Beyond Age

BEYOND AGEFrom the ashes: portraits of resilience, love and loss

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BEYOND AGEFrom the ashes: portraits of resilience, love and loss

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Photographs by Alan Attwood, Julie Bowyer, Andrew Chapman, Rodney Dekker, Susan Gordon-Brown, Brent Lukey, Morganna Magee, Dale Mann, Jaime Murcia, Kristian Scott and Ellen Smith

Words by Hanna Mills

Introduction by Alan Attwood

Design and production by Andrew and Anna Wolf

Front cover photo by Susan Gordon-Brown Back cover photo by Kristian Scott

Commissioned by Murrindindi Shire Council

www.murrindindi.vic.gov.au

Sponsor

Supporter

Introduction 5

Doris Perkes 6

Brian Dillon 8

Robert Dare 10

Peg and Doug Lade 12

Mary and Reg Kenealy 14

Peter Crook 16

Les Dovaston 18

John and Eunice Rebbechi 20

Jack and Mary Robb 22

Sally Kellas 24

Marie Lee 28

Margaret Mahon 30

Geoffrey Pope 32

Eva Jellinek 34

Robert Artini 36

Bessie McMahon 38

Ted Hall 40

Robert Tate 42

John and Clare Sinclair 44

John Sharwood 46

CONTENTSGraham and Lyn Clifford 50

Maurice Pawsey 52

Carol Ward 54

Craig MacAulay 56

Rosemary Simon-Ralph 58

Bruce Hinkley 60

Andrew Schreuder 62

Col and Georgina Lawrey 64

Bert and Estelle Shaw 66

Helen Carter 68

Gordon Willis 72

Muriel Paech 74

Ray Donkin 76

Denise McKenzie 78

Jenny and Les Dovaston 80

Dennis Cosh 82

Norm Berndt 84

Jim Sherlock 86

John Vietz 88

Max and Nancy Leslie 90

Acknowledgements 94

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Photograph: ANDREW CHAPMAN

INTRODUCTIONVictoria’s ‘Black Saturday’ bushfires of February 2009 are often described as a once-in-a-lifetime event. But in the Shire of Murrindindi, north-east of Melbourne, where some of the worst loss of life and property occurred, there are many people whose lives and memories go back to the fires of 1939—and even further. More than 15 per cent of the shire’s population (higher than the national average) are aged 65 and over. When we started approaching some of these people, seeking their portraits and stories, a pattern often unfolded: reserve gave way to hospitality and caution became candour. Some who were slow to start were even slower to stop when the stories came. A few, true, weren’t quite as keen to see our cameras but, compared to their recent experiences, being photographed wasn’t too tough. Most were ready for their close-ups.

All of us involved in this project were privileged to meet these people, take their portraits, and listen to what they had to say. There was wisdom: “An older person’s approach, particularly to fairly nasty events, is quite different to that of young people.” There were examples of improvisation: “I knew that inside I had cartons of soft drink left over from Christmas. I grabbed a couple of cartons of soft drink and started putting out flames on the side gate.” There was optimism: “I never think anything is impossible.” … “Things will recover well.” There was stoicism: “I thought we were pretty safe until I saw a fire coming up over the hill …‘Well, that’s it, we’re in for a big one’.”

Despite everything, there was humour: “After we had settled down with pillows and blankets in our car, he said: ‘I suppose sex is out of the question?’ And that sort of broke the ice. I just laughed and said: ‘yes, it is out of the question’.” There was realism: “It’s a big task for people my age. It is a very long way back.” There were delayed reactions: “We arrived at the fire station, and I will always remember the fellows saying: ‘You’re alive? We didn’t know you were alive’.” … “I went to get something to work on the car. I went up to the shed and it was all gone.” There were a lot of smiles. Plenty of tears, too; sometimes on both sides of the cameras.

Remarkably, there was an absence of self-pity: “But it’s no good looking back or going to the Wailing Wall and thinking: ‘Why me?’” … “I don’t feel hard done by. It’s sad, of course, because of what we lost. But we’re still here; still alive. We’re still going.” Perhaps there were a few porkies: “We don’t think we’re very old at all.” Or is that just more honesty? You see, “A lot of people still have this idea that once you get old you’re useless; hopeless; a has-been.”

These stories and photographs prove otherwise.

Alan Attwood

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Doris Perkes, 91, Flowerdale

We knew nothing; we didn’t even know a fire was coming, although our neighbour says he was hollering at us to ‘get out, get out’. We were just sitting here when my son, Bill, saw something and said to me: ‘I’d better go and put the pumps on, Mum’. I looked outside and got a glimpse through the curtains of a tree ablaze. I thought we were gone this time.

