Ash Wednesday 1983.
My parents lived in this house:
It was their 'seachange' if you like. We had come to Australia in 1971 and lived in suburban Melbourne. My mother yearned for more of a village (ie English village) lifestyle and they moved to Cockatoo (on the outskirts of Melbourne in the Dandenongs) in 1980. This was the house they were going to retire in. Dad was due to retire in the November of '83 when he turned 65 but had planned to leave a smidge earlier.
This site tells it better. I still get upset talking about it. What isn't clear to those that don't live in Melbourne is that the fires effectively ringed Melbourne. We were in suburbia but still had smouldering embers landing in our street.
I was unaware that Cockatoo and Upper Beaconsfield (a short distance away) had gone up and when a friend of my parents rang to ask if they were OK cos she couldn't get through on the phone I reassured her.
The first I knew of a problem was when my parents burst through my front door having escaped their home with the flames bearing down on them. They had to drive a very convoluted route to get to us and were, naturally, devastated. We sat up all night and watched the progress on telly. It was the moment where my parents ceased to be the carers and became those that needed caring for. I think we all experience that shift but I don't know if it's always quite so defined.
It was three days before my parents were allowed to go back to see if their house was OK. We knew that lives and property had been lost.
Their house was ash. The picket gate was pristine white in a charred hedge. The chooks were either dead or dying. Dr. Teacher was a student vet and spent an afternoon wringing the necks of those unfortunate chooks that survived. Two of the four cats returned. (The two dogs had been inside and were brought down with my parents ... the cats had been outside and had fled). The fire ball that had engulfed their property had been so intense that half the outside picnic table was ash and the other half didn't even have the paint blistered. A Waterford crystal champagne glass had melted and solidified so that it was literally half a glass! One side still had the intricate engraving. My father's reading glasses were still in their case. The frames had melted away to nothing but the lenses were still intact ... only opaque. And the case? No idea why that survived.
This was the car they left behind. The front (near where my father is standing) was almost untouched. Tyre rubber intact. Paint not damaged.
And the reason for this trip down an unpleasant memory lane?
We are experiencing extreme fire conditions. Today and tomorrow we will have temperatures over 40C with a cool change tomorrow. But cool changes are always accompanied by strong wind shifts and that makes the fire danger even higher. And there is no rain forecast.
A friend has a son who works for a department that Knows These Things. Conditions are worse now than they were 25 years ago. It's not a case of "if" it's a case of "where". And there are already fires burning. Including one in the very same street my parents were living in 25 years ago.
Heat, no rain and high winds make frightening combination. Horrible memories, Caro for them and the family. I am fortunate that my parent's house survived in Christmas Blue Mountains fires of 1977. It was a little wooden place, about 100 years old and there had been no fire through the valley there for over 50 years. The fire was capricious as you say. It went through the block next door and showed rocks I never knew existed. Then there would be tiny green blades of grass out in the open, untouched.
ReplyDeleteI remember hearing the SA radio journalist and volunteer RFS firefighter describing live on radio as he watched his own house burn in the Ash Wednesday fires in SA. he could do nothing to save it.
I hope things are nowhere near what they could be. I've done some firefighting myself but not in those conditions and that was horrible enough.
What a devastating experience. It must be hard to get over something like that.
ReplyDeleteI hope it rains.
As I was driving to work today I was grumbling about the rain. I think I'll shut up now.
ReplyDeleteI have my own memories of 1983...I was only 8 or 9 at the time and yet they stay with me (and we were much more fortunate than your parents).
ReplyDeleteI can remember quite a few nights of my dad and brother sleeping on the verandah, hosing down the cypress trees that leaned on our house....they were cut down after that. There were embers in the air constantly landing on them. We had our bags packed and were ready to evacuate. I can remember all of us standing out on the front porch watching the red sky over the hill and dad saying it was time to get in the car.... less than 5mins later the wind changed and the town of Talbot got the full blast of what was headed our way... very scary stuff.