s someone you have to beat, but right from the start you don’t like your chances because it’s so big and unpredictable and can do so much harm.

  In fact, you never really beat it. You may eventually slow its progress, but even that is debatable. Tommy says a bushfire will stop when it’s starved of fuel and he’s yet to see one that’s been tamed by man. ‘No way yer gunna make it stop, mate,’ he explains, ‘Best you can hope for is to try to direct its path until it’s had enough and used up all the available fuel.’The back-burning we’ve done is just such an attempt, futile as it’s proved to be.

  With the fire in the canopy of the River Red Gum, it’s time to move out. The fire’s not only going to jump Reedy Creek, it’s also going to spread to the grassland. It’s the farmhouses in its path that are our immediate worry, then the houses on the outskirts of Yankalillee. We’ll try to stop the fire before it reaches the gorge. Don’t see how though. Maybe Tommy and John Crowe have an idea, but I can’t for the life of me think what it might be and I reckon the others feel the same.

  We load our gear and jump onto the back of the tanker and Tommy starts to move out even before we see John Crowe standing on the roof of his ute, signalling for all the teams to get going.

  We haven’t gone more than a couple of hundred yards when we see the first small spiral of smoke rise in the grass in open country about twenty yards to our right. Tommy keeps driving, it’s important to get to open ground where there’s low grass so that we can park the tanker and back-burn a parking spot quickly. Without water for their knapsack pumps, there’s no chance of putting out the spot fires.

  I jump off the truck, my knapsack pump on my back, and move through the grass to the spiral of smoke, it’s only just beginning to take and I douse it quickly. Another minute and it could be well on the way and hard to stop. Tommy’s slowed right down, we’re only crawling along as it is, but the knapsack pump is heavy and I can’t move all that quickly. I’m pretty puffed by the time I catch them again and the other blokes grab a hold of me and pull me up onto the back of the tanker.

  By this time, the utes carrying the men are beginning to pass us. We learn later that John Crowe has decided he can’t do anything about the grassfire and he’s sent the message carrier ahead in his jeep to Yankalillee to warn them to get ready. Also that the houses on the edge of the Historic Park are to be evacuated and hosed down thoroughly, drainpipes blocked and gutters filled with water, sprinklers going wherever possible and any inflammables, especially petrol and kerosene, taken from the sheds and garages. Many a house would have been saved except that there’s a drum of petrol or kero in the garage or someone’s drained the sump of their car or ute and the oil is left in an open container.

  We’re undermanned anyway and the chances of finding another place to make a stand is remote. Every district bushfire brigade has to attend to its own town when it’s threatened, that’s the code. Tommy says later that John Crowe made the only decision he could, there was no stopping this fire.

  The idea in the meantime is to try to protect the farmhouses and property in the path of the fire. There’s a number of farms in the Woolshed Valley that are directly in the path of the grassfire and they’re going to need help before we fall back to a last stand in Yankalillee.

  What most people don’t understand about fires is that if a house is properly prepared before the fire strikes, it’s just about the safest place to be. Fleeing a house when a fire is approaching can be a disaster. A fire feeds on oxygen and even though a fire can be a fair distance away, it has created sufficient radiant heat so that you may even see birds falling out of the air, though I’ve never seen this myself, but Tommy says he has.

  Remember how I told you about the folk who ran for the dam thinking they’d be safe in the water but never got there, that’s because of the radiant heat and smoke. So the drill is fairly simple, though I admit it takes courage. Stay in the house. Do what I said before, water down everything, fill the gutters, wet the roof, clear the outhouses and sheds of any inflammable liquid, seal all the homestead windows tight as you can so there’s plenty of oxygen trapped in the house. Then soak all your wool blankets in the bath tub and leav
e the tub full of water and anything else, buckets, the kitchen sink, so you can douse a small flame if it gets inside. Wrap yourself in the wet blankets just before the fire reaches you and wait for it to pass over.

  Even if the house eventually burns down, it will only happen long after the fire has passed and you’ll usually have time to escape into the burnt and blackened, but safe, world outside. Fire travels with wind, wind and fire are natural partners so the fire moves on. Remember, a fire starting inside a house is quite different from one that starts on the outside and is trying to get in.