I made my way out to the garage but Bill met me just out the back door and asked me where I thought I was going. I said I was going to get the car in the garage. He said I was not going anywhere and to get back inside. We stood arguing for 10 minutes until Bill won and I stayed.

All I could see was a glow of red and flames rolling over very quickly. We had sprinklers watering the roof and I don’t know how many going down the back. We had at least two or three in the front as well. We were prepared for a fire, but not for the force with which it came. We had three generators hooked up and the TV on—Bill had to have the TV—but there was no phone and no light. We coped all right.

That night, two men had obviously left their run too late and a tree fell on their ute on the hill here. There were that many trees and logs across the road. They wouldn’t come in but one was very upset. He kept saying: ‘I’ve lost my family, I’ve lost my family.’ We heard later he’d lost two boys. One wanted to go and one wanted to stay and they were arguing on the verandah until 2am, poor fellas. I don’t know who they were, but they said they were heading for Kinglake West.

It used to be a lovely trip up through the mountains. It became a bit depressing when the bush was so black, but now it’s greening up again. We’re Kinglake senior citizens, and I have also joined the Yea senior citizens. We’re getting back into a routine now. I go out with the shire bus twice a month for a shopping trip or a meal. We have a lot of fun on that.

Photograph: JAIME MURCIA

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Brian Dillon, 70, Alexandra

Initially, we weren’t concerned. We had word of fires over in Kilmore, but that is a fair distance from here, and then over at Murrindindi. That fire grew enormously and smoke started to descend on us. The town was engulfed in smoke—you could just see the outline of the houses on the other side of the street.

It was Saturday night when we got word they had evacuated people from Marysville to Alexandra. We took in eight people from Melbourne who were really traumatised, and we had to convince them that it was just as safe at our place as the high school. They stayed for three nights before the roads opened and they could go home.

I’m with the Rotary Club of Alexandra, and I was helping out with the catering when we heard the police and coroner’s staff in Marysville hadn’t had a reasonable feed for a couple of days. So we threw a couple of barbecues in my trailer, found some food and helpers, and convinced people to let us through the road-blocks. Everything was black from Taggerty onwards. We got lost because there were no landmarks left—it was like going through a waste land.

We found there was a great need to help people who had absolutely nothing. We started a relief fund and then, when the money started coming in, we started a voucher system. We issued vouchers of up to $250 per family so they could go to the local traders who were also feeling the pinch. We gave a bit back to the community in two ways—by getting goods for the people who needed them, and a bit of money for the traders.

I don’t think the community has fully recovered. It will be a long process. It didn’t really hit us until later that it was all gone and we won’t see it again. It does affect you—it’s got to affect you—if you lose part of your community and the places you are used to. But there were positives. The traders and businesses in Alex were fantastic. The generosity of the community was enormous. It was simply a case of saying we needed something and it happened.

Photograph: KRISTIAN SCOTT

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Robert Dare, 68, Eildon

I have never been so busy in retirement. I do part-time work for the outdoor education group and I am a technical education officer for the Country Fire Authority. As a volunteer, I am a member of the Eildon Fire Brigade board and deputy president of the Darlington Nursing Home.

Eildon was ready for the fires we have had in the past pretty well. There’s a big program we run here to educate the town. But if you ask the question: was the town or the fire brigade ready for what actually happened on February 7? Probably not.

I was manning this fire station. The officers of the brigade got here at about 8.30am and stayed here the whole day because we were aware of the potential the day had. It was very busy. Most of us had to do things we wouldn’t normally have been asked to do—but we did it. There are parts of it that are quite vivid. The movement of traffic, particularly the interstate fire trucks that we were dealing with at Kilmore, was quite a surprise. The number of interstate fire trucks, maybe 10 hours after the fire had started, was amazing. There are no state boundaries when things like that happen.

I think our brigade does very well here because it has a number of people of all age ranges. An older person’s approach, particularly to fairly nasty events, is quite different to that of young people and there can be a lot of cross-support between those age groups. It is a great advantage to have older people involved in any organisation. I would say about 25 per cent of people on the backs of trucks have grey hair.

I think the fires brought the community closer together. I think the spin off from that is that right now people are asking questions about what we are going to do to prevent it happening again here. And that’s a hell of a question.

