Another time the Country Fire Authority attended a burning wreck and found a bloke dead in the driver’s seat. Tragic, but not particularly urgent; until somebody noticed that the hole in the windscreen looked man-made. They searched the scrub and found the passenger fifty metres away—still alive.
Today, however, Roger Wood completes the trip without incident and cruises into the main street.
Kinglake started out as a rough and ready timber, mining and farming community, named after Alexander Kinglake, an English author whose contributions to posterity are an out-of-print history of the Crimean War and a town he never saw. These days the majority of the population works off the mountain, making the long haul down The Windies every day. They’re drawn here by the cheap land and the beautiful environment. You can buy a cedar kit-home and put it on a big bush block, live a life you couldn’t buy for a million bucks in Melbourne: wake up and smell the eucalypts, listen to the kookaburras chortle on the setting sun. An ideal place to raise a family or see out your days.
It’s a town of frozen winters and log fires, of red-earth potato farms and pick-your-own berries. It’s a town where Aussie Rules football rules. The Whittlesea Country Music Festival is on this weekend. You can guarantee a lot of the locals will have made the thirty-kilometre drive down the mountain for it despite the heat— and despite their eclectic makeup: farmers and greenies, university lecturers and labourers, tradespeople and teachers, musicians and shop assistants. They have their little run-ins from time to time, but the differences are mostly balanced out by a powerful sense of community.
And the town has one thing going for it that is unique, something that doubtless contributes to that sense of community: the Kinglake National Park, 22,360 hectares of luminescent fern gullies and waterfalls, kilometre after kilometre of walking tracks and nature trails.
Take a tramp along those trails and chances are you’ll come across one of the subtle wonders of the bush: a ring of yabby holes that give away the location of an underground lake, an orb weaver suspended in mid-air, a currawong call that is in fact a lyrebird mimicking a currawong.
The vegetation is as rich a display of nature’s plenty as you’ll find on Earth. On the lower, more exposed slopes, red box and narrow-leafed peppermint gums predominate. On the more sheltered south- and east-facing slopes, magnificent stands of mountain ash up to seventy metres in height are common. There are specimens in the Wallaby Creek catchment that, at over ninety metres, are among the tallest trees in the world. The understorey varies enormously, with patches of bracken and blanket bush, musk-daisy, hazel pomaderris, blackwood and silver wattle.
The locals are proud of their forest and inspired by it. Many of them make their homes along its shadowy perimeters, and on any day of the week you see people—ordinary joes, dads home from work, kids at hand, mums with four-wheel-drive prams—just wandering around, soaking it up. You might get seventy observers on a freezing winter dawn for the annual lyrebird survey, hundreds of visitors on a Saturday in spring. The National Park is what makes the district a unique, peaceful place to live. When it’s not on fire.
Acting Sergeant Roger Wood pulls into the police station and opens the office. He’s on his own this shift, in charge of the police station and the town itself while his superior, Jon Ellks, is on leave. His radio call-sign is Kinglake-350. The date is Saturday, February 7, 2009.
FIRE PLAN
Roger Wood’s working day starts out no differently from hundreds of others over the past five years. He checks the messages on the phone and the equipment in the strongroom, reports in to the police communications centre, D24.
‘Kinglake-350 to VKC Wangaratta. Stats for the day: One up— Code Two—Wood the member on till 1800.’
‘Thanks Kinglake-350.’
‘Roger and out.’
‘Roger, Roger.’
A brief smile. How many times has he heard that one? ‘You have a good day now.’
Although he’s a long-term local, Wood only joined the Kinglake staff five years ago. Early in his career he spent six years as a beat copper in places like Preston and Broadmeadows—some of Melbourne’s more challenging suburbs—but he was out of general duties for a long time after that, with fourteen years in the Victoria Police Mounted Branch. At Mounted he did everything from breaking in horses to driving the transporter. The most satisfying aspect of the job was search and rescue. You never knew what to expect. You might get a call in the middle of the night from anywhere in the state, usually somewhere rough: a bushwalker lost, a skier in trouble, a school group overdue. Load up the horses and away you’d go. He experienced the full gamut of police operations during those years, or as much of it as you saw from the back of a horse. As well as the bush work, there were demonstrations and riots; crowd-control operations—not the least risky of them at the footy, where they copped the job of escorting the umpires on and off the field.
