Podcast

Louise Maher has worked with the Bumbalong Valley over the last few months to record and produce a podcast about the Clear Range bushfire. The podcast documents the first hand experience of residents as we recount our stories of preparation, fighting to save what we could and the losses and recovery.

Most of the valley got together a few weeks ago to listen to the podcast for the first time. That event, the podcast itself and participating in the interviews has been an emotionally challenging but overwhelmingly positive experience for us and the community. Louise has done a phenomenal job weaving these stories into one and it is well worth a listen as the next bushfire season begins.

https://soundcloud.com/user-23420655-593510438/sets/bumbalong-valley-the-fire-of-the-first-of-february

Wildlife Recovery

I don’t think I’ve ever looked at the Brindies from Canberra and not wanted to be there. After moving to Canberra in 2009 I spent every available opportunity exploring those mountains. Mt Bimberi from the east and west, Mt Gingera on full moon Friday nights in the snow with no torch necessary, a fifteen hour ride and walk to Mt Namadgi and back from the Orroral Vallery, the Fitz’s Extreme ride, the now classic MTB loop up Warks Road up to Picadilly Circus and down Two Sticks, lugging cross country ski gear up Stockyard Spur to get last tracks for 300m near Pryors Hut in October. Such good times, and many more to come.

This affliction is common among Canberrans, and there are plenty of local weekend warriors and great adventurers to look to for blessings and inspiration across the Brindies and beyond. Flipping through Klaus Hueneke AM midweek has launched many weekend expeditions and picking up Anthony Sharwood’s From Snow to Ash will have you sticky taping topo maps to your walls in no time.

It’s not news to anyone that humans need to be in nature, but why we want to leave behind the apparent comforts of home and venture out into the unpredictable bush is becoming clearer to science as it catches up with us doing what humans do. You could say “human well-being is linked to the natural environment in myriad ways, and actionable understanding of these links is deepening in diverse disciplines” and there is “a scientifically significant increase in people’s health, happiness, connection to nature and active nature behaviours, such as feeding the birds and planting flowers for bees”.

I reckon the urge to help the bush after we’ve watched it burn comes from the same place as the urge to be in it. Or we could take David Attenborough’s view that “The living world is a unique and spectacular marvel. […] We rely entirely on this finely tuned life support machine.” So helping nature recover, whether from a bushfire or from more global “bad planning and human error”, is not altruistic at all but very much in our own interests.

Rollick Farm before the fire:

Wherever it comes from, the drive to help what was left of the bush and its wildlife after the Clear Range fire was there. Alongside it was a sense of awe that any living thing made it through, so each bee, frog, wallaby or lizard we saw was something to be cherished.

With dams just dust or mud and the river banks a steep and distant proposition for an injured animal water was the first concern. According to the photo metadata, by 7am on the day after the fire I’d attached a drinker to a water cube that we’d placed for firefighting and it was well used from that afternoon. Wildcare delivered deployable drinkers and emergency feed for birds, roos and wallabies. They provided two shipping containers in Michelago full of apples, sweet potatoes, bags of feed pellets, nesting boxes, drinkers and bird seed for anyone affected to distribute and they maintained this right up until the grass began to grow after rain in September.

In the weeks and months after the fire we placed feed from Wildcare along the river and up in the mountains where things were really dire.

Seeing the total destruction of bird habitat we started to put up a few nesting boxes from the Wildcare shipping containers. When we enquired about where to get more, Wildcare provided over fifty boxes made by local community groups and then sent us twenty five professionally made nesting boxes from Hollow Log Homes. An incredibly generous Canberran from the Facebook group NestBoxTales run by Alice McGlashan made fifteen boxes for us ranging in size from Pardalote (small) to Black Cockatoo (enormous). We worked with friends and Backpacker volunteers to get these up along the ridges of the Clear Range and we have a few more to go into more inaccessible areas.

In September we replanted the first one hundred trees of the one thousand that we lost. The wetter weather outlook this year will make it perfect for planting the remaining nine hundred.

We still have a long way to go, but the support from Wildcare, friends, backpacker volunteers and kind strangers from the internet has made it possible for us to have a good crack at doing what we can to help the recovery of the patch of nature we look after. I hope sharing the recovery story here counts as a small thank you.

2020 Bushfire Story 05: The Flood

This is the fifth and final post in a series on the bushfire. Start with the first post here.

Kim and Helen organised a catch up at their place two weeks after the fire. Most of the valley turned up along with a few visitors to stand around a barbie and burn some sausages. There was a collective sigh of relief early in the night as we told our stories, or kept them to ourselves, or reported unauthorised incursions by white vans, or made plans for the recovery of the valley. It was apparent that despite the irreparable damage and trauma, Bumbalong was still its people. 

The mood lifted further with the sound of rain on the roof. Welcome moisture to soak into the dehydrated earth and extinguish the ‘smokers’, timber still burning in inaccessible rugged country.

The rain steadily intensified driving us off the veranda and inside. The volume of precipitation rapidly passed the threshold at which everyone in Bumbalong thinks ‘The Bridge’. The bridge across the Murrumbidgee is the gateway to the Bumbalong Valley and as gateways tend to do, it can close. Significant rain in the upper catchment or in the Numeralla or Bredbo river tributaries can cause the river to rise within a few hours, cutting off the crossing.

Those who had lost their houses were in emergency accommodation in Canberra or Cooma and needed to get across the bridge before it flooded. One visitor was a diabetic without insulin. The gathering dispersed and as we walked to our vehicles we could hear something big. I think Justin said it sounded like the fire, but it was coming from the gully just north of Kim and Helen’s.

C and I returned to our place to find our shed flooded and a creek running through our carport. We stood under cover on the front veranda and watched the line of red taillights making their way towards the crossing. They stopped just short of the crossing, turned around and headed back to Kim and Helen’s place.

C and I jumped in the Jeep and drove through the rain to see what had gotten in the way. A few hundred metres down the road we came across some drifts of deep black mud but with the vehicle only moving a touch sideways at slow speed they were not a problem. Further down the road as we approached Liz’s place near the crossing the impediment to forward motion came into view. The road and everything either side had been completely submerged under black mud, sticks, large rocks the size of microwaves, a microwave the size of a large rock, a stove top espresso maker, Liz’s barbed wire fence, a washing machine, sheets of galvanized roofing and charred tree trunks. There was no getting through that.