Photograph: SUSAN GORDON-BROWN

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Peg, 80, and Doug Lade, 89, Highlands

Peg: When the fires were on, they had a meeting at Highlands Hall. I’m the representative from Yea Red Cross, so I just asked if anybody had anything they’d like to donate. Lots of people gave things, and lots of people cooked beautiful food. I took it down and I was simply amazed with what the Red Cross were doing in Yea. All the stuff we took in was good stuff—so good on Highlands!

Doug: We certainly realised that it was distributed, because on television that night I saw somebody wearing my Norwegian jumper. I’m glad it went to a good home.

Peg: Being such hot weather, nobody thought about taking warm clothes. I said to Doug: ‘Now you fish anything out of your drawers that you don’t want’. That jumper was one of the things, and to see it being used gave me a real buzz. It was on ABC television that night: there was Doug’s Norwegian jumper walking around the Yea Recreation Reserve.

The wind and the heat were just unbelievable. Highlands is not a hot place, but the temperature was 46 that day. It was such a dreadful day that anything could happen. We felt that anything could start up anywhere at any time, and we were glad that we didn’t actually live in the bush.

On Black Saturday we had all our important documents in baskets on this table ready to put in the car, drive the car down to the dam and get in the dam ourselves. That was our plan.

We like going off and camping. I just love the open spaces—and by that I mean I love going across the Nullarbor, which I think I’ve done three times now, and if anyone says it’s boring it’s not, there is interest all the way. We might be able to do that again; you never know. I don’t think we’re too old to do anything, yet!

Photograph: RODNEY DEKKER

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Mary, 71, and Reg Kenealy, 80, Marysville

Mary: We had the Marysville Historical Society fire plan in place. The most valuable objects had been chosen and we knew to divide the collection. It was in three places, and all three went up. All that survived were a couple of albums that one of our members had off-site, where he was putting them on the computer, and some burned and blackened artifacts we found in the rubble.

Reg: We put a call out for Marysville history and we’ve received thousands and thousands of objects. Postcards, pictures, small pieces of memorabilia, menus, brochures, paintings—people have done paintings and given them to us. Historical societies and individuals from all around Australia have sent money.

Mary: My mother was an artist and we lost all her artwork. One of the paintings she did was an old bush hut that had belonged to her grandfather. We were down at an antique fair recently and at one stall I just stood and froze. Here was a copy of this bush hut. Reg stood and burst into tears too. The man at the stall said he had carted that painting to the last half-dozen antique fairs he had been to. That picture will have pride of place in our new home.

The outpouring of generosity has just been humbling. The whole fire episode has brought out the best but, sadly, in some cases, it has brought out the worst. We have had some pretty torrid experiences in the past 12 months—ones I wouldn’t ever want to go through again. But we are both fortunate enough to have a sense of humour and I suppose you bounce back. That’s the thing that has got us through.

The story of Marysville is a long one—it is not the story of one night—and that’s the message we must hang on to. If Marysville never becomes the tourist place it used to be, it is still a town with a story. And that story must be accessible to future generations.

Photograph: JULIE BOWYER

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Peter Crook, 68, Kinglake

I think I am pretty well prepared to cope with emergencies. I have experienced some pretty horrific things in my lifetime. But this fire was something out of the box—to have a fire come at you at such a speed.

The water stopped, so I was using my number-nine boots to stamp out the spot fires at the front, close to the house. I knew that inside I had cartons of soft drink left over from Christmas. I grabbed a couple of cartons of soft drink and started putting out flames on the side gate. I just kept using the soft drinks until I had used about 35 cans.

We lost everything we owned in Cyclone Tracy in Darwin. We had a house that was two years and 13 days old. I don’t know how, but we just got on with it this time around. We brought a lot of people in after the fires—we basically had a house without power or anything else.

It’s taken a very long time to sort out the insurance for St Peter’s church. We managed to salvage almost all we could from the site which we thought, in time, could be of historical value—almost every square centimetre of glass from the windows and hand-forged nails. We managed to find a prayer book from the altar that was burnt around the outside, but the centre is still readable.

The character of Kinglake is being rebuilt, I think. There are people who will complain about the time span, which is just inevitable, but I think, all in all, it is coming back together very well. I just hope that we don’t have this death-defying celebration every year.

Remember those that have perished, of course, but it’s life—we’ve got to move on.