Roger Wood loved the Mounted Branch, but it was more than an hour’s drive away, too far for a man with a young family. Sergeant Jon Ellks, the officer in charge of the Kinglake district, had known Wood for twenty years and was pleased the day he rang up and asked if there were any vacancies on Ellks’ patch.
‘Pain in the arse, he was, from the day he arrived in Kinglake,’ says Ellks. ‘But in the best sense. He wanted to know everything. If there was something he didn’t know, he’d ask. And if I didn’t know, he’d say, “But we have to find out.” And I might say, “Rodge, mate, it doesn’t really matter,” he’d say, “No, no, no—might come in handy some day.”’
That was how Wood approached the job from day one. He’s steeped himself in the culture of the district. He knows the back roads, the black spots, the short cuts. He knows who is likely to own the little plantation in the scrub, who’ll be driving home drunk, which kids are in trouble at home. If he’s called to a disturbance at the pub, chances are he knows exactly what’s going to happen— who’ll be there, how they’ll react, how it’ll end up—before he walks in the door.
Having done time in some of the roughest postings in Melbourne, he is perfectly capable of bringing force to bear if there’s no other option. But he’s come to realise that more often than not there are other options. Michelle Marshall, proprietor of the Toolangi Tavern, comments that there never seems to be trouble when Wood is around. ‘He just radiates confidence,’ she comments. ‘Never seen him use force. He doesn’t have to.’
If there’s one thing that everybody interviewed for this book agrees upon, it is this ability to inspire confidence. There was the man with the psychiatric problems who took to calling D24 in the middle of the night, saying he was having troubles but he’d only see ‘that Woody feller, thanks’. The mother who rang him to report her son for theft because she knew he’d get a fair deal. One woman, whose first and only meeting with him came when he booked her for speeding and driving an unregistered vehicle, commented: ‘He was so charming about it, this big, handsome fellow, explaining what I’d done wrong, saying how he knew I’d learn from it. Far as I was concerned he could have booked me all day.’
On February 7, with Jon Ellks on leave, Wood is acting sergeant. But the values Ellks has always instilled into his team—personal commitment, strong community relationships, an intimate knowledge of the region—are Roger Wood’s values too, and they will save a lot of lives before the day is done.
As Wood goes about the morning rituals, he keeps an eye on the sky and an ear on the radio, listening in particular for any indications of fire. There are none yet, but from experience he knows they tend to come later in the day. The police are about as ready as they can be. They’ve met with the other emergency services organisations on the mountain—the Country Fire Authority, State Emergency Service, Ambulance Victoria, Department of Sustainability and Environment—and done what they could to alert the community.
If he has time, though, he might take a wander up the main street later. Wouldn’t do any harm, show some presence on a day like this. Gives people reassuran
ce just seeing the uniform. He knows just about everybody he’s likely to encounter: a lot of them are friends. Andrew from the video hire. Brad, the printer. Laur, who owns the sheepskin shop. At Cappa Rossi’s Pizza, Isabella and Rossi have even named a pizza after him, the Woody Special.
His latent concerns are intensified when a woman with a couple of kids comes in and tells him she’s worried about the weather. You can tell she’s not a local soon as she walks in. She says she’s only just moved up the mountain, doesn’t have a fire plan. Doesn’t quite know what a fire plan is.