Not without a front-end loader to clear the road anyway, and Justin happened to have one up at his place. Justin and Lynette had defended the loader from the fire in a heroic effort against unimaginable danger and now it would save us from the flood. C had chatted to Liz and she was ok despite her shed washing away. We drove back to Kim and Helen’s where everyone had gathered once more and proposed an expedition a few kilometres to the north to retrieve Justin’s loader and clear the road.

Four of us left in two vehicles while Kim and Helen prepared to put everyone up for the night at their place in case we couldn’t get through, a very real possibility. Michael was driving his Toyota Landcrusier 70 series Troopy with Paul and twin diff lock traction aids on board while Justin and I lead out in the Jeep.

One hundred metres out the gate we saw the source of the noise we had heard as we left. What was once an elevated creek crossing two metres or more above culvert pipes down at the little creek was now a level crossing. Sand, sediment and a jumble of boulders and trees had filled either side and covered the road. A small shed near the road was gone along with piles of tailings from the mining days. The water was still flowing but nothing like it must have been. It was low enough to get across without getting too wet so we checked out the other side. The base seemed firm enough but a 600mm wash out had formed on either side of where the water was now flowing. I’d have to drop into the waterway, navigate across and then climb the sandy step up on the other side. Not a problem, but I attached my snatch strap to a rear recovery point so it was accessible just in case.

The Jeep has a short wheelbase which is an advantage in an obstacle like a wash out and the soft sand deformed on any underbody contact so I didn’t have any trouble getting down into the now subsiding flow of water. I stuck to my line and found a couple of soft spots but liberal application of right boot got me to within a few metres of the other side. I approached the washout on a slight angle so one tyre contacted after the other and this standard practice for step ups worked a treat. I felt the rear end of the Jeep pop up over the washout and we knew the first obstacle was achievable.

Michael in the big 70 series found cause to reach for the diff lockers button as he bottomed out on the washout while dropping in. But, with the magic button delivering equal drive to all four wheels he was through like it was the Bunda Street shareway. That is to say, carefully, minding people and obstacles but not without a smile.

We continued north in convoy with spacing between the vehicles. Completely cut off from outside assistance we needed one vehicle to recover the other if either got stuck so we tackled muddy sections one at a time. We stuck to this arrangement as we passed the remnants of Tony’s place lying crumpled in the dark. 

As we descended the hill past Tony’s quarry, I could see a big burnt log across the road at the dam. This part of the road crossed a deep gully and the six or seven metre deep void had been filled in, creating the dam uphill and a steep slope downhill. The dam was now completely filled with sand, rocks and sediment. The water had flowed up and over the road and the log had snagged as it floated across leaving it blocking our path.

I lashed a tow strap around the blackened log and dragged it out of the way before continuing up into the charcoal pine forest and past another burnt out home, the pile of warped corrugated iron harbouring shadows where the headlights didn’t reach.

The northern end of the valley narrows sharply and the steep slopes that descend into the river corridor were gouged by gullies draining water from the mountain above into the Murrumbidgee.  Moving through the dark into this rugged section I noticed water was still draining down from the higher elevations.

Driving past Paul and Sue’s place we approached the creek crossing between their place and Justin and Lynette’s. It was unrecognisable. A huge gully had formed on the downhill side and the uphill side was level with the crossing and packed with rocks, sand and sediment. Part of the triangular steel structure of the crossing was exposed on the downhill side. With water still draining and the structure uncertain we left the vehicles and walked the few hundred metres into Justin and Lynette’s place.

While we walked, Paul checked in with everyone making sure we were still on the ball. It was after midnight, and we were all processing the second disaster to hit the valley in two weeks. We called partners back at Kim and Helen’s place. We had good news, we’d made it to the loader. The news from their end was less positive. The visitor without insulin was becoming increasingly anxious about being trapped. The flood had been reported to the SES and insulin requested as a contingency in case our trip down the valley was unsuccessful.

With the loader fired up and on the move Paul and I checked out the low road around the previous creek crossing. The high road had suffered significant damage and we couldn’t be sure the loader’s weight would be supported. The low road was slick, but at least it was solid.

It took a few attempts for the loader to make it up the other side of the low road crossing with Justin manhandling the controls to navigate a rut on the lower side of the off-camber track. The rut sucked the four-wheel drive loader in every time. Justin did a little track building and opened a new line on the uphill side and that did the trick.

That got us back to the passenger vehicles and the convoy of three progressed back towards the crossing. The loader handled the washed-out track well but its weight and high centre of gravity caused it to drift on a narrow sloping muddy section. Justin pulled it up and reversed out to have another run. Michael, Paul and I had stopped just ahead to make sure he’d make it through and we watched as the loader moved into the thick mud and slid diagonally downhill, two wheels dipping into a gully while the loader sickeningly lurched sideways at an angle not usually conducive to continued forward progress.

Teetering there for a moment, the loader leant on a well-placed strainer post and with some rapid work on the controls Justin regained the favour of gravity and the higher ground.

Getting back in the Jeep, I called ahead to let C know that we were most of the way back. After navigating the waterway before Kim and Helen’s place once more Justin headed straight for the crossing, and I dropped into our place on the way to get an angle grinder to clear the fence.

Justin worked the loader through the slop and debris. Lifting buckets of black muck off the road by the incandescent lights of the loader. It was after midnight, but this was the final hurdle. I moved ahead to clear the fence. The fence, a length of forty metres or so, had been pushed into an arc across the road, catching sticks and rocks until it leant right over releasing the dam it had made and a few stretches of horizontal fencing were now submerged. It would cause issues for the loader if it got caught in mechanical or hydraulic parts. I used the grinder to cut the fence from star pickets bent over into the shape of allan keys and reefed out of the ground by the flow. I moved all the unsubmerged sections of wire off the road making way for the loader and vehicles to follow.

