Without Warning

by Jane O'Connor

  Sean went into full swing at Number 59: wetting down all the combustible items again, putting out embers as they fell, patrolling constantly, walking across the road to check the fire front, teaming up with John and Julie and Kevin and Rose. Our abiding recollection of that fire is of interminable waiting. Adrenaline levels were up, sleep was out of the question and we steeled ourselves psychologically for any major physical effort that might come. Water containers were full, wet towels were in place. We took naps in shifts, with our boots on, organised shared meals and kept the good humour going.

  In the end our properties were untouched, though it was four days before the fire was declared under control. Life quickly returned to normal, but being an analytical lot we frequently revisited our fire plans—that fire was picked over down to the last detail. Our neighbourhood set up its own community fire-guard group, for which the CFA provided a direct liaison officer. We took it in turns to host the training meetings, teasing our CFA contact whenever she tried to raise the subject of how traumatised we might be after the fire. Traumatised? Only when the beer got warm! Or when Rose Chandler couldn’t find the tiger snakes that had crawled out of the bush and into her house for safety. We did, though, crank up our regular clearing of anything that would easily ignite and were vigilant about our efforts to burn off and reduce fuel loads.

  For the rest of that summer we remained fire-free. Sean and I got stuck into renovating Number 1: more painting, renovating, cleaning and gardening. ‘We must be mad,’ he declared. ‘Here we are again, hacking out blackberries and taking down tree branches, not to mention replacing gutters and tanks.’ We confined potential tenants to about half a hectare—enough to mow and take care of—and told the managing agent that they must be made aware they were in a fire-prone area, that they should not consider staying to defend the property, and that they should have contents insurance.

  2

  An ill wind

  DURING 2007 and 2008, the fire-guard meetings continued and many a barbecue and dinner were defined by conversations about the 2006 fire and the changing weather patterns on the mountain. It was not just those of us who planned to stay in the event of a fire who attended the meetings, but also those intending to go. Other friends, who lived on the Whittlesea–Kinglake Road, organised their own local fire-guard group. It all seemed to be working in the spirit of good, responsible community behaviour; we felt under control.

  In late winter 2008 there was a particularly severe snowfall that stayed on the ground for days, closing schools and roads. This wasn’t normal: it snows most years on the mountain, but rarely enough to stick. Sitting on the big trees and carpeting the lawns it did, though, provide some of the most beautiful photos Sean has ever taken of Number 59. We had them blown up and framed for the hallway.

  It was hot early that summer. Sean’s precious vegie garden needed daily watering, gum leaves and twigs constantly carpeted the backyard and crunched underfoot like potato crisps, and long strips of bark dangled from the mountain ash as they shucked off any unnecessary baggage. The paddocks were browner than we’d ever seen them and Sean had already decided to slash all the dry grass early. ‘We might even get those bloody figs to ripen,’ he said of the tree which each year tantalised us with a bumper crop that never quite received enough heat to turn the fruit from green to purple.

  The family traffic came and went as usual. My granddaughter Carissa, Tania’s daughter, was a regular inhabitant, often with an assortment of school friends; Number 59 had become her retreat from the outside world. Sean would pick her up in Eltham on weekdays and take her to school the next morning. It became the norm to have two or three chattering girls sitting outside under the stars, discussing the meaning of teenage life and later all jumping into a big bed together.

  Early 2009 continued the promise of a hot summer. Water levels in the catchments were perilously low; the drought was an unrelenting presence; the air-conditioning seemed to be on constantly. We kept up our usual preparations for the fire season. In one conversation with John and Julie we pontificated that any fires were likely to hit us from the north, given the days of greatest fire danger were those with top temperatures, no rain and the vicious northerlies that put us all on edge. Southerly winds usually spell cooler, sea-breeze-driven changes for us and we look forward to them. ‘If anything ever came up from the south through the national park we’d be in strife. Nothing has been burnt in there for years and it’s all uphill,’ I recall saying. Fire gathers momentum as it moves uphill: give it a tail wind and the speed becomes alarming.

