Without Warning

by Jane O'Connor

  Julie Hansen and her husband John Christadoulou had retired to their property, which stood diagonally across the road from Number 59, several years after we first moved in. John had built most of the house over six or seven years and Julie had engaged in a constant battle with the unforgiving north wind to establish a fabulous garden; it all looked out on a beautiful stand of bush and across green fields to those distant blue-hazed ranges. The four of us quickly settled into a natural, easy pattern of sharing a meal, chattering about building projects and garden ideas and, always, the weather. We would keep an eye on each other’s properties if either couple was away.

  The Chandlers, landlocked at the end of an easement running through John and Julie’s property, were happy in their mudbrick house, farming sheep as a sideline and generating their own power and water. Their son Tim would head through our paddocks each morning, to cut a long round trip off his school bus ride, and stop for a chat. Later, when Tim went to university, that wellworn path was trodden by Kevin Smith, the eldest of three who had moved in next door with their parents Dionne and Mark. Their property, also at the lower end of Deviation Road, adjoins ours on two boundaries. It was heartening to see the generations ticking over and watch as Kevin replaced Tim in dodging our two nosy horses, Ricky and Eliza—acquired along the way—and an even nosier trio of white goats—the offspring and remnants of our original blackberry-eaters. Kevin’s younger brother Kane and little sister Kelsey were also regular visitors and Kelsey would line up to stay the night when Dionne and Mark went out.

  The Cahills owned a property further along the road, adjoining John and Julie’s: they lived off the mountain, but would come up at weekends. Next to them were Karen Ostenried and husband Bernie Svoboda, who had moved to the road before us and did so owing in part to their love of horses. Once past their property, the left-hand side of the road—with bush blocks and ferny, shaded gullies—was sparsely populated. Towards the top end of the road stood Peter Mitchell’s attractive mudbrick house with its views out through a stand of mountain ash. Here too were the Lawless family, Pam and Terry and their son Craig; Terry and Craig had a long history of service with the CFA. Kate and Ivan Rowbotham were building their retirement home at the far end of the road, where it rejoined the main road.

  Others from further afield became friends when local issues spurred us into collective action, and of course people with similar interests and senses of humour tend naturally to gravitate towards each other. At the same time, nobody on the mountain intruded unnecessarily on anyone else; we all enjoyed our solitude and respected it in others. But we’d share surplus vegies, keep an eye on each other’s properties, help if needed, swap notes about experiences and, out of necessity, observe the seasons coming and going. The Chandlers kept detailed weather records for their sheep and horticultural production.

  The seasons are very distinctive on the mountain. There is the obvious—drifts of bulbs pushing through in spring, bees coming out of hibernation, the rate at which the pasture grows, vegie and fruit harvests, autumn leaves, snow most winters. Acutely aware of bird and animal behaviour and bush signals, Sean has always had an extra sense, what he calls ‘a gypsy instinct’, about what may or may not be on the weather horizon. He is also a natural conversationalist and could often be found engaging the brain of one of the older farmers or residents he’d run into.

  A normal part of the seasonal routine was the annual burn-off. All jokes about men and boxes of matches aside, it was a longstanding ritual in late autumn or early spring to clear as much undergrowth and combustible debris as possible. There was only a small window of opportunity to get the piles dry enough before burn-off restrictions came into force. Summer rain was the norm on the mountain—grass up to the fence tops before you knew it, high hay yields, well-fed livestock. When the lowland world was getting browned off, we’d crow about still being green. Sean’s brother Marty would drive up from the flatlands of the baking northern suburbs and declare, ‘It’s like a different world up here.’ We were able at times to offer farmers elsewhere, in the grip of severe drought, the use of our lush land to save a core herd.

  Over the years the burn-off morphed into a social occasion. At some point, the council contractors stopped slashing the growth along the roadside. (As we’d planted our own verges, we weren’t in fact sorry to see the last of the mower that charged indiscriminately through our handiwork.) We all picked up the slack, mowing as well as clearing bark and fallen tree limbs. The ensuing burn-off was a Sunday job, with lots of conversation about fire behaviour, the odd flame that escaped and needed reining in; in the late afternoon we’d all share a cold glass of wine and a plate of nibbles. Sean would keep tabs on the ember piles for the rest of the night and we’d feel satisfied that our fuel-reduction efforts were in order.