Liz had walked down from her place to say hello. Items from her shed that had washed down the creek were emerging: catering supplies, her grandfather’s desk, a computer, a lounge and all the other objects we could see half submerged in the mud. We salvaged what we could but between the water and the mud most of Liz’s belongings from the shed were destroyed or washed away.

The next area that required attention was the crossing itself. Branches, tree trunks, sticks and debris had piled up across the roadway. It’d need to be moved before vehicles could cross so I went over with Paul and Michael to clear it.

Just as we had most of the timber removed a vehicle pulled up on the other side of the crossing. Three sets of reflective disco pants emerged. It was the SES. They left the vehicle on the eastern side and walked onto the crossing. I recognised one of the crew. He’d provided Kim and I with a lift back to the fire shed when our fire truck broke down in early January.

We were explaining the situation when in the direction of their vehicle a silhouette emerged from the shadows. As the shape made its way bipedally into the torchlight I could see it was human and dressed in head to toe black, skin-tight wetsuit. All I could say was ‘mate, I didn’t know this was that kind of party’.

While they were fully prepared for a swift water rescue the SES crew had not been able to access the insulin. They had just come down for a look at the crossing. After they were up to speed on the plan they agreed to escort the vehicles out from the other side of the Murrumbidgee but they didn’t want to put their vehicle onto the bridge.

By this time, Justin had cleared a channel through the muck. The road surface was 600mm below the surrounding sediment and still very soft. Those who needed to get out began to arrive and one by one they made it through and across to the other side. Sheryl, who lives further to the south on the western side, didn’t need to get across the bridge but had to cross a few more creeks before her place. Just in case of any issues an escort was a good idea. The flood had deepened the two major creeks on the way to Sheryl’s place, but she was able to navigate these without a problem. I waved her off at the second crossing and made my way back.

Coming through Liz’s gate I could see Justin had continued to work on the road, he was down on the far side of the muddy section. The cleared area was one lane, one bucket width, so there was no line to choose but I’d been through a few times and wasn’t expecting an issue. I’d been through, but so had eight other vehicles and a loader with huge tyres. I got about ten metres in and sunk to the diffs, totally bottomed out.

Shifting from forward to reverse, turning the wheel and mashing the ‘forward please’ pedal just put more mud on the roof. So I called Justin on the UHF: “Ahhh, a little help?”

“Oh, so the Barbie™ car needs a tow from the loader hey?”

“Ha! Yes, it does”

With the mission to retrieve the loader and clear the road about complete, the Jeep took a short rest with its belly on the mud as the loader made its way over. I attached a short tow strap to the bucket and the loader leant its mass while I gave the jeep some combustive encouragement. The jeep popped up out of the mud hole like an excited puppy let outside. We were done. It was 1am but those who needed to get out were out. It was time for a frosty sports recovery drink, a Coopers as I recall.

We all regrouped at Kim and Helens and debriefed, what a night. What a couple of weeks.

The effects of the flood were amplified by the destruction caused by the fire. There was no vegetation left to slow water down or hold soil together and the heat of fire will sometimes change the chemistry of the soil, causing it to become hydrophobic. The mountains were like a porcelain toilet bowl and instantly shed precipitation. Thousands of tonnes of sand and sediment flushed down into the upper Murrumbidgee river, home to endangered Macquarie Perch . The creeks are still choked with sediment yet to wash down. Justin and Lynette’s place was severely impacted by the flood and they are working with Rivers of Carbon to remediate and protect the Murrumbidgee River.

As the fire approached two weeks before, my sphere of interest and information gathering zoomed from something approaching global to regional to local and then hyperlocal. During the fire we operated on what we could see, hear, smell and feel. That was the signal, everything else was noise. The fire was a fight that we fought alone and this experience was replicated in the others doing the same through the valley. We were a community isolated from the outside world and from each other. We all fought individually to save whatever we could. That was the plan.

The flood destroyed some of what the fire hadn’t and we would have been much better off without it, but the flood also restored things. It was an opportunity to bridge some of the distance fighting the fire as isolated individuals created.  In the flood, we responded and recovered face to face and side by side. Everyone fell into their roles, did whatever they could, and we helped each other overcome another disaster. This small, mighty community got through once more.

Recovery

Since the floods and fire the Bumbalong valley has progressed an informal self-recovery program. Justin organised a relocatable building for Tony and Nina and we all pitched in to build foundations for it. Sue organised a scrap metal company to come and clear hundreds of tonnes of burnt material while we waited and waited for the NSW Government clean up. Paul made detailed submissions to the Commonwealth and NSW bushfire enquiries ensuring our voice was heard. Liz organised and housed a group of superhero backpackers to help with the recovery effort. Graham taught them how to fence and supervised as they replaced kilometre upon kilometre of critical fencing in conjunction with Blaze Aid. Charlie and Danielle hosted catch ups and continued work in the Bumbalong Progress Association dealing with the Council, State and Federal Government. Kim and Helen have supported the essential mental health recovery through organised events and are also coordinating a project to record and document the stories from the fire. Others have donated clothing, protective equipment, food and tools to the volunteers, made and donated nesting boxes and there is much more I am forgetting or unaware of. We’ve seen the greatest humans.

There is still a long way to go but this is where I’m going to finish this part of the story. I’ve left a lot out, and Charlie might say I put a bit extra in, but that is the story of the bushfires and the floods on Rollick Farm in 2020. 

I have corroborated and cross-checked key facts with others who were in the valley or at our place. As part of that, Charlie and I discussed the singed chicken that I remember him cradling during the fire. He does not remember it. I remember it as if he was standing before me now in avian embrace. Memory is far from infallible, especially under those conditions. Whether Charlie forgot or my exhausted mind confabulated it, ‘seeing’ Charlie there demonstrating strength and empathy helped me dig a bit deeper. We both agreed that it should stay in the story.

BONUS WOMBAT

2020 Bushfire Story 04: The Days After

This is the fourth post in a series on the bushfire. Start with the first post here.

At dawn on Sunday I walked around the front section of our property. The sky was red with morning light filtering through the smoke that hung in the valley. Charcoal tufts crunched under my boots while I walked, pausing every so often in the destruction.  I saw Helen from next door doing the same on their place, we waved and shared a shell-shocked smile. 