Photograph: ELLEN SMITH

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Les Dovaston, 71, Marysville

We got a phone call from Marysville around 5 o’clock; they said we got a fire here. Because you are outside most of the time you don’t have a radio, so you don’t know what’s going on. I was surprised we didn’t hear a siren on a truck or anything; that would have helped …

Around 5.20 the fire came over the hill and just engulfed us. I’d certainly never been in a fire like it before. I remember as a young bloke in Healesville they’d give you a stick with a bit of old fire-hose about two feet long on the end. You’d go out with ’em in a truck and they’d say ‘start fighting’ and you’d bash the grass. If the smoke was blowing in your face all you’d have to do was run through it and get on the other side.

We’d put the pumps around: we imagined the fire coming from the north. So that paddock over there, we cut it four times over the summer, and we had everything set up … I thought the fire had gone past; thought I’d just have to deal with a few spot-fires. I put out a few of them and then, around 5.30, it just came over the hill and rolled over. It was all red and rolled like a wave breaking on the beach. And it was like a jet-engine roaring. It just blew up, so we had no chance. If we’d had half a dozen people at each building, with enough water, it might have done some good. But even when the wind dropped I was spraying water at a building and it wasn’t even reaching it. Just blowing back in my face. And there was just the three of us—Jenny, myself and our son, Glenn. We had too many buildings to look after for so few. That was our problem. I don’t believe a fire like that will ever happen again here.

I didn’t think I was in any danger. I thought well, being a trout farm, we’ve got plenty of water to get in. I’d said to Jenny before, make sure you come down to the bridge. We had to dive under the water, it was that hot. Was the water warm? I don’t know. I had the dog in my arms—he was shivering. I don’t even know how long we were in the water. I lost all track of time because by 6 o’clock it was dark.

I had a terrific shed up there with all the tools I’d collected over the years. I could do anything; had every tool you could think of—electric, anything … A week after, I went to get something to work on the car. I went up to the shed and it was all gone. But I couldn’t get that into my head. That was hard.

We had a meeting with the accountant. He said: ‘I suggest you walk out’. But I don’t want to walk out. I haven’t finished here what I started to do. I don’t want to go somewhere else and start again. No, I don’t want to do that. I want to get us back going … We were on our way. But we’ll never get it back the way it was.

Photograph: ALAN ATTWOOD

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John, 68, and Eunice Rebbechi, 74, Granton

John: We’d had a weekender at Sorrento for many years but the family had grown up and weren’t using it. We’re not really beach people and had always loved the bush. So we started looking around for a country property … This particular one came on the market, and we took one look and said: ‘wow, this will do us’. So that was our tree-change, though no-one had coined the term then.

Eunice: We both love the bush and like walking. It’s the solitude, too: it is a beautiful area. We’re both interested in birds.

John: I’ve always been a bit of a gardener, so it’s nice having trees all around. And it’s just so quiet: the birds come in and you can just sit there and enjoy looking out at the bush. I’d put in a lot of time into clearing blackberries. It’s all a bit of a mess now.

We’d gone back home to Mount Waverley because Saturday was one of our watering days. We followed the reports, but it wasn’t until Sunday, when we heard of fires at Narbethong, that we had any idea of the magnitude. Finally we were able to get in touch with one of our neighbours, David, and the first thing he said was: ‘I’m sorry about your house’. Later he sent us some photos. So when we did get up there we knew what we would see. But it was the sheer extent of the devastation … The garden close to the house, where we had lovely rhodos and azaleas—just totally vapourised. Nothing left. We have plans in place to rebuild.

Eunice: It’s not so much the house as some of the things we had in there—personal stuff and memorabilia that we’d taken up there like children’s books. That old typewriter was my Dad’s—he was a tax agent in Colac, where I grew up. My sister had it, she gave it to me—and of course I took it up there and it sat on a big desk we had … Other things survived, like the windmill.

John: On the Friday night we knew that the weather was bad; knew that there was a risk of fire in the area, but the thought of the house actually being destroyed never crossed our minds. When I think of all the things that were there; if that thought had crossed our minds I could have put the trailer on the car.

Eunice: Stay or go? We had always said we would leave. People say: ‘Well, if you’d stayed the Friday night what would you have done?’ We couldn’t have fought it. We just didn’t have the equipment to save the place.


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Jack, 84, and Mary Robb, 78, Rubicon

Mary: We weren’t worried. We knew the fires were coming, but we thought we were fairly safe. We had hoses going all the time and a lot of green around. Our children in Melbourne were more stressed than we were. They were listening to radio reports, and according to the radio the fires were at our back door. It wasn’t quite like that.

Jack: There were trucks everywhere. It was very good of them to be here, but they didn’t have much of a job during the day. Come night time, we told them it was very important to patrol the main road near us. We thought it was important to have a truck here, but it wasn’t here for two nights in a row. They went away and left us with nothing.

