Sitting Beside Bushfire Survivors: A Personal Account

I was one of the lucky ones. Some of us who lived in St Andrews on 7 February 2009 escaped the Black Saturday inferno simply because the wind changed and took the bushfire to others instead. I didn’t lose my house or possessions; I lost no family members. There are many stories of those who did – stories of devastating loss, heroism, death and miraculous escape. My story is a parallel story – although a much smaller one – and I write it with distress, humility and grief. I also write it with love. I mean no disrespect to those who lost so much, and I make no claim to universal truth. This is just my own personal story.

I knew right from the start that any bushfire on that day would be catastrophic; it felt like Armageddon had arrived. But punch-drunk from days of exhausting heat, I didn’t pay sufficient attention to the public warnings and woke from a late afternoon nap to a vivid, burnt-orange sky. Ash was floating strangely in the air like snowflakes alongside great tumbling strips of bark. This could only mean one thing. From my neighbours’ cleared hilltop, I saw the massive firestorm roaring towards us before it headed away, detonating houses, cars and gas bottles on impact. Later, the anguish on the faces of CFA firefighters confirmed the extent of the devastation. ‘There’s hardly anything left,’ one burly firefighter murmured, ‘from Mittons Bridge… up.’ He covered his face with his hands as if to block out what he had just seen. It was obvious that the death toll was going to be high.

Indeed, it was a miracle that so many people managed to survive. The night of Black Saturday, I looked into the dazed eyes of my friend Ange, who had somehow walked her family out of their burning house and through the flames to safety. Another friend, Colin, had a similarly blank expression on his face when he emerged the next day from his razed area with his wife and little boy, alive against all odds. Both smelt strongly of smoke and had been within minutes of death. I hugged these friends gratefully, knowing how close I had come to losing them.

In the days and weeks that followed, I watched the familiar faces of beloved friends change as their initial shock and disbelief were replaced by overwhelming grief and distress. They shared with me a myriad of stories about what had happened, of couples whispering final farewells to each other as they huddled under blankets inside burning houses… A little dog consumed by flames in front of its family… a son’s call echoing throughout Black Saturday’s long night but receiving no answer from his father on the neighbouring property… A host of images became indelibly imprinted on my mind. With no traumatic experience of my own to engulf me, I listened and absorbed the distressing stories of those around me.

‘Sometimes,’ my old pal Helen told me a month after Black Saturday, ‘I get so homesick.’ She looked despondently around her temporary accommodation, a unit in Montmorency. I nodded, knowing how much she loved her St Andrews home of several decades – her house, her pet sheep, her chooks and the bush, all of which had been taken from her. Helen recounted how one of her cherished sheep had had to suffer four days of agony from extreme burns before she had finally been allowed to return to her property and put her pet down. The memory clearly tortured my friend, and I steered our conversation towards happier times, of Landcare meetings around her kitchen table and raucous parties on her verandah. But eventually, Helen came back to the present and said quietly, ‘You know, Liezl, I just want to go home.’ I gave her my love and support but kept my sorrow in check – she already had enough of her own. Eventually, she brightened up and began talking about plans for her new house. Helen was determined to return home.

Later on, in the privacy of my car, I cried for my friend and for all she had lost. It seemed so tragic that an eighty-two-year-old had to start all over again, and somehow, Helen’s great, resilient spirit just served to make me feel even sadder. It was so incredibly unfair.

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