The burning husks of once mighty gum trees hundreds of years old were sending small plumes of smoke into the air, their crowns snapped off and crumpled on the ground. The charred bones of a monitor lizard were still warm. A wallaby with black skin hanging from its feet and legs had succumbed to its injuries in the night. There was death, silence and emptiness where there was once flourishing life. 

Lost to the flames were one thousand native trees that we had planted to revegetate previously grazed paddocks. Many of our fence posts were still burning. Our water line was hardened goo or completely combusted, leaving us with no way to refill water tanks. But, we had saved our main structures and we still had a foothold in this place.

Matt needed to get back to Sydney for work, so after all owing us a chance to get some precious sleep he made his way back on Sunday. We heard from Stan and Charlie sometime in the morning. They’d made it safely back to Canberra and reported that as they left on Saturday, completely exhausted from firefighting all day, they had to navigate their way through more than ten RFS trucks parked up on the closed Monaro Highway a kilometre from Bumbalong Road. Apparently untasked, they were watching as Bumbalong continued to burn.

It is standard practice for RFS crews to extinguish smouldering logs and other material to prevent flare ups after a fire, so we thought we’d see RFS crews through the valley to work on the burning trees and logs around the roads and assets. None showed so around lunch time I called a senior member of our local RFS to see if they could send some help now that the main fire front had well and truly passed. The reply I received was ‘you’ve got plenty of water don’t you?’ I explained that our pump had failed. ‘Well, we’re pretty busy over this side of the river’.

Liz, a neighbour from down the road dropped into our place to see how we were getting on. We caught up and mentioned that we needed some help blacking out around the house. After speaking with us, Liz drove over to the fire shed. Seeing all four trucks parked there, she asked if some help could be sent down Bumbalong Road. The response was “Well if those on the other side of the river were more cooperative then maybe they’d get more help”.

On the way back from the RFS shed, Liz saw a NSW Fire and Rescue truck at the corner of Bumbalong road. She stopped and had a chat, sending them our way. They made it to us and were only too happy to help extinguish the tree behind the shed.

That whole turn of events made it pretty clear that in terms of RFS firefighting we were well and truly on our own.

But that’s what we had prepared for and on the Monday my mum Annie came over from Wagga to lend a hand. After picking up the last firefighting pump in Wagga and bringing it over along with some more solar gear, food and essentials she helped me black out the burning stumps and trees still putting our house at risk.

We also received some help from a helicopter that we had been watching doing runs up and down the river. On a return run we flagged them down and pointed to a big burning stump up the hill from the house. They timed the swing and dropped a bucket right down the chimney formed by the trunk of the huge old gum.  We were elated, cheering and waving our appreciation as they circled to say ‘have a good one’.

The water bombing made a good start but it wasn’t quite enough to put the big stump completely out, so we connected multiple lengths of hose to the new fire pump and finished it off. It took around 500L of water before the stump stopped steaming.

Had the fire in the stump spread to the gum leaves and massive branches all around, it would have gone up quickly and then continued to burn for days, sending embers on the westerly wind towards the lovegrass around the house.

It was a long slog, but with that stump out, we’d done all we could on the fire around the house.  

The ecological impact of the fire was revealed day by day. It’s clear now that thousands of animals perished on our property and millions upon millions died in fires across Australia. They were burnt alive by the heat of the fire or severely injured and later succumbed to dehydration, infection or other slow and painful ways to go. Others somehow escaped the fire unharmed but found the habitat that had until then provided shelter, food and water was now bare earth and charcoal. 

The bush that had so reliably nourished our eyeballs and replenished our wellbeing now needed a hand.

IMG_20200202_062732.jpg

To provide water for the injured wallabies and kangaroos hanging around our house I converted the water cubes in the refuge area into wildlife drinkers. C used socials to connect with volunteer wildlife organisations who delivered apples, sweet potatoes, equine feed, hay and deployable water stations. While we were still blacking out around the house Wildcare in Queanbeyan sent out a Subaru wagon full of feed. They would later make a number of trips to retrieve injured wildlife with a qualified wildlife darter tranquilizing the wallabies and wallaroos that could not be caught by hand.

We distributed food and drinkers into the areas that were safe to access and soon had mobs of kangaroos and more solitary swamp wallabies turning up each evening. After surviving years of drought and a catastrophic fire, they had earnt a good feed.

We’ve continued this practice of placing wildlife feed up in the mountains where feed is still very scarce. Trail camera footage show wombats, red necked wallabies, swamp wallabies, eastern grey kangaroos and one possum so far.

On Friday, six days after the fire, we left our place unpatrolled for the first time. We travelled into town to catch up with our neighbours at a pub in Canberra. For those who had lost their properties and vehicles it was more convenient to meet near their emergency accommodation.

The stories that were shared helped everyone piece together what had happened on the day. We heard that Mick and Karen had to leave their place with a few belongings in plastic shopping bags as the fire rapidly approached. They returned in the days after to find everything gone, their fishing boat lifted off its trailer by the wind and dropped again some distance away.

We heard about the support that had been provided to Tony and Nina by the Red Cross and others. Tony stayed with Kim and Helen on the Saturday night and was later hospitalised with burns. Tony told of his house burning along with all everything in it. All he had was his RFS uniform and boots. No wallet, phone, toothbrush, or shoes. We shared a laugh when he explained that the fluoro blue and green Velcro strapped runners he was wearing were the only ones in his size at Vinnies. They were pretty out there.

Those who hadn’t been in Bumbalong on the day told of watching in distress and disbelief as news reports and fire maps revealed the destruction. With everyone in the valley fighting the fire communications were slow to get out and there was uncertainty about the welfare of those who had stayed.

On speaking with Justin and Kim we pieced together events on the night of the fire. Justin had called me just on dusk, he asked for a hand down at his place. I got my gear on and headed down there. Justin had a lot of heavy equipment that he frequently used to maintain the road that services the valley.  When I arrived he was standing near his fuel store shipping container that was well alight at one end. With water supplies exhausted and nothing else on hand he said ‘there’s nothing we can do about that now’. With my fire trailer out of action, and nothing much I could do with a rake hoe I agreed. We needed a fire truck.

