Forged with Flames (2 page)

I couldn't read the bush or its creatures then nor did I understand that this was an ancient land that could turn wild. After all, I'd called our property Pendle Hill after a rainy summit in England! I didn't notice leaves dropping from trees when they shouldn't have been and lying coated in dust for rainless weeks. The dried-out debris of drought that crackled underfoot meant nothing to me.

I knew there'd been bushfires before in Upper Beaconsfield because ‘Procie', our grandfatherly neighbour from over the road, had mentioned them; but although I could see the tell-tale blackened trunks and burnt-out stumps, I didn't fully realise that people lost their lives in them. I'd never heard of Black Friday, 1939, when seventy-one people died, nor had I ever seen footage of fires—we didn't have a television for the early part of our married life. My father had preferred TV to conversation with his family, a habit I definitely didn't want to repeat, so in the evenings Terry and I talked, read, played backgammon and listened to music, until eventually his parents gave us a set.

Our old Wolseley felt like an oven as I strapped the girls in
their seatbelts and wound down the windows ready for the run to school. Sarah and Rachel chatted animatedly in the back seat as we set off, oblivious to the draining heat. The primary school and kindergarten were adjacent to each other on the other side of what was then the Upper Beaconsfield village. It was little more than a cluster of timber shops with corrugated iron roofs and verandas that extended to the street in a way that reminded me of an outpost waiting for a horse. So much was different from England. The trip only took several minutes, but already I couldn't wait to be back home with the airconditioning on full blast. I slowed as I passed the shops and looked out for any cars I might recognise. It was considered rude not to acknowledge people and their cars—locals expected you to recognise them. I passed the service station where a neighbour, Alan, worked filling tanks and fixing engines. Alan and his wife were good sorts; he was a cheery, muscled man with tightly curled hair, she a straight-speaking woman who didn't take nonsense from anyone. Carol would often yell out to me across the vacant block that separated our houses to come over for a cuppa.

I dropped off Sarah at school first and was coming out of the kindergarten after taking Rachel in when a friend, Liz, approached me and asked for a lift home. Liz, flushed in the face and looking bothered, explained that she was having her carpets cleaned that day and hadn't been able to get her car out of the driveway because the cleaner's van was blocking the way. She'd walked her children to school and kinder but although she lived only a short distance away thought it was too hot to walk back, so would I mind? We commented on how unusually and unpleasantly hot it was for that time of day, and wondered whether the Weather Bureau's forecast of a ‘cool
change' tomorrow would eventuate. Little did we know as we said goodbye then that neither of us would have a house or any possessions by the end of the day.

Sarah's recollection.

The day started like any other school day. I got up and ate some fruit and then a piece of toast with Vegemite for breakfast. I dressed in my school uniform and got my little brown case ready with my lunch and snacks in it. Mum tied my hair back in a ponytail. I had no reason to be concerned, no reason to think that the outcome of this day would alter so many people's lives, including my own. I was six at the time.

Back home I grimaced at the sight of the two huge baskets of ironing waiting for attention. Being English and a young wife I ironed everything. But today the ironing could wait until it was cooler. The airconditioning was on high but I was still sweating from driving in a hot car. Would I ever get used to these Australian summers? The pink cotton skirt my mother had sent me from England was clinging to my legs and my blue T-shirt with the white collar and cuffs was sticky with sweat. The Shetland Sheepdogs, Tammy and Dusky, allowed inside today because of the heat, were sprawled out on the carpet, tongues lolling.

I flicked off my thongs and sat down for a moment, turning my face towards the cool stream of air, coiling a roll of thick hair to get it off my neck. Anything close to the skin felt too hot. Three friends from my church were coming to lunch the following day and I wondered what to prepare for them. Obviously nothing cooked unless there was a big cool change
… but would I have to go to the shops to buy some more cold meat? I couldn't know that we would never share that meal; that two of them would not survive the night.