The Country Fire Authority recommends that every household in a bushfire zone should have a written fire plan, a document that ensures the household is as ready for fire as it can be. It covers matters such as preparing your property (surrounds trimmed, gutters clear, hoses at the ready and so on), evacuation plans, strategies for defence, emergency contact details. One of the many benefits of having a plan is to make it more likely that each member of the household will know what the others are doing: lack of communication during a bushfire can be fatal. Another is that drawing up the plan encourages residents of the fire zone to think seriously about fire—which direction is it likely to come from, what happens if the kids are home alone, which personal objects would I be shattered to lose?—something that, otherwise, surprisingly few of them do.
This woman is no Robinson Crusoe. The government’s been pushing the policy for years but despite that, research by the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre suggests that only 20 to 25 percent of households within the danger zone have taken the trouble to produce a written plan.
‘Should I be worried?’ the woman asks.
Strewth. Wood scratches his head. She lives in one of the most fire-prone communities in the world; it’s been hit by fire time and again in its 130-year history; today is the worst forecast ever, she doesn’t know what a fire plan is—and she’s asking if she should be worried?
There is a standard police procedure in these situations: do nothing other than recommend that members of the public ‘activate their fire plans’. Anything else, any specific suggestion, could go pear-shaped and leave the force open to litigation. You suggest to a person that she stay—you could be held responsible if she dies. You suggest she goes, she gets caught out on the road—same thing. But he looks at her standing there, thinks about the weather, the slope, the parched bush. Thinks about his own family down in St Andrews.
‘If I were you, ma’am, I’d take the kids and get off the mountain. Early. Like now. Go down the city somewhere, visit a friend. Lot of safer places than Kinglake on a day like this.’
The woman looks a little taken aback. ‘You really think it’s that bad?’
‘What I’d do if I were in your shoes.’
She nods, picks up a barefoot boy who’s playing with a rack of pamphlets. ‘Okay, that’s what I’ll do then.’
She leaves, and he never sees her again. But when he casts his mind back over the conversation, days later, he prays that she took his advice.
The Bureau of Meteorology might have issued hundreds of warnings during the days leading up to February 7, but how much attention the residents of Victoria paid to those warnings is open to question.
We heard them, but they were just words: we’d heard them all before. They rose out of the radio or off the screen, drifted about for a while; settled into the woodwork or floated off into the ether. You’d see the Premier, John Brumby, draw down his solemn eyebrows and you’d think, oh yeah, but he’s a politician. And those public servants: only trying to justify their fat wages. We hadn’t had a decent fire in almost thirty years.
That’s how it was for people all through rural Victoria. At the start of summer, some talking head would get up there and give you the guff about fires and threats and preparations. Every year’s going to be ‘the worst ever’. What are you supposed to do? Scuttle off down The Windies every time the weather warms up? Go and see Shrek Ten at Greensborough Plaza?
The CFA’s gold standard for warnings is a day of Total Fire Ban, when it’s an offence to light a fire, or even use a welder or grinder, out in the open. There’s been hundreds of those in the past; nothing’s ever happened. The long-term locals don’t look too worried. Really, what are the odds of getting hit? A million to one?
That’s a generalisation, of course, and unfair to a lot of people. There were those who prepared, and prepared well. They activated their fire plans. They had fire plans. Some left early, others arranged their defences: they primed the pumps, laid out the hoses, gave the property a final clean-up.
But there were many more who did few if any of those things.
There were some, even in positions of authority, who suspected that major conflagrations were a thing of the past. We were so much more sophisticated now: we had sky cranes and water bombers, improved communications, bigger, better trucks. And of course, we had the internet; the CFA website gave you regularly updated summaries of all fires reported across the state. If there was any danger, surely the authorities would let you know? There was even talk that the drought itself had made a megafire unlikely: that after twelve years’ desiccation there simply wasn’t enough fuel left to sustain a monster fire.
And if by any chance a fire does come, you know the routine. Let the main front pass; give it maybe ten minutes, then nip outside, start up the pump if you’ve got one. If not, a mop and bucket should do the trick—there was that fellow in Anglesea on Ash Wednesday back in ’83 who saved his entire street with a mop and bucket. Extinguish the spots; remain vigilant: watch for further outbreaks.