On the way out I ran into Kim also on his way to assist. I explained the situation and Kim said he’d call for a couple of Cat 1 trucks, with plenty of water and foam. Kim, an RFS Deputy Captain, called the RFS and requested the trucks and was told they would be sent. They never arrived. The fire spread from the fuel store to adjacent equipment, trucks, tool shed and workshop.

Six days after the main fire front and the bush continues to burn, keeping us on edge.

On the drive home from the pub C and I talked through and processed the stories. When we got home, we found the power was back on and a large tree on fire up the hill, telling us it was not yet time to completely relax.

To regain a sense of control we made a broad a ninety day recovery plan in three phases that included things like cleaning up debris, refilling water tanks, replacing fencing and gates, scoping trenching and poly pipe required to restore water lines, repairing a melted dam overflow pipe. Having a plan provided something to refer to when answering the question, ‘what’s next’.

Thanks for reading. The photos here are all from the days immediately following the fire except the ‘carbonated’ air filter, I took that out of the Jeep a while after. With trees falling down all over the place it was a few weeks before we could walk up into the bush to get a look. I’ll share those photos in a future post.

2020 Bushfire Story 03: The Day

This is the third post in a series on the bushfire. Start with the first post here.

Still unsuccessfully chasing sleep, my phone dinged at 5:06am with a message from the local RFS call out officer: FIRE REPORTED AT BUMBALONG. Here we go. Into my gear, no time to go to the fire shed, out to the farm Jeep with the fire trailer hooked up and on the way to find it. I wasn’t even 100m out of the driveway when our neighbour Kim came in over the UHF, “they’re overreacting, it’s in the Naas Valley over the back but it’s not here yet. You better go and wake up John and Julie though, now is the time for them to get their horses out”.

The Bumbalong valley was coordinating over UHF channel 26 and text messages . We had taken turns completing scheduled spot fire patrols overnight, as we had for previous nights when we were under threat. Kim had arranged for a briefing at 9:00am.

Before the briefing C and I worked through the last elements of our fire plan. I blocked the forklift tine gaps in the base of our shipping container with gravel. We raked, shovelled and hoed a bare earth perimeter around the small one-bedroom studio next to our house and moved our indoor ragdoll mouse deterrent cat named Killer into it. Our old house was vulnerable to embers and we were expecting it to be gone by the end of the day, so we relocated anything important to the smaller, less flammable and more defensible studio.

In no time it was 9am and we went next door to Kim and Helen’s place for the briefing. Kim and Helen had prepared A4 topographic maps with gridlines marked so RFS standard grid referenced locations could be provided. They distributed these along with a map showing who lived in each property and whether the occupants were staying or going.  Kim briefed us on the weather conditions, the fire spread prediction and the resources around.

Historically, small fires in the valley had been extinguished by a ragtag assembly of converted trailers and old trucks sporting improvised water tanks and petrol water pumps.  This time though every property was at risk so it was agreed that we all needed to defend our own properties during the ember attack and main fire front. We would check on each other after. With some humour to dilute the slowly rising sense of terror, the Bumbalong Renegade Brigade dispersed to face what was now called the Clear Range fire.

Stan and Charlie arrived at our place just after the briefing finished. We caught up for a couple of minutes and then stepped through the plan for the day; the situation, our mission and objectives, the execution, communication and safety.  This was not a time for ‘she’ll be right’. I assigned a role, area, equipment and objective to each person. We walked around the structures and identified the lines we would try to prevent the fire from crossing. We identified vulnerabilities and safety hazards.

The column of smoke rising behind our place was darkening. The wind was light but chopping from north west (bad) to the north (less bad). The fire was within a couple of kilometres and external sources of information were lagging well behind what we could see ourselves.

Darkening column of smoke

Stan and I drove a couple of minutes down the road to a ridge that provided a view of the whole valley and the Clear Range. We needed to see if the fire had crested over the range three kilometres to the west and would communicate this to the valley on UHF radio.

From the ridge we could see the fire had crested the Clear Range at the southern end. It would be heading towards Mick and Karen’s place first so we called them to pass on that bad news and we radioed the valley with an update. Then, we returned to our place.

Like the morning of an exam, there was really nothing more we could do . The test was set and imminent. It would meet our preparation, skill and resilience and destroy anything found lacking. The brutality of the fire and its sheer destructive force was amplified by its erratic behaviour in dry country with steep topography and poor weather conditions. We had ample opportunity to get a sense of this as it approached.

The pumping column of white, grey, black and now increasingly orange smoke furthered its dominance of the sky in all directions but the north, towards Canberra.

Sometime around 11:30am two RFS trucks drove past our gate and turned into Kim and Helen’s place. As they arrived over there a spot fire ignited just below Kim and Helen’s dam. One of the crews saw the fire and raced over to put it out.  As far as these things go, that was great timing. They quickly got on top of the fire and then drove up to us. The truck was part of a strike team from up near Lake Macquarie.

I briefed them on our fire plan, the hazards around our place, water sources and our objectives. We chatted as casually as we could. Then, we could see the fire on the ridge just behind our house and on the ridge behind Kim and Helen’s place. It was about 450m away.

I started to see kangaroos and wallabies escaping the bush and heading downhill to the river.

In conversation with the RFS crew it became apparent that the RFS plan for the day was to hold the fire at the Monaro Highway east of us. We were the cannon fodder between the fire and the highway. The Monaro Highway that is surrounded by thousands of acres of African Lovegrass, a tussocky grass so flammable that it’s the subject of RFS awareness campaigns in the area. It seemed unlikely they would achieve their objective.

Around 20 minutes after the truck arrived I heard the crew leader’s portable radio squawk with a call from Fire Command. They were being reassigned to a grass fire somewhere. Both trucks departed leaving us, Kim and Helen and everyone north along Downstream Road without RFS support for asset protection.

We were on our own but that’s what we had prepared for. Looking back through the handful of photos that I took shows the colour changing in the smoke column and finally thick black-red smoke dominating the entire sky. At that stage, the winds were moderate and swinging to the north from time to time which meant the fire progressed slowly in our direction, trickling down the slopes. At 1:15pm the flames were around 300m away. 

