FROM FLOOD TO FIRE

A year ago - 19 November 2008 - it was a flood that washed away our creek crossing.

This year - 21 November - it was a fire.  Some unbelievably stupid arsonist(s) lit about 60 fires along a six kilometre stretch of Wallers Road through the middle of the Helidon Hills last Saturday morning.  Within a couple of hours it was a huge and uncontrollable bushfire.

By Tuesday midday it had burned its way across the hills and was into the headwaters of Lilydale Creek - the creek that we cross to enter our property - in the panorama below (taken from the hill behind the house) you might just make out the smoke coming up from the creek gully in the far right.

By midday it was advancing rapidly down the creek, and though the wind was keeping it away from our place, there was no certainty that the weather would not change.  By 2.00pm the fire control centre had decided that they were going to back-burn from behind the houses on our side of the Hills - something they had been preparing for during the two preceding days.

Two teams of fire-fighters arrived at our place about 5.30pm, one from Parks and Wildlife and one from the Rural Fire Service.  They decided to burn on the western side of the ridge (and buildings), as this was the downwind side, and then to come back and burn the windward northeastern side.  By this time a strong northeasterly wind was blowing.

They used a backpack leaf-blower to clear a line down the path from the header tanks up on the hill down to the workshop, where it then followed the edge of the firebreak around the buildings.  We had asked them not to burn the firebreaks, partly because of the erosion that would be likely if it rained on bare soil there, but also because of the effort Hanneke had put into bringing them back to native grasses and shrubs.  They were willing to do this, even though it meant a lot more work for them in keeping a wet line between the fire and the firebreak.  The photo below shows the beginning of the back-burn at the top of the track below the header tanks.

As they moved around the western firebreak below the buildings it became harder, because of the steep drop of the hillside below the edge of the break.  It must have been like standing on the edge of a furnace.

When they began to burn the windward side it became a lot more difficult, but by this time two Rural Fire Service tanker trucks had arrived with additional water, so they moved one of them close to the fire line and ran out a hose.  Nevertheless it was a spectacular sight, and one that would have been terrifying if they had not been so clearly professional about what they were doing.

After both sides of our buildings had been back-burned, as well as the western side of our access track, the teams moved off to burn from the breaks around our neighbours on both sides.  By this time it was 10.00pm and we were both exhausted.  I've no idea how the firefighters managed to keep going till after midnight when they changed over with fresh crews.  Hanneke went to bed and I sat up till midnight to make sure no embers got into the buildings - and all this time there were fire-trucks coming up every 30-40 minutes to make sure everything was OK - and they continued this after I went to bed.

I'll try to expand this posting at some future time when I have a chance to talk about our preparations before the fire, and the behaviour of the fire over the next couple of days.