Mary: We stayed up most of the nights. We couldn’t sleep. It was a weird feeling; an uncertain feeling. We weren’t really frightened of it, but the communication wasn’t really good. Some of our trees won’t ever recover. There are others that are shooting out from the sides, and others are keeping alive from the top. It will eventually come back, but it will be a good while.

Jack: The fires of 1939 were memorable. In those days, everyone went and fought the fires. They dropped whatever they were doing. Mostly they had knapsacks, branches of trees or wet bags. The brigade might have had an old truck if they could have got it started. And I was a captain in the ’69 fires. We were out at Ackeron doing what we could, but we had to leave it. It got out of control; nobody could do anything. We had to come home.

Mary: We weren’t really affected a lot this time, not like Marysville. We don’t think Marysville will ever get back to what it was. They have found it very hard to get off the ground. It’s just like a ghost town. There’s the odd house going up but that’s it. It’s a tragic scene now. We were very blessed to have escaped it all.


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Sally Kellas, 67, Narbethong

We were approached to baby-sit a property in Marysville a quarter of a century ago. And we did something people don’t normally do in a rented house—we made a lovely garden. When our time was up there, we had two different people in the town who wanted us to rent their properties because they wanted a garden. Then we moved out here.

We were watching the weather on the day of the fires. My husband, Bill, said we were going to be in trouble tomorrow, and I always listen to this weatherman—he is always right. I got up early and gave every tree six litres of water. But by 5pm that day there wasn’t one left out there. We lost the lot.

It started like hail on the roof and it was hammering down. Sometimes a cloud like that can form its own thunderstorm and that’s what I thought was happening. But it was actually gum nuts—thousands and thousands of gum nuts coming before the fire front. They finished up two inches deep out the back. But then the winds came in and carried things away.

I had just run out of water at 9.30pm when the fire truck turned up. Our big tank had lasted nearly six hours. I was so desperate towards the end that I was using water from the fish pond. I was hoping the fish stayed down the bottom.

Earlier, I had taken Bill to the office down at the mill because it had a big air-conditioner. But there was so much burning debris that we decided to leave him in the car with the motor running, while I came back here. But then he got trapped in the car by his oxygen bottle while the mill burned down all around him. A neighbour found him unconscious and performed CPR. The two cats in the car died from the radiant heat. Bill has spent most of the last year in hospital. They didn’t think he would survive Christmas.

We were one of the only unburnt patches in the area. In the first week we had about 40 different little birds here, and because we had this little oasis we also got the displaced fire cats. One day, there was a note tucked under the door: ‘Dear Sally, I’m told you’re the cat lady of Narbethong. Have you got or seen my Misty?’ I hadn’t seen her, but we put dry food out at several farms and asked them to keep an eye out for her. She’s back home with her family now.

Photograph: MORGANNA MAGEE

26Photograph: SUSAN GORDON-BROWN

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Marie Lee, 90, Alexandra

On the day of the fires, you could hardly see across the road for the smoke. About 6 o’clock in the evening, the detective who lives a couple of doors up told my next-door neighbour to take me down to the college. She picked me up—I didn’t even have a bottle of water—and took me down to the assembly hall.

The oldies and the young ones were assembled and then finally, about 10pm, my daughter found me and took me to a friend’s place. We stayed the night there. The fire came as far as Taggerty. I think you can still see the trees that are blackened.

I have always led a very busy life. Whenever I sit down, I do crossword puzzles and I knit. I have just finished knitting 50 beanies for orphans in Ukraine. I can’t bear just sitting down and doing nothing.

My grandson, Andy, gave me a computer. I get on it nearly every day. Depending on who’s online, I can go and talk to my children, nieces and nephews and my grandchildren. I use Skype—I can see them and they can see me. I also bought a new car, a Toyota Yaris. I drive round the town, that’s about all. I rely on my car very much to do the shopping. I probably don’t do as much walking as I should but I can’t see myself on an electric gopher.

Life goes on pretty quietly here. I probably couldn’t live in Melbourne. I have been living on my own for the last 27 years but I have never felt lonely in the house. I’ve been very lucky—wonderful family, good friends and pretty good health. You have your moments, but there is always someone worse off than you. So you get up and get going. I can say I’ve been blessed.

Photograph: BRENT LUKEY

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Margaret Mahon, 76, Killingworth

I’ve had a long association with the Red Cross. I’ve been in it over 40 years and president here for nearly 30 years—not that I want to keep it, but nobody else wants to take it on. I’m also the catering officer.