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Things changed rapidly. The wind picked up from the west and the sound was a foreboding announcement of the fire front’s imminent arrival. It was the sound of air induction on an enormous scale. A jet engine powered freight train. The sound of the fire inhaling.

I watched as a bird flew high on a path that would take it directly overhead. It flapped its wings urgently and continually as its trajectory curved sickeningly towards the earth. It thudded into the ground, dead, a few metres away.

The sizeable east-west valley behind Kim and Helen’s place is a prominent feature in the crinkly topography of the Clear Range. Under these conditions the valley funnelled the wind, and it channelled the fire front and spat it out on top of us all. The spot fire in lovegrass north of our driveway reignited and in the darkness I remember seeing the flames race across the front of our place, easily jumping the driveway, streaming down into the gully below our dam and travelling parallel with the road.

It was out of control in seconds and then spreading up toward the house and into our refuge area. The refuge area had grass mown to a centimetre long and was surrounded by a bare mineral earth containment line. It housed two thousand litres of water and our vehicles. It was now alight. That part of the plan did not survive the first minute of the fire front. But that’s the things with plans, nothing ever goes to them exactly and you need to plan to adapt. And we did.

I yelled to Stan ‘vehicles, vehicles’ and we ran down to the now flaming refuge area to move them. C’s car was closer to the house and further from the flames but the fire got there quickly. Stan went back to put out flames underneath C’s car with a wet mop.

While this was happening the fire was moving through the grass up behind the house and the bush further up the hill. It was as black as night and hot as balls.

We returned to positions. I relocated to my area, the shed. The shed was priority two, porous to embers and full of fuel, solvents, lead acid batteries and all my tools and equipment. I couldn’t ask anyone else to defend such a sketchy area. The studio was priority one and C and Charlie were down there actively defending the studio from fire a few metres away coming from the north and north west. The house, being almost indefensible was priority three but needed a superhuman if we were going to save it. Stan was on the house. If it sparked up and burnt down he was going to fall in with me at the shed, provided C and Charlie had the studio sorted.

The Jeep and fire trailer were on a bare mineral earth track near the shed thirty or so metres from the house, pointed downhill towards the carport. I had a hose out trying to get on top of the grass fire moving rapidly from north to south behind the house towards the shed. The erratic wind swung around to the west and gusted, sending the fire downhill towards the house. A few seconds later the wind swung back to the north sending a wall of embers, smoke and flames directly into me. The heat hit with force and I had to move the vehicle or lose it. I dropped my hose and retreated towards the Jeep. I couldn’t see and I was breathing deep lungfuls of acrid black gritty smoke.

I got into the Jeep, looked out the windscreen and I couldn’t see anything, it was all black smoke and a foreboding yellow glow. I turned on the headlights, nothing but smoke. I had to move, urgently, so I rapidly drove by feel until I saw the carport come into view a few metres away. I parked the Jeep on the dirt pad there and I went back out and got on the end of the hose. The fire had jumped the containment line around the back of the house and was burning in short mown lovegrass. C and Charlie were doing an incredible job keeping it under control around the studio. Stan was dealing with embers swirling around the front and back of the house, getting in between the gaps in the deck.

I extinguished the grass fire to the north of the road between the shed and the house. I moved the Jeep back up near the shed and checked inside. It was pitch black, I had to get my phone torch out to look around. At least that meant there wasn’t anything on fire and incredibly with the fire metres away on 3 sides, the shed was still ok. I took the opportunity to quickly swap from the pitiful P2.5 paper mask to a proper respirator mask.

I think it was then that Stan asked me for Zip-Ties. He quickly explained that he needed them to fix a hose, the only 18mm hose he had to defend the house. In the middle of this hostile environment he was able to communicate the solution he needed and the urgency. I quickly found a few zip ties.

As the main fire front took hold, I heard a call for help over my handheld UHF on channel 25, the local RFS channel. It was Helen next door calling for urgent assistance. It was harrowing to hear her call something to the effect of “where are the trucks, we’re burning here, the fire is coming from all directions. We need help, the valley is burning” A response came back from someone in the RFS “is anyone’s life in danger?”.

What do you bloody reckon?

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That must have triggered the beginnings of a response because not long after we heard a senior RFS member absolutely ripping into a Crew Leader. The Crew Leader had phoned Cooma Fire Command directly to request more resources to the valley. The senior member angrily told him “you don’t do that, you go through me”. The resources never came.

Not long after I heard Tony on the UHF. Tony lives about 1km north of us. “Where are the trucks, where are the trucks?, it’s gone my house is gone.”

Tony had been 4km from his place at the river running a Community Fire Unit trailer, filling up fire trucks. As the fire front moved through the trucks took the water and left the valley towards the highway. Tony tried to return to his house but a stand of huge poplar trees were on fire along the road preventing him from getting back to his place. When he did get back, there was nothing left.

Through the flames and pitch blackness we heard explosions echoing up and down the valley. Some thumping loud, others distant and reverberating. Then a too close for comfort ka-boom. I looked south in the direction of the shock. Our neighbour Mik’s place three hundred metres away to the south was well alight. Flames were pouring out the windows five metres into the air. I put my head down and thought of Mik in town recovering from heart bypass surgery. It was beyond hope for his place.

Down the hill from our shed to the south of the house are two huge gum trees and just south of them is a gully that runs down to our dam. The fire was moving through that gully and either spotted or ran from south to north up under the southernmost yellow box.

A few months before Essential Energy contractors had lopped off five or six large limbs and left them piled up a few metres from the base of this tree. I’d been cutting and stacking the timber for firewood but there was still a pile about three metres in diameter left. That was well alight and fire was moving up into the tree.

As I approached from the north the wind was at my back pushing much of the heat and smoke away. I got some water on the base of the fire and made ground. The heat that had been holding me back subsided slightly and I moved closer as parts of the fire were extinguished. I took another step forward and a strong gust of wind came from the south, the opposite direction. Embers and flames surrounded me and I stumbled backwards. Embers were in behind my goggles. I staggered back, regrouped and started again from the south this time, with the wind at my back. I made some progress before the wind violently swung around again and I copped another face full of embers and heat. With the wind chopping and changing by the minute putting out this pile was turning into a tough ask.

