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.

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