  By the beginning of February, the temperatures were hitting the mid-30s. Some days it was hotter in Kinglake than was forecast for the city. But life went on pretty much as usual, with family and friends coming and going; Carissa had reached the stage where half her wardrobe was in her room at Number 59. My nephew Brad had rung in late January to say he was bringing his new partner Sarah over for the Australia v. New Zealand cricket in February and they’d love to visit us the weekend after. They might have another friend with them, he told me. ‘Fine,’ I said. Savagely hot weather was predicted for the cricket, with talk of a run of days in the 40s. Total fire bans were a given: it was being said that this would be the worst fire season ever. But we’d heard that year after year, ramped up a bit as the drought continued to suck the life out of plant matter across the state. We kept our grass low, slashed paddocks, constantly raked up leaves and bark, and thanked God for the bore water that was keeping the vegies going. We’d never run the air-conditioner so often overnight.

  The three days of 40°C hit like an inferno, dry and searing. The drive home through the national park had an ominous feel to it. Trees were dropping branches; you could smell the eucalyptus oil evaporating out of the gum leaves. The grass was brown, the north wind relentless. The car tyres slid on bitumen that had turned to liquid—shimmering in the sun and dangerous to hit. No respite except to stay indoors, with the air-conditioning sapping the power grid. Birds perched on the birdbaths, their beaks open, gasping for air. The horses stayed in their shelter, out of the sun. The dogs weren’t moving far. Dust and dirt were blowing in, coating everything.

  We prayed for the southerly change. When it finally arrived, around 4 February, we headed outdoors. The 30s temperatures that followed felt like heaven by comparison. But there had been almost a fortnight of temperatures over that—this summer seemed interminable. On Friday 6 February, we started preparing for Brad and Sarah’s arrival the next day. There had been days of warnings by the state premier and the emergency services that Saturday was going to be a dangerous day. The messages were clear: temperatures would soar back into the 40s, winds would be gale-force, the fire danger extreme. Victorians were advised to keep off the roads and only venture out if absolutely necessary. If residents in fire-prone areas were intending to leave their properties, they should go early. No specific locations were mentioned at that stage—it was a blanket warning. I’d spoken to Julie about it during the week. ‘If anything happens, we’ll be ready,’ she said.

  Sean brought Carissa and a friend up the mountain after school. They were in a bit of trouble over some misdemeanour and were effectively grounded, so it was perhaps more appealing to sit under the stars at Number 59 than be at home deprived of their social life. They had arrived a little grumpy—they’d far rather have been out with their friends—and weren’t happy about there being another 40°C day on the way. We ate dinner outside. The stars had never seemed brighter—clear as a bell, a gorgeous sight. The girls were on a quest to spot as many shooting stars as possible, given that each one meant they’d have a wish granted. I kept whingeing about the quantity of dry leaves and twigs—fire fuel—still filling up the backyard, but decided to leave it until the morning, so things would be pristine when our guests arrived. ‘I’ve never seen so much stuff dropping so constantly,’ I said to Sean.

  An opportunity arose for the girls to spend the Saturday on a property at the bottom of the mountain, where they could swim i
n the dam and perhaps deal better with the heat. ‘I think it’s going to be worse outdoors,’ I said. ‘Besides, you’ll have to ask your mother,’ I added, flicking a potential flouting of the Friday night grounding back to my daughter. A phone call to Tania brought an emphatic ‘No’. Carissa accepted that and we all had a fun night—a lot of banter, teasing and laughs. Life was good aboard the Battlestar and we all slept in peace.

  3

  Black

  Saturday

  IT is morning and Sean starts to wet the place down. He gave it a soaking last night too: the watering process has become a nightly after-work ritual. Again he drenches the garden beds, floods the vegies, flicks debris out of gutters. He saturates the areas around the entire house. Carissa starts taking photos of him—she loves our digital camera. The radio is on, tuned to the ABC.

  Brad calls and I suggest they might like to change their plans. An air-conditioned hotel room and some indoor shopping might be preferable to a day of intense heat on the mountain. ‘We’ll be fine, Aunty. Really looking forward to seeing you. In any case, it’s pretty damned hot everywhere,’ he says. He seems more concerned that the Kiwis lost the cricket yesterday, and that we meet Sarah.