  From 2004, though, the burnable mounds turned into huge piles. Summer rain dried up and the winters didn’t bring their usual degree of bogging mud. The howling northerlies came belting in earlier, often before Christmas; the paddocks turned brown and crisp. We were burning off several times a season instead of just once, and the roadside heaps formed a string of beacon fires that must have looked eerie to airline pilots flying into Melbourne. It was a struggle to keep gardens watered as rainwater-tank contents dropped. Fruits and vegetables would ripen, whereas they’d struggled to get enough heat before. Our mountain climate was palpably changing.

  The timber deck Sean and I had added to the side of the house became an observation post, the place to flop once you’d got up ‘the Windies’ on a hot day. Whatever Melbourne’s thermometer says, you can shave around six degrees off that for the mountain: what the weather bureau predicts for the metropolis has to be recalibrated for Kinglake. Add the awning provided by the trees and we could feel smug when sweltering friends rang to bemoan the pitiless heat elsewhere; here, a day that brought 36°C was considered aberrant. Not for us too many nights of pacing the floor, too hot to sleep—we’d just head for the deck, or for the backyard now beautifully paved with old factory bricks. A glass of wine in hand, we’d kick back and watch the summer world instead of television. The dogs—black labrador Harley, blue-heeler-cross Meg, and Jazz the Jack Russell cross—sprawled at our feet or hung over the end of the verandah.

  Early evening was peak-hour for birds, which chattered in and out of the towering mountain ash until dusk put them to sleep. Parrots came in for seed and for water that was always topped up and cool. Stunning green and orange king parrots became bold enough to tap on the window—ominous, given they normally prefer to be at lower altitudes and around water. We were also being visited by larger kangaroos rather than the smaller wallabies we were used to; they were getting higher and higher up the mountain in their search for food and drink. Butterflies formed a colourful, fluttering cloud in the flowering gum, while the speckled brown birds known as tree creepers vacuumed bugs from its bark. ‘It’s amazing how much life there is in that one tree,’ Sean often observed. We’d watch the sun set and turn the wattles from purple to blue–grey, the thick clouds of insects just above the paddock grass, and the swallows zeroing in for a feeding frenzy (this swooping, bug-eating activity always happened between weather fronts). Sean would rail at the flocking Indian myna birds that invaded his line of sight. ‘Bloody cane toads with wings,’ he’d mutter. Like cane toads in northern Queensland, Indian mynas were imported to control crop pests but became pests themselves: Sean had declared war on them for invading the nesting sites of native birds.

  The deck was the venue for many a conversation about firesafety planning too. The devastating bushfires that had ripped through the state of Victoria in January 1939 were still talked about. It was the state’s worst fire tragedy, known henceforth as Black Friday: seventy people died and two million hectares of land, plus entire townships, were destroyed; the old-timers around Kinglake still talked about it. A long, severe drought saw uncontrolled smaller fires that had been burning for a week turn into giant, rampaging firestorms as temperatures soared an
d winds whipped up to the extent that flames were leaping from mountain peak to mountain peak. The massive fireballs that threatened or wiped out townships were etched forever into the memories of survivors. In those days firefighting brigades, which received little financial support from the government, used wet hessian sacks as their primary weapon.

  The forests of the Great Dividing Range were devastated by one of the first fire outbreaks—at Toolangi, near Kinglake—in early January that year. Attempts to contain it failed and the flames burnt into the Lower Acheron Valley and Narbethong before racing through the Cathedral Range near Buxton and on towards Marysville. Outbreaks ringed towns such as Warburton before wind changes saved them. Others were not so lucky, with small forest towns such as Noojee being wiped out and dozens of sawmills and properties destroyed in iconic locations such as Bright. A deliberately lit fire near Colac in the Western District leapt through the hills to the seaside retreat of Lorne, sending people scurrying onto the beach for safety. Warrandyte, on Melbourne’s outer-eastern fringe, was also threatened and the Black Forest near Woodend in the Macedon Ranges was all but destroyed. The subsequent royal commission’s findings laid the basis for much of today’s bushfire policy and led to the establishment, in 1945, of a single rural firefighting agency, the Country Fire Authority.

