Bush fires in Australia are becoming more dangerous amid record-breaking droughts and heat caused by climate change. Irishman Ray Farrell recalls his close encounter with the 1994 fires which destroyed over 200 homes and claimed four lives.
Bush fires are a growing concern in Australia, even more than when I moved here back in 1983. We now call them fire storms, and they don’t only affect the cockies (small farmers) living out in the bush.
The first bit of advice I got about building a house in suburban Sydney was from a Blue Mountains resident (an area notorious for its bush fires). “Never build a house in the bush on an upward slope facing west,” he said.
So I duly built my house on top of a 90m (295ft) deep gully facing west overlooking more than 500sq km (200sq miles) of bush.
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In summer, it sits there shimmering in the heat, and you know that a single spark could ignite a catastrophe. It ignited several times in the 35 years we have been living here, but without significant consequences for us.
However, it came close on January 5th, 1994.
[ My ‘neutral’ accent is now just another foreign voice from a country far awayOpens in new window ]
It starts, once again, as a small but ominous puff of smoke on the horizon. Then the oven-like westerly winds take over. Within minutes, it becomes a raging inferno travelling at 20km/h, a genuine fire storm.
I swiftly get most of the pets to safety. But Bailey, the Siamese cat, is missing.
This fire storm knows exactly where I live because, like the breath of a dragon, the smoke starts to sting my eyes even though it’s still 5km away.
Now an armada of embers arrives in their thousands, burning the back of my neck because I can’t face into them.
I know that ember attack, rather than direct contact with flames, is the cause of most house losses in bushfires.
They land on the lawn, exploding into flames like mini napalm bombs.
The real worry is that a single ember will get into the attic and the house will be lost. These fires are so intense that they create their own weather systems.
The noise rising from the valley behind us is deafening, and it drowns out all other sound. I can no longer hear the revving of cars, the shouting of adults and the crying of children. Suddenly, it is pitch black. I can’t see my hand in front of my face for the smoke. I’m alone in the blackness with roaring cacophony and a manic wind raging from every direction. It is all happening so quickly.
Fire trucks or helicopters are never going to get here in time. I might have left it too late because the fire is here ... get out now. Even without our Bailey. On the street, I can see through a clearing in the smoke that everything combustible is on fire: hedges, trees, fences, furniture, wooden retaining walls, cubby houses, even the lawns.
Returning after half an hour, the only thing standing in the smouldering black landscape is... the house. A bunch of teenagers decided to form their own fire service and descended on the house as soon as the fire had passed. They put out blazes on the front veranda and the back deck.
The budgie is dead in its cage. I still feel guilty that I had forgotten him.
Four lives and hundreds of houses were lost in that bush fire. Bailey came home the next day. I don’t know why they call it bush, my brother calls it jungle and he’s more on the money.
Dealing with disasters and tragedy is a very Australian thing. Its volunteer rescue services, with millions of members, are woven into the fabric of communities.
There are so many ways Australians meet misfortune that are not sharks, snakes and spiders (deaths from which are about the same as from cows and bulls in Ireland),
The world is aware of our fires and floods when they affect the big cities, but few would have heard of the western Queensland farmer I spoke to a few months back.
After the floods washed away his house and destroyed all his machinery, he had to shoot hundreds of sheep and calves until he ran out of bullets, then he had to use a knife.
Or how his young daughter saved their three best horses by swimming them a mile to dry land.
I doubt if you heard of the retired couple I had lunch with and, six months later, were found dead in their burned-out house on their farm after the Marysville bush fires.
Thirty years since that close encounter fire, I sit in the back yard looking out over that vast expanse, watching and listening to the many sounds of birdlife as the sun sinks into the jungle.
It still looks the way it did tens of thousands of years before Captain Cook arrived. Despite the risks, I love being part of it. For 50,000 years the First Nations people have been part of it and they certainly get it. I think I get it, too.
Ray Farrell and his wife Marian emigrated to Australia in 1983 and live in Alfords Point on the edge of Sydney. He is originally from west Clare. He is retired but worked as a general manager in manufacturing.
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