  ‘Is it still okay if we bring my mate Mike with us?’

  ‘No problem,’ I say, ‘plenty of room for everybody. We’re supposed to stay off the roads, so I reckon the earlier Sean comes to pick you up the better. At least we can sit around up here in air-conditioned comfort.’ Brad isn’t too concerned, and besides, we can wait it out until the change predicted for later in the day. But even now, mid-morning, the air-conditioning is struggling. The thermometer is rising even as we look at it, the wind is gathering speed, there’s a heat haze. It isn’t going to be pleasant.

  Sean heads off to pick up Brad and the others in Melbourne, and is going to drop Carissa’s friend home on the way. Tania is planning to join us when she finishes work. She calls from her office in Thomastown, a suburb some 15 kilometres north of Melbourne and about 35 kilometres south of us. ‘Nobody’s coming in today,’ she says. ‘The roads were deserted this morning. They’ve all stayed home and who can blame them. I reckon we’ll be closing the doors early and getting out of here.’ The heat is already unbearable and the north wind is howling. So much for my efforts to make the backyard look good—it’s full of leaves and debris again.

  We plan to eat outside later in the day, maybe crash under the cool sycamore. I sweep up another mountain of leaves and put them in the brick firepit for burning later, but they’re already blowing out. The gum trees are raining shards of bark. It’s so hot—strangling, chest-tightening hot—and it doesn’t feel quite right; it just isn’t normal. I feel on edge. The air-conditioning is really labouring now, but the only place to be is inside. I do a bit more housework and take a cool shower. Housework: who am I trying to impress? But the beds are ready.

  Carissa is chattering, bemoaning the heat. Sean calls to say they’ve stopped to buy beer and will be back soon, around lunchtime. He says there’s plenty of smoke to the north-west of us, towards the township of Wandong on the Hume Freeway, he thinks, but that’s a good 40–50 kilometres away. The Hume is the state’s main north–south artery and if it has to be closed there will be traffic chaos as motorists seek alternate routes. I hear radio reports of a fire at Kilmore East and Wandong: Julie, who has been in constant touch, is plugged into the fire-alert websites and has the maps out, plotting the fire.

  The family spills out of the car around 1.30 p.m. It’s great to see Brad again and to meet Sarah and Mike. They’re shell-shocked by the heat. ‘Man, and I thought it was hot at the cricket yesterday,’ says Brad, and he pulls out a large green-and-gold sombrero bought specially for the occasion. I tease him about the fact that he spent a year in the Antarctic and would play golf there in the nude but can’t hack a bit of good old Aussie warmth. They pass on lunch—too hot to eat at this point—and Brad and Mike go for a walk in the back garden with a stubby in hand. The dogs take a raincheck on going with them. Unusual: they’re always up for an excursion. Sarah stays inside and we have a get-to-know-you chat. She’s sensible and nice. Just what Brad needs, I think.

  ‘We can see a fair bit of smoke coming back from the city. They were talking about closing the Hume Freeway,’ Sean says. We discuss where a fire in the Kilmore/Wandong area is likely to head: if there were a northerly behind it, we would see smoke over John and Julie’s way, but the sky is brilliantly clear. The radio keeps putting out updates and we don’t feel any sense of alarm, because the fire’s still far away and heading in another direction, away from us. Other blazes are breaking out across the state, though. ‘That’s going to stretch things a bit,’ I say. Whenever there are multiple fires burning, both ground and aerial firefighting resources have to be carefully deployed to cover as much territory as possible.

  Nobody is up for too much activity. The heat is energy-sapping. I flop in a chair on the bricks outside. Brad heads back from the vegie garden and hands me his beer. ‘Check out how hot the bottle is. That’s amazing: it’s undrinkable in a few minutes,’ he says. It makes me feel even more uneasy. The wind is like a blast furnace now. Magpies are landing on the lawn with their wings outspread, unable to stay in the air.