  While Kinglake township largely escaped the full onslaught of Black Friday, the ranges surrounding it lay in ruins. The destructive Ash Wednesday fires of 16 February 1983 also spared the town, but the resulting development of a ‘Stay and defend or go early’ policy was well known, well studied and well discussed. Ash Wednesday was tattooed on my brain; I was working at the time as Victorian news editor for the national wire service, Australian Associated Press. On 16 February, the newsroom went onto full alert as the world watched a series of smaller fires picked up by a violent wind change and racing, in one day, through the Dandenong Ranges near Melbourne, wiping out most of Mount Macedon and roaring down the Great Ocean Road to burn out communities such as Aireys Inlet and Anglesea before again being stopped by the ocean at Lorne. In Victoria, there were forty-seven dead; in South Australia, the death toll was twenty-eight. Around 8000 people were evacuated and the loss of homes and buildings was horrendous. I still recall clearly the reports of giant fireballs, formed by eucalyptus gas, being flung kilometres ahead of fire fronts, and the descriptions of the jet-like roar as fronts approached.

  The ‘Stay and defend or go early’ policy, which began to be developed after Ash Wednesday but was not fully introduced for several years, was unique to Australia. It was based on findings from previous deadly bushfires that people who could stay and defend their property—sheltering in the house until a firestorm passed and then actively attacking any ember strikes—had a higher chance of survival than those who fled late and were trapped on roads. There was an understanding between us Deviation Road residents about who would stay and who would go in the event of a bushfire.

  By the beginning of 2006 we were noticing that there was an increasing number of total-fire-ban days. The radio was automatically tuned to the ABC (the state’s emergency broadcaster) throughout summer, and we developed our own fire plans. These were tested on Australia Day that year, when a blaze broke out near Kinglake, its front clearly visible from Deviation Road.

  As soon as the alert went out we made the firm decision to stay, as did John and Julie, the Chandlers and the Cahills. We had organised the safety clothing, worked out what to do in the event of an ember attack, and formed a united neighbourhood front to keep each other informed of any falling, burning debris. It was clearly understood that the behaviour of the wind would be crucial. We blocked up doors and windows with wet towels and constantly soaked walls, gutters, roofs, verandahs and any combustible material. A convoy of horse floats and livestock trucks headed past our back boundary, taking animals to safety at council facilities that had been set up in Whittlesea. As soon as the fire was observed, emergency services had arrived on the scene and we felt fully prepared to stay and defend our own patch, and even to lend the neighbours a hand if necessary. The Smiths were in Perth with Kevin, while Dionne’s father minded the other two children at home. The couple next to John and Julie also planned to stay, despite being in their eighties, as they weren’t willing to leave the cattle behind. Most of the residents at the top, heavily treed end of the road—including the Lawless family, with all their firefighting knowledge—had said that in the event of a major outbreak they would most likely head off the mountain, judging their properties too hard to defend.

  Our road became a vantage point for local fire crews who had been assigned to the township to respond to building fires and to protect as many homes as possible in the local area they were familiar with. Aggravating ‘rubber-neckers’ arrived in droves too, dumping their rubbish, sitting on their car roofs as if they were at a country football match, and generally getting underfoot until the police cleared them out. The wind was dancing in all directions, taking the fire front first one way and then another. We followed the emergency services broadcasts like they were the bible and trusted our own eyes, ears and instincts. We donned our fire clothing—overalls, boots, woollen shirts, masks, hats, gloves, goggles—and there was a tacit understanding that we wouldn’t be getting any sleep until it was over. There was time to prepare fire-breaks, rake up more flammable material, fill gutters with water, drench garden beds and external structures, fill extra water receptacles and place them strategically around the house, top up water tanks from the artesian bore, prepare food in case of power cuts. We worked calmly in unison in the way we’d planned, dealing efficiently with falling embers and checking on others to see if they needed help. As the wind brought burning gum leaves and twigs onto the property, we would either hose them out or attack them with wet towels or a soaking mop. Walking around the exterior of the house constantly, watching for any points where embers might enter, became our constant patrol. If embers did fall, we’d call John and Julie to ensure that they too were on the lookout.