After lunch, I hosed down the dogs and locked them in their run, then set off for an afternoon with a couple of friends nearby. Yvonne and her daughter, Shelley, and I would meet up every Wednesday afternoon for a social. Shelley was about my age with kids at the same school. As I was making my way across the lawn to the car a possum staggered uncertainly in front of me, zigzagging as if it were drunk. I did know that possums don't usually show themselves in the middle of the day so that behaviour struck me as rather odd, if not disconcerting.

Shelley didn't have airconditioning so the three of us slumped in our chairs under the shade of some gum trees, sipping iced tea and wiping the sweat off our brows and cheeks, wilting. The heat was so intense that you could feel it as you breathed in. Any movement was too much but passing time talking somehow made it more bearable. By three o'clock, the mercury was hovering around its peak of forty-three degrees Celsius and it was time for me to pick up the girls.

‘I'm hot, Mummy,' Rachel wailed, as she got in the car, in a way that suggested I could do something about it.

‘You can both play under the sprinkler when you get home,' I promised.

Once home, they quickly changed their minds and asked if they could play next door at their friend Fiona's, as they often did. As soon as the car came to a halt in our driveway, they dashed out and headed for her place.

I realised that the power was off as soon as I got inside. The airconditioner was silent when I switched it on and the fridge
didn't hum to life as I opened the door. I picked up the telephone receiver but the line was dead. Strange, I thought, the electricity grid must be overloaded, the way it does when the whole of Melbourne has airconditioners on.

Then I saw the smoke.

The rear of the house—the kitchen and dining-room area—had a long picture window that faced the bush. A pillar of purple-grey smoke, skewed low to one side, rose from behind the trees in the direction of Beaconsfield or Berwick, to the south-west. I stood in the kitchen transfixed. The fire couldn't come towards us though, could it? The wind was blowing in the opposite direction. Surely someone would put it out? I'll ring Terry at work and ask him if he knows anything about it, I decided; then remembered the phone was dead. It dawned on me then that there was no way of finding out what the fire was doing—the television and radio weren't options and we didn't have a battery-operated transistor. I'll ask the neighbours later. One of them will know.

I was surprised to see several neighbours gathered on the nature strip when I went out; apparently I wasn't the only one who was becoming anxious. Carol and Alan, Procie who was a widower, and another middle-aged couple were standing in a huddle, bracing themselves and trying to talk over the strengthening wind. We turned to face the smoke rising in the distance.

‘It's a long way off,' I ventured, hopefully. ‘And the wind's blowing it away from us. Someone would let everyone know if it was coming this way, wouldn't they?'

The others shrugged and nodded. I got the feeling they'd already raked over the questions. We stood and watched.

The girls were still playing next door. Suddenly unnerved, I excused myself from the gathering to go and fetch them. It was twenty minutes before the time I'd normally collect them—five o'clock—but I suddenly wanted them with me. If only Terry would arrive home soon! He was usually home around fivethirty from his work at Bayswater but maybe he would come home earlier. Perhaps he had tried to phone and was worried that he couldn't get through? I exchanged a few words with Fiona's mother as we stood at her front door, asking her whether she'd seen the fire and knew anything about it (she had, but she didn't), and left. I was too toey to chat.

I came home from school and went to a neighbour's house to play. Mum came early to collect me. I remember doing the typical six-year-old pestering of ‘why can't I stay longer, just for a little while more'. I realised something was wrong when Mum spoke sternly to me. Mum was generally patient, so the moment stands out vividly. I thought I must have done something bad, or maybe something had happened. I just wasn't sure what it was.

By now, I was too distracted to carry on with the routine of getting tea ready and bathing the girls. There was still no power and the house was suffocatingly hot. The girls and I sat together by the kitchen window on the bench as I watched the smoke. It was still a long way away, billowing up like a smoke signal behind the trees. The wind had intensified; the day had turned nasty. Birds were struggling to balance on branches, battling to fly at an angle to the wind. Trees were bowing low, their limbs thrashing dementedly.

Sarah, always a little chatterbox, was sensing something, and talked and talked and talked.

