Great Australian Bushfire Stories – a book review
Last year, I went up to the Perth Hills for a bushfire awareness session. I don’t live in the hills and after that briefing I think it is unlikely I ever will.
Everywhere I looked I saw a fire hazard. Thick mulch on the gardens. Fire hazard. Trees growing snugly against a house. Fire hazard. Woodpile. Fire hazard. Timber fence. Fire hazard.
I saw windy picturesque roads that would be difficult to negotiate in low visibility with fire trucks screaming past.
I’ve seen Scorched.
No, despite the undisputed beauty of the place, I couldn’t imagine living in summer in the hills.
Apart from anything else I confess to a little household laziness.
The gutters on my house have more flowering plants than my garden.
You need to be prepared for fires.
How do I know this?
I’ve just read Ian Mannix’s Great Australian Bushfire Stories. Now before I go on, let me make a disclaimer, I know Ian well. A respected ex foreign correspondent, Ian is passionate about emergency communication. Beyond passionate.
Anyway over a few drinks one night he told me about some of the stories he was collecting for his book and they were extraordinary, so when his book came out I was prepared to give it a go.
I didn’t have particularly high expectations. It’s his first book and how interesting can a collection of bushfire stories be?
After all it’s all much of a muchness isn’t it? Fire comes along. You stay or you go. If you stay you fight the fire. And I’d heard what I thought must be the best of the stories anyway.
Wrong.
First of all the fires are different, they act in strange ways, they don’t do what they are supposed to.
Secondly and most interestingly the human reaction is so different.
These are ordinary people doing amazing things. As Ian says in his book:
None of the people in this book believes their actions were perfect, none believes they were acting heroically. They just confronted the difficulties in the best way they knew how, and they wanted to keep their families safe.
And the stories are inspiring.
A man shelters under a blanket – a blanket! – in his vegetable patch and survives.
Another family run to the sea – you can see the video here – metres in front of the flames.
You get the feeling that while everyone in the book survived physically – there is still a lot of emotional trauma to be dealt with.
The whole glass back door was being smashed repeatedly by large sticks and debris, which were alight. Some of the sticks were massive. The fire was chucking everything at us. We all thought the door would break and the fire would get inside.
The wind grew louder and extremely strong. It tore a hundred-year-old gum tree out of the ground by its roots and laid it on its side. There were massive gum trees all around the area toppled over by the wind. Their tops were twisted out and tossed on the ground. Then everything went black.
One of the scariest days in my life was after we’d been camping down the back paddock with just a few mates…. they all left to go to work hubby included, leaving me and the 2 kiddies there……
Well, there had been some logs burning to try and get rid of some rubbish and none of the guys had put it out properly before they left….. so here I am on the phone to my friend discussing whether I’d go to town and visit her when I look down the back and there is smoke everywhere!!
The worst part was that the grass was really long and dry and it was windy
Hubby was working half an hour away so I called our mate who had just left (and was supposed to be going to work) and he came back to help me… I had to sit the kids in the car at the gate while we tried to bash out the flames with wet sacks…… talk about scary, grass fires are hot and we didn’t want it to spread to the neighbours.
In the end we had to call the bush fire brigade, thank god for them
There really wasn’t any property in danger but I guess things could have turned for the worst, it was heading tothe house but probably would have just burnt out, I can just remember feeling SO vulnerable and scared….
Fire safety is SO important, we learnt our lesson for sure!!
That does sound scary – and it happens so quickly!
You know, you can read any number of Fire Services publications on what you need and possibly like me, you almost immediately forget what they’ve said. The thing I found reading this book is that the stories stay with me – and the precautions the people took do too.
In part, that’s why this book is worth the read.
I am amazed about how quickly it has dried up this spring. We have had hardly any rain for over a month. The reserve next to Ryan’s Joey Scout Hall is completely brown. A few weeks ago it was green. There is just no residual moisture in the soil either.
We went to the Fire Station with the Joey Scouts last month. They emphasised a fire plan for your house. It seems more and more, we will need them for our neighbourhoods too.
They are devastating and our brave firefighters do an amazing job under difficult circumstances. Open Day at the local fire station is always well attended and always informative.
I remember as a child when my gran lived in the blue mts & the pine trees caught fire across the road. Thankfully our local firemen saved her house.
Fires are definitely unpredictable and a sudden change of wind is all that is needed or the careless dropped cigarette butt. Your descriptions from Ian’s book sound like it’s definitely a graphic read.
We all need to be prepared for the upcoming bushfire season. Only wish our neighbours felt the same way…. I had an old couple living on one side who piled their grass clippings etc up against the wooden fence right next to my sunroom. A real tinderbox… just waiting to go up as is the favourite brush box fence.
i liked the story, i thought that it was great. anyway c ya