My Experience of Black Saturday

We found our new landlords putting out a fire in the back wood shed. They were as surprised to see us as we were them, and we asked if they had seen a dog. They hadn’t, but then as if on cue, Daisy emerged from under a bush. She had been there for two days watching the fire crews come and go. It must have been terrifying for her.

We helped put out the shed fire and with nowhere else to go, we went back to our new landlord’s house.

And it was there that we met first met the fire.

For a moment we were distracted as two farmers raced into the paddock, making a beeline for the broken fence. I had built fences in a previous life and I watched in awe as these two men repaired their broken fence with a speed that made no sense to me. It was an Olympic effort and while I realise this moment may sound insignificant in light of the unfolding events, it will stand out as one of the most incredible things I witnessed over the following three weeks. With an enormous fire bearing down on them, these two farmers made sure their cows were safe before racing off to protect their homes.

By now the air was thick with smoke and the sky had become black. The noise and the heat from the fire was incredible. Fuelled by the gasses coming off the trees, the flames seemed to reach kilometres into the sky. It didn’t seem possible and was something I couldn’t have dreamt of in my wildest nightmares.

We spent the night camped out in our landlord’s house and the following morning were told we could join a police escort out. The road going down to Yarra Glen, referred to as 'the slide' by the locals, had been partially cleared and we were told we could leave in a convoy to go and get supplies. The convoy would then return two hours later. Once back, those that wanted to leave again in a third and final convoy, could.

We decided to go and fill up our car with supplies and then come back to drop those supplies at the Toolangi hall where an emergency centre was being set up. After dropping the supplies we would leave again in the final convoy to help my partner’s sister defend her home.

The drive out was ugly. Burnt cars littered the road, metal wrecks twisted from the intense heat. That little stretch of highway is referred to as ‘the slide’ by locals. Heading up to Kinglake, it is a steep winding road with a cliff face on one side and a steep drop on the other.

For the next three weeks we fought the fire. It was relentless work broken up by evacuations into Healesville when it all became too dangerous to stay. Often a CFA truck would come and join us as we worked together to protect the houses in the street.

One night a fire truck turned up to help us defend one of the neighbour’s homes. The men in the truck were seasoned volunteers and between them there would have been over one hundred years of firefighting experience. I remember overhearing them talking amongst themselves with a combination of childish excitement and awe. They had watched the Marysville fire descend upon Maroondah Dam, a large expanse of water just outside of Healesville. As it burst from the forest it literally ignited the air above the water. Incredulous, they watched a fireball race across the water and explode into the trees on the other side. The fire had travelled across nearly two hundred meters of water without missing a beat.

Many other word of mouth stories began to emerge. I remember running into a farmer who had sadly lost his sheep but his goats were still alive. He had survived by jumping into his dam and from there he watched a ten foot high flames race across his paddocks. The grass was short and so it didn’t burn for long but it was enough to set his sheep alight. The goats survived by getting down on the ground as low as they could with legs splayed out, and while they were singed, the fire passed over the top of them. He was devastated by the loss of his sheep and in awe at how clever his goats were.

The fire had taken most townships by surprise and Kinglake was no different. By the time people knew the fire was coming, it was already there. Many people chose to stay in their houses while many others ran. Up until then the accepted convention was to bunker down in your house. This made sense because while a fire front can easily reach a thousand degrees, it moves on quickly, leaving little to burn in its wake. Hiding in your house for the fifteen minutes it takes to become fully engulfed buys the time you need for outside to cool down to a survivable temperature. Due to the enormity of the Black Saturday fires, the outside temperature remained at a thousand degrees for up to an hour after the front had passed by. There was simply nowhere safe to run to from a burning house.

I was told another story of survival that has stuck with me. It occurred on the same stretch of highway we had travelled down to get supplies. A resident of Kinglake was about to flee in his mustang when he thought he should check in on his neighbour, a single woman with a couple of kids. They were still home and as he rushed them to his car the kids became concerned about the family pets. The man ran back inside their house and grabbing both the cat and the dog, piled them all into the car and took off.

The drive out was extremely dangerous. Visibility was almost zero and the road was already becoming blocked with cars that had failed to make it out. Terrible accidents were claiming lives before the main fire front had even hit.

The mustang raced down ‘the slide’, but no matter how fast it went the fire front kept up, keeping the mustang in a perpetual fire storm. The car couldn’t last much longer. Thinking quickly, the man slammed on the brakes and spun the car around to face the wall of flames coming down the hill. Slamming down on his accelerator the car took off, back the way it had come.

I can’t imagine how terrifying this must have been, driving headlong into a fire the likes of which no-one in living memory had ever seen before. The man estimated that they were travelling at well over one hundred kilometres an hour when they smashed into the main blaze, with a familiarity of the road only a local could have had keeping them on track. The car launched itself out of the other side of the front and with melted tyres and peeling paint they made it to safety in Alexandria on the other side of the range.

For three weeks we prayed for rain as we continued to fight the fire. It was exhausting work. The adrenalin that kept us going, never stopped building and had begun to take a terrible toll on our bodies. It would be many months before any of us could begin to relax and many years before the mental scars began to heal.

The rain eventually came and four weeks after the fires had begun we were allowed to head on back up the mountain and move into our new home in Toolangi. We were grateful to be alive and felt extremely lucky to have somewhere safe to live.

Sadly, our relationship didn't survive the ordeal and after a few years living in a little warehouse in Coldstream at the entrance to the Yarra Valley, I eventually moved to the Macedon Ranges on the other side of Melbourne.

Visits back to the Yarra Valley have been very challenging for me in the past and in light of the recent anniversary of the fires, I decided to take a drive through memory lane. I traced our journey up the mountain and into Toolangi, and for the first time since the fires it felt good.

I am grateful to that little township and the wonderful people there who took us in. I am grateful to all of the brave volunteer firefighters and to all the men and women who stepped up to help in any way they could. And I'm grateful for that wonderful home where I got to start rebuilding my life.. and where the idea of Goodwill Wine was formed.