  Well, you can only hope all the farmers and the property owners know this, they’ve certainly been told often enough. It’s not hard to understand the temptation to bundle the kids into the car and get going. That’s fine if you’re well ahead of the fire, though not such a good idea if you have to drive through one.

  Also, if you’re heading for a main highway, the chances are that it might already be blocked by others trying to do the same as you. All it takes is for a couple of breakdowns or an accident and you’re stopped with nowhere to go and with the possibility of the fire catching up with you. If this happens, stay in the car, wind the windows up and hope that the fire will pass before the car goes up in smoke, which is almost always the case. Getting out and running for it is not a good idea, the radiant heat and smoke will get you before you’ve gone a hundred yards.

  With the fire now in the open grassland and the wind blowing in a north-westerly direction, it’s not hard to see where its most likely path will lie, and the first farm is Woolshed Park, the property of Tom and Edie Park.

  John Crowe now draws up alongside and he signals for Tommy to stop. ‘Mate, how much water you reckon you’ve got left?’ he shouts over.

  ‘Fair bit, about half-full or thereabouts.’

  ‘Yeah, okay, looks like Woolshed Park is gunna cop this lot first off, we’ve still got the other tanker for the knapsacks. Head over there, see what your crew can do to get the farm ready. I’ll send crews over to the other farms, you handle this one.’ ‘Righto,’ Tommy calls back.

  ‘Don’t wait for the fire to come, I want you back with us as soon as possible. Bring Edie Park and the kids with you if you think you have to. Tom Park is with the Chiltern Brigade and has been gone since yesterday, Edie’s gunna need a hand.’

  Tommy nods and we turn in the direction of Woolshed Park, which is a big property, with both sheep and apple orchards and a fair bit of hay and lucerne. Tom Park is a bloody hard worker and he’s built it bit by bit and it’s not come easy.

  The track’s not too bad except that there’s gates to open every few hundred yards. It’s muggins has to do this as the older blokes reckon opening farm gates is kids’ work. I leave the gates open because there’s stock, mostly sheep, in some of the paddocks and, when they sense the fire, instinct will take over while there is an escape route and they’ll try to stay ahead of the fire. The survivors end up gawd knows where, but that’s something that gets sorted out later in a communal muster between neighbours.

  We open the last gate to the Woolshed Park homestead, which is a mile or so further up the track, and see the little Park girlie pedalling her bicycle as fast as she can with her school bag still on her back. In fact the tanker can’t move a lot faster than her furious pedalling and we’ve gone three hundred yards up the road before we catch her.

  The wind is making such a racket we’ve come right up to her before she realises we’re there and when Tommy blows the horn she gets such a fright she skids and falls off her bike. I jump down from the tanker, pick her up and dust her off. Her eyes are brimming with tears and she wipes them with the back of her fist.

  ‘I’m sorry we frightened you, hop in the front, we’ll get there faster!’

  ‘What about my bike?’ she says tearfully, then adds, ‘We got out of school early, Miss Lenton said it was because of the fire.’

  She’s come from the Woolshed Valley Small School about five miles down the road. ‘No worries, we’ll take it in the back.’ Then I say, ‘My name’s Mole.’ I smile, trying to reassure her, ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘Ann,’ she says, her eyes are still wide but the tears have cleared. I see that she’s scraped her knee and there’s a trickle of blood running down her shin and not quite reached the neat little white ankle socks. ‘It doesn’t have an “e” on the end, my dad says it cost more to put an “e” on the end of Ann and we couldn’t afford it at the time because fat-lamb prices were down.’

  I don’t laugh because she looks so serious. With little Colleen around, I’m used to kids. ‘You think that’s bad! I’m called Mole because as a baby I used to burrow down in my cot and get lost.’

  She laughs. ‘That’s funny, Mr Mole,’ she says.

  ‘It’s just Mole. What say we get moving hey, Ann? We ain’t got much time.’ I jerk my head in the direction of the rolling clouds of black smoke towering above the horizon. The wind is blowing something fierce and there’s dust everywhere.