‘Shut up,' I suddenly snapped. ‘Just shut up.'

We were both taken aback by the harshness in my voice. I felt bad. It's no good upsetting the girls, I chided myself. Stay calm, be normal.

I thought I heard the crunch of gravel over the wind, a car pulling up outside on the verge. I moved quickly to open the front door, expecting Terry, but there was nothing there or the car had moved on. It was now approaching seven o'clock and he still wasn't home. Terry had been late before only this time he couldn't ring to tell me, I told myself.

It was too hot to want to eat and I was too on edge to think about preparing a proper tea so the girls and I ate cold meat sandwiches, then I put them in their bunk beds, assuring them that Daddy would say goodnight when he got home.

‘But what if we're asleep?' piped up Rachel.

It was seven-thirty. Terry was still not home. He was now two hours late. A sickening unease overtook me. What if he'd got mixed up in the fire? He used a back route from work to get home in that general direction and what if he'd been caught in it? Even if he was working late he must have tried phoning to tell me and wondered about the phone line. And what if the fire approached our street and he wasn't home yet? Terry would know what to do in these circumstances—he was a good person to have around in a time of crisis. I was intuitive; Terry was sensible.

I could smell smoke; I desperately needed him home.

Much later, I learnt that Terry had been held up at a police roadblock at Beaconsfield. The police were directing everyone
except emergency vehicles to the local football ground. Dozens of people were arriving carrying belongings and pets.

Rachel was snuffling softly within minutes and Sarah was soundly asleep when I checked on them. Girls settled, I quickly slipped outside to check the situation with the neighbours, who were still on the nature strip.

‘Does anyone know what's going on?' I asked.

Everyone shook their heads.

I caught snatches of conversation above the wind… ‘hosing down the house'… ‘water in the gutters'… ‘should we go down to the CFA?'… Something about buckets.

We all strained to be normal, to keep the panic out of our voices.

We tossed up whether we should stay or go. Stay or go. It sounds so clear-cut: if you choose to stay, make sure you're fully equipped and prepared to defend your property; if you choose to go, flee early. Stay or go were the only options, the doctrine that was enshrined later.

It was probably safer to stay, I thought. Procie seemed pretty calm. He was older than the rest of us and had been through bushfires before, and he wasn't going anywhere. We all stood around, saying nothing, glancing at the smoke, waiting. It was reassuring to be with the others. It took my mind off Terry.

My husband meanwhile was waiting with a group of people gathered around a two-way radio in someone's car that was picking up Country Fire Authority traffic. Terry consoled himself when he heard that the fires had skirted Upper Beaconsfield. Then one of the voices announced a wind change. The fire was headed towards his family. A call went out for help for two fire trucks in Upper Beaconsfield. The CFA line screeched and went
dead. Terry knew from what was said that those fire trucks were in the bush at the back of our street.

As darkness fell about nine o'clock, the sky to the south glowed orange-red. The streetlights were out and everything was reduced to dark outlines. The headlights of a four-wheel-drive appeared suddenly along the road. A man's voice punched out a message over a loudspeaker, a hard voice, urgently repeating the same message.

‘Leave now,' it shouted over the wind. ‘The wind's going to change. Leave now. Get out! Now!'

An abrupt, turbulent wind change was turning the flank of the fire—kilometres long—into its head. What had been a long finger of fire was becoming a massive wall.

We all scattered. I turned and ran to the house, flinging the front door open and knocking myself on something as I tried to adjust to the pitch black inside. I felt the dogs brush past me as they ran from room to room, whimpering. Sarah was sleeping on the top of the bunk in her room without clothes on. I tried to balance on the bottom bed and drag her out and down without hurting her, shaking her, urging her to wake. I fumbled around frantically and put on her pyjamas, back-to-front, and dragged her by the arm into her sister's bedroom. Rachel felt leaden as I shook her awake and pulled her sideways, trying not to frighten her. I got them both on their feet and into their sandals, but it was so dark that we were bumping into everything around us when we tried to move.