In the line of fire

1.30 am, New Year’s Eve. The FiresNearMe text: Put your plan into action. I hear a vehicle down on the road, coming in from the forest. Then another. Soon, a constant stream.

2 am. We’re backing down the driveway, in two cars. I have the dogs, food for them, water, my walker, and the Mechanic has my scooter, our documents bag and the go-bag, which has been sitting in a corner for weeks.

Down at the Quaama fire shed an RFS guy stops us.
Do you know anyone out at Verona? he says.
Plenty, why?
Lots of homes are threatened. We can’t get out there, not enough of us.
Later, too late, I wondered if he wanted us to ring and warn them.

I say, We want to go to Bega.
Well, the fire’s jumped the highway down at Israels Road.
Then I suppose we’re not going to Bega?
No, you’ll probably make it if you leave now. Go. If there are flames on the road, stop and come back.

So we go. The Mechanic passes me just out of town and I watch his tail lights and drive.

On top of McLeod Hill there’s hot, fragrant dust blowing into the car. I close the window. Then we’re down the hill and past Israels Road. A red glow to our right. Past the roadblock at the Snowy Mountains Highway, then we’re in Bega. We pull into the sportsground carpark and try to get some sleep.

 

If you’re planning to leave, they’d said, leave early. So we’d checked the app the night before and decided to get a good night’s sleep and make a decision in the morning—the fire was heading towards us but still 40 kilometres away. And it was a calm night, no wind. All the same, I disabled my phone’s sleep function and put it on my bedside table. When the text woke us at 1.30 am, the fire was seven kilometres away. By the time we drove out, half an hour later, it had advanced five kilometres. Leave early? How early is too late?

 

7.30 am. We go to check out the Bega Evacuation Centre at the Showground. No accessible toilet. We go back to Carp Street and order coffee at Evolve Café. A large group sits around the next two tables, three couples and a number of small children. They’re from Melbourne, have been holidaying in Mallacoota but were nervous about the situation—just one long, narrow, winding forest track between them and the highway—so had left early that morning. It will be hours before we hear what unfolded at Mallacoota that day.

9 am. We know that our neighbours of twenty years, Jim and Cathy, were planning to stay home and defend. I rang their landline and to my relief Cathy answers. Jim’s still out there, she says. They saved your house. Jim and Rachel. Here’s Rachel now … and then I hear Rachel‘s voice. I’ll just go over to your place, she says. And then she’s walking around and describing what she sees. Woodpile, gone. Back gate, gone. Veggie garden smouldering. Yep, she says, your house is untouched.

The fire, it went through like a bullet, Jim tells us later. Through the paddock behind us, along our back fence line. Like a bullet.

 

My brother’s new son arrived the week before Christmas. Amidst the cooing and peeping, I looked down at this tiny person in my arms and wondered what kind of world he would inherit as an adult. I imagined a few scenarios that day; one of them looked a bit like what we are living through now. Too soon, too soon.

 

10.00 am. I google ‘bega pet-friendly accommodation’ and two results come up. I ring the first one, in Bega, a three-star motel. They say, Sure, we have a room, $350. No comment. I ring the other one, in Millingandi: $150 but they’re holding the room for someone who hasn’t turned up yet. They’ll call me as soon as they know.

We need somewhere to stay where I can access the toilet. I’m worried about infections while on my new immunotherapy—I’m not drinking enough fluids. A friend suggests Bega Hospital. I can try to get a room there, even if just for 24 hours. Anyway, it’s the only option, it seems.

In Casualty I explain my situation. I feel selfish and trite. In Emergency, people are coming in with fire-fighting burns, and I’m not even sick—yet. But they take me seriously and we wait there for a couple of hours, surrounded by children with breathing difficulties, mostly. Just as I get called to see the doctor, the woman from Millingandi calls back. The room is ours. I tell the doctor, expecting annoyance, but all she says is, Is there anything else we can help you with? Catheters? Medications? Her kindness makes me want to cry.

 

In Millingandi (Top of the Lake Holiday Units, shameless plug for a business that didn’t triple its rates in an emergency, and a very nice unit too) we see the TV news. A number of ABC reporters have abandoned their summer holidays. Hamish MacDonald had been in Tathra and sprang into action at the Bega Evacuation Centre. Reporters we usually see against a backdrop of Middle Eastern or Eastern European carnage, now doing pieces-to-camera on our coastline. I see veteran correspondent Philip Williams reporting from Bega, then, when Eden is suddenly under threat, he’s there. In my mind’s eye, a stream of traffic evacuating north out of Eden, and one lone ABC vehicle heading south.

And the Murdoch press, from their air-conditioned offices in the city, have the gall to criticise.

 

1 January. We try to get home, get turned back at the Cooma turn-off. Back to Millingandi.

2 January. Try again and this time they wave us through. No obvious damage until the approach to Quaama, then blackened paddocks and scorched trees. Crossing the Dry River bridge, the riverbanks black and bare. Outside the Quaama Store, people mill around, looking shell-shocked. Long, tight hugs all around. The Store, the Hall and the school are intact. The church and thirteen homes are gone. Jim and Rachel saved four houses, it turns out, with Jim’s underground water tank, fire pump and hoses. Norm on the corner charged up and down our street on his quad bike, putting out spot fires with a tank of water and his weed-sprayer. Akshara saved his Gordon Street house then raced through to Bega Street where he saved two more, the second one by waving down a fire truck and pointing out a tree ablaze beside it—flat on his back on the roadside, physically spent. There will be more such stories.

When the Mechanic sees Jim … well, what can you say? Profound thanks. And the response, entirely predictable: a grin, and, Aw, that’s all right … But he’s standing closer than he used to. That old Aussie line of demarcation breached, maybe forever.

17 January. So here we’ve been, ever since. After a couple of days there was mains water—with a boil notice, the disinfection unit had been damaged. After another ten days, power. But, every day, reminders that we’re not alone. Trucks arrive full of food, drinking water, fodder and hardware. Cooks turn up to prepare community dinners. Three strapping young soldiers in camouflage gear knocked at our door one day, asking if we needed help. BlazeAid were at the Hall on Wednesday. And an acupuncturist.

Smoke blows in, clears away, and blows back again, at the mercy of the winds.

We’ve had rain now—maybe half an inch. After an eerie silence two weeks ago, the birds started coming back. A small flock of thornbills at the birdbath. Lorikeets, rosellas, king parrots. A blackbird flinging mulch about. Kookaburras at dawn. This morning I woke to the caroling of magpies, and something in my heart lifted, at last.