I noticed the water pressure in my hose dropping and saw Charlie coming over with the big seventy-metre-long, eighteen-millimetre diameter hose. Bloody marvellous, things must be under control over at the studio. C brought my helmet over, concerned a branch would fall on my head. We could hear trees and branches falling in the bush around us every few minutes. Charlie and I worked to extinguish the pile of timber and then Charlie focussed on the burning tree and I went back up the hill to work out what was going on with the fire trailer pressure.

As I did my fire hose got caught in a roll of poly pipe. While I faced this irritating but normally surmountable inconvenience, I realised my cognitive capacity had dwindled to the point of stupefaction. I registered this, at least, and looked down towards Charlie not far away near the chicken coop. This large man having extinguished the tree was cradling a chicken, patting its singed bum saying you’ll be alright.

It was still dark, everything around us was alight. I got the tangle out and moved over to the fire trailer. It was low on water but not completely empty. Doesn’t explain the drop in pressure I thought, but I need to fill it up anyway. I started reeling in the hose and gallant early efforts to reel that thing in rapidly gave way to meagre attempts. It may as well have been attached to an ocean liner headed for New Zealand. C saw this, came over and gave me a hand to pull that boat in.

With the hose secured I drove down to the refuge area and started to work through the task of refilling the fire trailer from the cubes. C brought down the only sugary drink we had, a bottle of tonic water, and a wet tea towel. The sugar in the tonic water, a few words from C and the wet towel on my neck saw cognition and optimism return.

I finished filling the tank and the wind started to pick up again, flipping back and forth and we saw a big willy-willy moving from north to south and crossing the driveway. We had performed well but it wasn’t over yet. The fire was still creating its own weather.

Flames four metres high told us that the building materials and lovegrass just south of the shed had lit up. With the studio and house area now surrounded by black earth and mainly out of immediate danger it was incredible to have Stan and Charles to help get on top of this. The fire trailer pump was rapidly dying but held on long enough to get us in the clear.

We continued to put out the larger fires near the structures and it wasn’t until 3:15pm and a thousand years later that we paused to regroup, taking in some food and water. It looked like we had made it through.

The power pole in the paddock was on fire so after a short break Stan and I thought we’d better go and put that out. If it fell, the power lines would have fallen onto the shed. The lines were live at that point, but we lost power not long after. Putting the power pole out was the last gasp for the fire trailer pump. We still had one petrol pump left at the house but with a little island of dry lovegrass around the house and everything else burning, there was no way we were moving that pump.

The power pole fire was out and the main threat had passed so we sat on the front deck, incredibly somehow still there, and exchanged stories. As we talked we watched our front gate burn to the ground without the water, pump or energy to do anything about it. Everything was still on fire, just not quite as much as before.

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The strike team crew from earlier came back up the road. We learnt that they’d driven back in past Charlie and Danielle’s family gathering property thirty years in the making burning to the ground, past Tom’s weekender which was completely destroyed and stopped near Mik’s still burning pile of former house just down the hill from us. The counsellor that happened to be on the crew asked the driver to stop so he could prepare the rest of the team to find our corpses.

They talked that through and then continued up the hill. As they crested the rise they saw us sitting on the front deck, spent but alive. We were there sitting down in a different frame of mind, full of relief and elation at having made it through. I got up to greet them and as I shook his hand I asked the crew leader, ‘are we having fun yet’? He looked at me ashen faced. I looked around and the crew had tears in their eyes. They said that they cheered in the truck when they saw us, because they thought maybe they wouldn’t.

We chatted for a few more minutes and they left. They probably passed a conspicuously out of place vehicle on the way out because not long after that, through the smoke and flaming gate, emerged a silver Corolla with an orange mirror. A Go-Get car. It was my younger brother Matt who had driven down from Sydney to lend a hand as part of a negotiation to stop our mum from coming over to help fight the fire. “Don’t you go mum, I’ll go”. He’d talked his way through two roadblocks and brought news of the fire along both sides of the Monaro highway. He said now everyone knew about Bumbalong, it was all over the radio. We didn’t know at the time, but an SBS crew were also broadcasting from down the road towards the highway.

With a fresh reinforcement on site, Stan and Charlie returned to their families in Canberra. I double checked for embers under the house and in the roof cavity, all clear. We touched base with neighbours. They were still kicking.

Text messages from friends, work colleagues and acquaintances had gone unanswered during the fire while we had our hands full. Too exhausted to text, we responded by sending a photo of C, Charles, Stan and I still alive and smiling in front of black paddocks, smoke and charred trees. 

Matt helped us put out what we could within the reaches of our hoses and stayed up all night while we tried to get some sleep, he was watching a tree burn behind the shed. It was burning in the base of the trunk and when it burnt through it had the potential to fall into the shed. There were burning logs rolling down the hill through the night and we could see and hear trees and limbs falling with a crack, an earthy thud, and a shower of embers that threatened to ignite anything that had not yet burned.

Needless to say, sleep was still hard to come by.

2020 Bushfire Story: 02 Kicking Off

This is the second post in a series on the bushfire. For a linear read, start with the first post here.

While there had been fires surrounding the region for months, Namadgi National Park and the Bumbalong Valley were somehow ok. And then a Defence helicopter landed in the Orroral Valley about 30km north west of us. It was 27 January 2020. The landing lights ignited dry grass and sparked the Orroral Valley fire.

After that, sleep was hard to come by. When it came it was intermittent and gave way to foggy thoughts questioning whether there really was an unstoppable bushfire bearing down upon us. Which is cruel, because sleep is just one of the finite resources required for the planning, preparation and hard physical labour necessary to get a sense that maybe, if you can work a bit harder, then maybe you’ll have a chance.

The Adaminaby Complex fire had been moving in our direction under bad conditions a couple of times, so we’d had a few dry runs preparing for the worst through January. We had packed our cars with most of the important stuff and pointed them to relative safety. We had conversations with our families about our plan to stay and defend. I asked C to stay with her family, she refused outright and after some explanation had the support of her family. I was relieved. My mum Annie said something like, ‘I know you will have it under control, it sounds like you have a plan and you’re well prepared’. That support was important, but I knew she was concerned. 