  The fire crews watching from the roadside described this as a ‘lazy’ fire, as distinct from those whipped to a frenzy by ferocious wind and heat. By now, most of the women and children had left the mountain. As one of the few women left, and the holder of an advanced food-handling qualification, I joined the pub’s landlady, Michelle Dunscombe, and—with new crews still rolling in from across and outside the state—we pumped out up to 600 meals a night for hungry firefighters, with help from anyone we could dragoon into action. Supplying food for crews was a matter of controversy at the time: bureaucracy had gone mad over the issue of food hygiene and safety, with the result that the activities of traditional Australian providers of fire-front fodder, such as the Country Women’s Association, Salvation Army and Red Cross, had been put on hold. But we had a commercial kitchen, a trained food-handler and an army of exhausted firefighters lining up—there was no way they weren’t going to get a decent meal.

  The ABC broadcasts belted out over the kitchen noise and I stayed on full alert for any mention of Deviation Road coming under direct fire attack; Sean was at Number 59 on his own. The crews coming in for food, who were watching like hawks for any winds whipping up, kept us well up to date. They told us that water-bombing aircraft were on their way and would focus on preserving the huge power pylons that march through Kinglake, down the mountain, through Strathewen and on to Melbourne. Meanwhile, we kept frying, grilling, chopping and peeling, and found ways around the roadblocks to get food supplies in. The bush telegraph worked wonders: bakery owners from as far away as Healesville brought in van-loads of bread rolls, and the local supermarket owner carted anything he could lay his hands on across the road. A truck-load of eskys enabled us to get lunch packs out to the fireline. Without them, many a firefighter was facing up to fourteen hours without food.

  My neighbour Julie joined the lunch-making team. We were nervous that we’d left Sean and John at home, but it was understood if Deviation Road was mentioned the aprons were off. My
daughter Tania was on the phone constantly from her home in Eltham, about 25 kilometres south-west of us, ordering me to ‘Get the hell out of there now!’ But there was no sense of panic, just heightened alert. The pub kitchen was filling with smoke and we cooked wearing filter masks, cracking jokes.

  Then, without warning, the wind changed and a fireball ripped across the roof of the pub, with deafening noise. We hunkered down inside, contemplating heading for the beer cellar if it got worse. Outside, a bunch of firefighters jumped back on their trucks and threw everything at it. Then they re-formed the food queue and we dished up. All of a sudden, we heard on the ABC that the fire had spotted into Deviation Road. I called Sean on the mobile, raced to the car and made straight for Number 59. Our road was like a war zone: water-bombing helicopters were spraying the Chandlers’ bush; strike teams were racing down the easement; there were wall-to-wall CFA trucks. We opened our bores and dams if they wanted to fill up—we knew we’d be taking care of our individual properties. The Smiths rang from Perth, frantic at the news reports they were hearing. We jumped the fence and suggested to Grandpa Bob that he had time to load the kids and dogs and get across to Healesville. We’d do what we could on their property, we assured the Smiths, until they could get a flight back.

  A few weeks before the fires, Sean and I had bought the next-door property, Number 1, from Barry Southern. It was a financial stretch, but once we got it to tenantable condition, we figured, it would provide us with good options: we could rent it out to help fund our retirement, or hive it off and sell it. Our insurance broker remarked ominously at the time, ‘You’d better insure it before the fire alerts go up, or you’ll have a job getting cover’, and we did so. But now we made a clear decision: we would defend our house first, but in the event of a major burn we couldn’t take care of Number 1 (which was unoccupied) as well.