  ‘Oh well, we’ve had a run of days over 40 and this is supposed to be the last one,’ I say in hope. I go for a stroll in the back garden to check where the horses are. Some corrugated iron has torn loose from their shelter and is banging in the wind, so I head back in and tell Sean that in this gale it’s likely to take off and cut somebody in half. He takes Brad and Mike, and the cordless drill, and they bolt the shelter back together, struggling against the wind. That done, we all gather in the backyard, lethargic. Julie and I stay in touch by phone, continuing to monitor the ABC and the internet. There is now reference to a growing ‘Murrindindi complex’ fire (Murrindindi is the name of our shire), but it is still said to be well away from us and burning in the opposite direction. At this stage of the day, we decide to stick at our own properties and forgo the usual drinks-and-dinner get-together later in the day. ‘John’s bringing the generator down and clearing some things,’ Julie tells me. ‘We’re putting everything in place, just in case.’

  The radio says the Hume Freeway has now been closed, as the intense northerly is pushing the fire in its direction. We feel confident that all the reported fire activity is still moving away from us, but we’re also very conscious that fires can break out anywhere on a day like this. At around 2.30 p.m. I start to see a plume of smoke, off to the right across the Whittlesea–Kinglake Road. Pure white and voluminous against the vivid blue sky, it seems a long way away. We all watch it for a while, but there’s no mention of anything more specific than the ‘Murrindindi complex’ fire.

  Tania calls at around three o’clock to say she’s leaving work: they’ve closed the doors, as it’s obvious nobody is venturing out in the heat. She’s heading onto Plenty Road, which runs north from the city to Whittlesea, roughly parallel to the Hume Freeway, and plans to come up the mountain that way. I warn her that there might be a lot of truck traffic and that the Hume is closed. We all decide to sit it out until she arrives: we catch up on family gossip, banter about the cricket. Carissa is with Sean, snapping away with the camera.

  Half an hour later Tania calls again, sounding distressed. Police have stopped her at a roadblock on the outskirts of Whittlesea. ‘Even when I said my daughter and family are up there, they wouldn’t let me through. What’s the best way for me to get there now?’ She’s argued with them to no avail. ‘They say it’s because of the fire further up the Hume Freeway.’

  ‘It will be because they’re worried that some idiots will try and get through to the Hume the back way,’ I suggest. There are several ways to cut through from Plenty Road to the highway. Tania says she can see a lot of smoke, and given the plume we are seeing beyond the main road we figure it must a fairly significant burn.

  I propose to Tania that she turn around and head ho
me if she’s feeling uncomfortable. Sean suggests instead that she go back along Plenty Road and take the turnoff east to Arthurs Creek, then come up the mountain through Strathewen. Bowden Spur Road, which leads from there to Kinglake, turns to precipitous gravel but we are all used to driving it. We often refer to it as ‘the powerline road’ because of the massive pylons that traverse the bush here. It cuts kilometres off the trip to or from Plenty Road, and we use it often for that as well as for trips to the lovely old community hall at Strathewen. Tania isn’t confident about making the journey on her own this time, though, given the severe wind and flying branches, and she isn’t sure which road fork to take for Strathewen. Sean tells her to go towards Arthurs Creek and he will go down in the Land Rover and meet her there, so she can follow him back up.

  Carissa goes with him, the camera still strung around her neck. The colour of the smoke plume has changed: it now has a dirty, yellowish tinge. I ring Julie, who says she’s had a visit from a friend who lives near the township and is a veteran firefighter. He’s seen the smoke and also doesn’t like the colour in it, and suggests we put our fire plans into action now. If the wind changes direction, he fears the fire will head towards us.

  The power goes off at about 3.30 p.m. This is nothing unusual for Kinglake, as falling trees and high winds often unplug us. Julie has her battery radio going: ‘They mentioned Nutfield might come under attack,’ she says, and plots it on her map. Nutfield, near Arthurs Creek, is not a household name, being more a small collection of properties than a township. We agree to make our own decisions to activate fire plans, and swing into action. I suggest that with the extra hands we have at Number 59 we should be able to cope with any ember attacks. If they hit John and Julie first, we can send resources there. Our tight little team has closed ranks.