With a few practice runs under our belts we were in familiar territory when we started to implement final preparations. This happened mostly alongside our normal Jobs, where I was implementing an organisational bushfire response plan and C was running front of house services and preparing for a job interview on Friday 31 January.

By the Friday of C’s interview the fire was only 15km away and the fire spread prediction map had Bumbalong in the middle of a flaming shit sandwich. I took the Friday off to run sprinklers, check pumps, keep my fingers crossed for C and finalise the plan .

A plan that would involve four people rather than two because early on Friday morning friends from Canberra Charles and Stan messaged to say they were coming out to give us a hand. They said they were coming out, leaving their families, to help us fight a bushfire.

Charles is a husband, father, international trade lawyer, accomplished cyclist and trained ACT RFS volunteer. A cultured, knowledgeable and burly man. Stan is a husband, father, qualified welder and fabricator, bike mechanic, former mariner of the high seas, adventure cyclist and bushwalker. Stan understands how to get things done and probably also knows a few other people that do it too. I’ve recreationally been to some dark and faraway places with Stan, riding and bushwalking, and we’ve always come back with a smile or at the very least a really good story.

These men had assessed the fire spread prediction map, they’d looked at the weather forecast and they knew there was a good chance we wouldn’t get through unscathed. On the morning of Saturday 1 February 2020 Charles and Stan got into their gear, said goodbye to their families and drove the hour south to Bumbalong.

When I reflect on what happened, the actions of these two stand out. It’s real courage and mateship. I have an overwhelming sense of gratitude for what they did on the day and since.

If you’re wondering, C did get the job. After she got home from the interview on Friday we discussed how we hadn’t yet officially named our place. We thought we should probably do that, before it burnt down. So we dubbed it Rollick Farm, because it’s supposed to be fun and it’s not a farm. 

We thought about writing ‘Rollick Farm’ in texta on the gate to make it dodgily official but had other more pressing things to do. As it turned out, 24 hours later we wouldn’t have a front gate anyway. 

Here’s the next post: 2020 Bushfire Story 03: The Day

2020 Bushfire Story: 01 The Lead Up

By late 2019 south eastern Australia had been in drought for years. The Murrumbidgee river was the lowest it had been in two decades and vegetation in the Bumbalong valley was well cured by low humidity and high temperatures through Australia’s warmest year on record.

The first of the fires started up in Queensland and northern NSW early in September 2019, burning rainforests and historic buildings. People in our community, our next-door neighbour amongst them, joined Rural Fire Service strike teams to help. With the unburnable going up in smoke everyone knew this would be a dangerous summer and we began to prepare early.

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I modified a box trailer, adding an IBC cube water tank, petrol pump, hose reels and converted the suspension to leaf over axle to increase ground clearance and improve the draw bar angle. The trailer would hold one thousand litres of water, equivalent to the more off road capable Rural Fire Service trucks. We topped up our water tanks, cleared flammable materials from around our structures, plugged gaps under the house, raked, mowed, and coordinated with our neighbours.

Even with preparation we knew the likelihood of being able to defend our old home was low. The former Duntroon cottage sports timber cladding, rests up on piers and features ember trapping decking front and back. From this timber structure one hundred short metres from the bush we watched as the fires started to move down the coast, into the Blue Mountains, to Victoria and back to the north to Tumbarumba, Kosciuszko National Park, Batlow and Adaminaby.

Namadgi National Park, Clear Range and Bumbalong were an island of unburnt land. Even so, the Canberra region was choked by smoke from the surrounding fires. ACT Health advised people not to go outside on more than 32 days over summer because of the hazardous levels of bushfire smoke in the air. Businesses, shopping centres, galleries and museums closed. There were fires to the north, south west, east and then two ignited in Pialligo, a few kilometres from Parliament House.  Smoke rolled in and out depending on the wind. You could feel the gritty particles in your eyes on the bad days. There were shortages of P2 masks across the county.

My woman friend C and I had spent some time training with the Rural Fire Service and crewing trucks at fires, but we are not experienced firefighters. Our time with the local brigade revealed some of the pitfalls of small volunteer organisations and left us feeling uncertain about how things would play out if a big fire ever came through the valley. With this in mind we prepared as if we would receive no external assistance.

New Year’s Eve and much of January was spent with our cars packed and hoses flaked at the ready as the Adaminaby Complex fire threatened to make a run through Namadgi National Park and the Good Good fire burnt to the south east. Blackened leaves fell from the sky and thick columns of darkening smoke dominated to the south east and south west but the winds persisted mainly from the north west and we were ok.

Here’s the next post in the bushfire story: 2020 Bushfire Story: 02 Kicking Off

Welcome to Rollick Farm

Welcome to Rollick Farm.

We’re a land for wildlife property in Bumbalong, an hour south of Canberra. While driving down the Monaro Highway you may have looked over to the mountains to the west around Michelago and Bredbo, that’s the Clear Range. The border between the ACT and NSW runs along the ridgeline.

Our place is about five hundred acres of that rugged terrain and reaches from the Murrumbidgee river three kilometres back to the top of the range at 1350m above sea level. Up there, it’s a only few hundred metres to Namadgi National Park.

We’re in our fifth year out here so we’re still new, but in that time we’ve had a chance to meet the neighbours and find our stride. In the first few years we cleared old sheds and structures, sprayed weeds, worked on plumbing, water tanks, gardens, chook sheds and all the rest.

Our biggest achievement was planting, watering and caring for a thousand native trees to revegetate previously grazed paddocks. In January this year some of the eucalypts that we planted were taller than we were, and if you’ve met us that’s pretty tall.

It took us a while to think of a name for the place and it was also in January that we settled on Rollick Farm. We thought about writing it on the gate but decided against it. We expected the gate would be gone the next day anyway.

Over the next few weeks I’ll tell the story of the 2020 bushfires that burnt ninety nine percent of our property and the floods that followed.  

Mid afternoon on Rollick Farm, 1 February 2020

Mid afternoon on Rollick Farm, 1 February 2020