Way to go.
NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH
Heat waves and fire threats notwithstanding, Roger Wood still has routine jobs to attend to. Like any town, Kinglake has its share of trouble-makers and he’s on first-name terms with most of them: occasional drunks and dopeheads, men and women on the edge of the law. They’re part of the local subculture: grow a little weed, pick up something that’s fallen off the back of a truck (the trucks of Kinglake must have very loose tailgates, judging from the amount of stuff that falls off them). Men in lumber jackets and elastic-sided boots disappear into the bush with hunting bows, come back with a deer on the roof and a whiff of dope on the breath.
But they’re harmless enough for the most part. There’s even a kind of camaraderie between crims and cops.
That’s one of the things about living in a small town. In a place this size you have to get along. It’s simply not possible to maintain arguments, divisions and grudges the way you could in the suburbs. You live cheek-by-jowl, make allowances, get to know each other, discover you have more in common than you knew. When trouble comes, you help each other out.
Sometimes weird stuff happens. It’s the combination of isolation and the wuthering, gloomy forests: they might attract tree-huggers and naturalists, but they also attract trouble. Those lonely mountain tracks make a good place to dump cars; bury evidence or bodies. They have a certain appeal for suicides: less chance of some busybody coming along and spotting the hose attached to the tail-pipe. A year ago a group of wannabe-jihadis decided it was the sort of place to test your home-made bombs. They had the poor judgment to do it near the property of a CFA volunteer who promptly phoned the Kinglake police. They’re now doing time in Port Phillip Prison.
Today might be a bit unpredictable, Wood thinks. Things can get strange in the heat. On the one hand, a lot of the usual trouble-makers can’t be stuffed tearing themselves away from the air conditioning and the plasma screen. On the other hand, some guys get a little troppo after a few cooling ales. The two kind of cancel each other out.
A welfare check at Flowerdale is the first job: he receives a call from a father, anxious to know how his daughter is faring. She’s been having trouble with her partner, hasn’t responded to his calls. Wood goes straight out to the car. Domestics are a heavy proportion of the work out here, and he doesn’t like even the hint of one. He drives out to Flowerdale, forty kilometres away, and finds the
woman at home. She’s fine. They have a chat at the screen door.
‘Maybe you ought to make more of an effort to keep in touch,’ he suggests. The woman concurs, but when he gets back to the car he calls the man himself, just to reassure him.
Driving back to the station, he comes across a feller he knows broken down at the service station. Paul Grieve is the partner of Jane Hayward, principal of his kids’ school. A police car isn’t a taxi, but you can’t leave the poor bugger out on a day like this. He gives Paul a lift back home.
Another job comes up: a firearms inspection at a Mr Singh’s. The Singhs own a broccoli farm just out of Kinglake. He knows the family: decent people, immigrants who’ve worked hard, done well. There’s been a bit of trouble recently because they’ve been firing guns to scare off the birds; managed to scare the neighbours as well. They’ve sorted it out now, though.
Wood finds Mr Singh at home and checks that the weapon is safely stored. It is. He has a chat with the gentleman, learns more about the house, which he finds fascinating: the building is made from polystyrene sections. Even today it’s incredibly cool.
That’s one of the things he likes about this job: there’s always something to learn. You meet people, listen to their stories. Sometimes the information comes in handy; other times—well, it’s still interesting.
As he steps outside he is buffeted by a gust of hot, violent wind.
He feels uneasy, something playing on his mind. He’s driving back along the Kinglake road when it surfaces: the woman and the fire plan. He advised her to get off the mountain, but is his own family much better prepared? That bloody pump.
He checks the clock: a bit after eleven. Time for an early lunch? Everything seems quiet.
He takes a run back down to the family farm. A quick hello to Jo and the kids, but he doesn’t have time to hang around. He grabs some tools from the shed, drives down to the dam, pulls the pump apart and in ten minutes has it back together. He yanks the cord. A pause—then it starts. Beautiful: running like Herb Elliott.
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