  Ray Davis, who, like John Crowe, is a mechanic, works at Philip Templeton’s used-car lot. He’s sitting in the front with Tommy and stretches his hand out to grab little Ann’s as she climbs up into the Blitz cabin. She sits on his knee and after I heave her bike up onto the back, we’re off again.

  Directly above us I hear the birds – magpies, crows, galahs, sulphur-crested cockatoos, rosellas – heading away from the fire-filled sky. They seem to be calling frantically to those of their kind lagging behind.

  The smell of burning leaves fills our nostrils and there’s floating embers landing around us that have blown miles ahead of the fire. A patch lights up, ignited by an ember, and Tommy slows down and two of the blokes hop off with their knapsack pumps, killing the smoulder before it gets a hold. Bad enough waiting for the big bastard coming, no point in having a dress rehearsal. The heat has increased noticeably, so that we’re all soaked through and I can feel my overalls clinging to my back and the sweat running down my neck and down the inside of my legs.

  Edie Park comes out to meet us, the wind whipping at her cotton dress; she’s shielding her eyes against the dust. The party-line phone has run hot and news that the fire has beaten the back-burn has spread terror through the women of the valley. All their men are gone and it’s up to them to cope. Most of the younger wives haven’t seen a big fire like this.

  ‘We can take you out with us, Mrs Park,’ Tommy says,

  ‘you and the kids?’

  ‘There’s only me and Ann,’ Edie replies, ‘No, we’re staying put. There’s everything me and Tom have worked for here, we built the homestead with our own hands.’ It’s sandstone and brick with a bullnose iron-roofed verandah. The posts may go, but it’s solid right through.’

  Tommy looks around quickly, there isn’t much time. ‘The orchard’s a bit close, that’ll go, looks like a good crop of greengages, won’t get any apples this year.’

  ‘Yes, the plums are good this year,’ she laughs, ‘We’re down to the last barrel of last winter’s apples.’

  Tommy looks about him at the outhouses, all solid brick. Tom Park has done his thinking ahead of time. The only things that are wooden are the hayshed and the shearing shed some distance from the homestead, no hope there.

  Ann has run inside and I take a quick look around. In the horse paddock nearby, there’s a dozen cows and two rams in one part and, in a separate area fenced off from the others, is a big Hereford bull.

  Edie sees me looking. ‘That’s our investment, we’ve had the sheep eat that paddock clean as a whistle all summer.’ She points to the stock nervously milling about. ‘They’re all “boxed” into the one paddock, those were Tom’s instructions. The cows and a prize calf, the bull and the rams won’t be able to keep ahead of the fire, we have to take the chance the fire will burn around the paddock.’ She shrugs her shoulders. ‘It’s all our capital. Tom sold a truck to put down the deposit on the bul
l and we still owe the bank for him and one of the stud rams.’

  Tommy doesn’t try to dissuade her, Edie Park is a country woman who knows her own mind. ‘What about the kid?’ he asks.

  There is a slight hesitation before Edie Park says tight lipped, ‘She’s country-bred, she stays.’ Then she looks at us, ‘I’m scared, Mr Maloney, and I don’t suppose I have the right to stop Ann going, but this is our life, this is everything we are, I’ve got to try and save it.’

  I think to myself, if it were little Colleen or four-yearold Templeton, I’d have her out of there so fast you wouldn’t see our dust!

  ‘It’s no problem to take you both?’ Tommy tries again. There is still the hesitation in Edie Park’s eyes, but then sudden resolve. ‘It’s happened once before to me, when I was Ann’s age. I still have nightmares about it but my parents saved the farm and if we’d moved out that time it would have all gone. I can’t take that chance, Tom’s worked too hard.’

  I wonder if Tommy has the right to force her to come, this is a crown fire and anything could happen, I wouldn’t like to be in their boots. But I guess not because Tommy says, ‘We left the gates open comin’ in, what about the other paddocks, any stock?’

  ‘Yes, sheep and cattle.’ Edie points to a Welsh mountain pony standing in the yard still saddled, its flanks wet from hard riding. ‘I’ve just got back in, I’ve opened all the paddock gates.’ She smiles, but it’s a sort of sad smile. ‘Let’s hope some of our stock make it out ahead of the blaze.’