I was at home on the day of the fires. We had a little listening set so I could hear what was going on, and I could tell from the tone of things that we would be needed. At 3.45pm, we received a call from the CFA to say they would need a meal that night for the firemen. Then things got worse and worse and people started coming in.

We’ve done a lot of catering for fires, but I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s hard to explain just how it was. The people were stunned. They didn’t want to talk to us or anyone else—unless they met someone that they knew in similar circumstances, and then there would be a lot of tears. It really was just awful. We worked all night. I went from 3.45pm until 9.30am and then came home for a shower. I couldn’t sleep, so I just went back in again and worked until midnight. It really was a horrific experience.

Things came from everywhere; I don’t know where they all came from in the end. The generosity of people was extraordinary. The supermarket and the butchers were open after hours for us. On the Sunday, a cool room came in from Sunbury full of milk. We got palates of potatoes and onions, bins of pears and fruit from Shepparton. Bedding came in from Mansfield. It was amazing the amount of stuff that came in. And the streets were full of people just walking. It was a scene we haven’t seen before, thank goodness, and I hope we don’t again.

I’m just thankful that there was a place that people could come to, where people could get a little bit of solace or food. Nobody seemed to want anything. They just needed comfort and a shoulder to cry on. And people came. People from the town could see the magnitude of the thing and just came to help. It’s very much a community here. Everybody is concerned about everybody and willing to help. It’s a wonderful little community, Yea.

Photograph: DALE MANN

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Geoffrey Pope, 69, Marysville

Marysville was a very close-knit community, because it was relatively small. It had little clout in terms of government or voting but the community just worked together. The sense of community was very strong.

I don’t know that any community could have been prepared for these fires, because it was beyond the realm of what we could imagine or conceive. We owned seven shops in the main street; built with concrete slab floors, masonry bricks, steel frames and roofs. We thought they were safe—but they were blown apart.

There was so much turmoil and confusion post Black Saturday. Families shattered, people lost. Being in Melbourne shielded me from some of that, and even though we owned property, we were not allowed into the community for quite a long period. But if Marysville was going to re-build, then I had to be part of it.

If we had demolished, I could never have afforded to rebuild so I took a gamble. I decided that I wasn’t rebuilding. I was just doing a renovation of the existing shops, so I didn’t need a permit. I was largely motivated by four of our tenants. They were very keen to get back in business, or leave the town if they couldn’t. That was almost therapy for me—to roll up my sleeves and throw myself into some facilitating of the recovery. Before the end of June, we will have seven shops operating again.

I think the economic recovery has barely started. The simple fact is that apart from our shops nobody has done anything. One or two have tried and just found the figures didn’t stack up. But, by and large, the community is still strong and I think that is shown by the number of houses that have rocketed up within the last 12 months.

There is still a very strong sense of community. ‘We will rebuild’ has been the mantra.


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Eva Jellinek, 87, Taggerty

I’m from the Czech Republic; I lost many of my family in the War. I was in the ghetto, then some time in the Auschwitz labour camp. I came to Australia after the war: I had some relatives here. My sister and her husband had a poultry business outside Melbourne, in Plenty. Her husband went to work and would leave us with the chickens.

When the fires came last year, I had to leave my home on two occasions. The first time, my son and grandson came. They told me to get some important things and then they would take me to Melbourne. But I couldn’t think of anything—I couldn’t take the garden with me! I really had no choice about it. But, as they insisted, I had to go. What else could I do?

I had a girl here with me from Singapore and she got completely freaked out. So I sent her to Melbourne and then on a plane back to Singapore. I said I can cope myself but not with her on top of it; her crying and not sleeping because of the fires. She freaked out—in Singapore you don’t have any bushfires!

I would say it was quite a scary experience, but it wasn’t my first experience of fire. In Plenty, when we had the poultry farm, there was a big fire once. The neighbour’s house burned down. An old lady was living there; she put her cow and horse and chooks in the bathroom and shut them up there. Then the fire-brigade came and said: ‘Are you crazy?’ Having all those animals in the bathroom …

When I was told to leave I thought it was OK to go. But I didn’t want to go. I just like it here. I like the country, and I can’t stand the city. My son brought me back here; he wanted to see what was going on. We stayed here two days, but the fires were still going. Then he said we’d better go back. It was like: oh no, here we go again!

It was around 1982 that I came here. My brother-in-law, after he retired, got a place here. It’s the peace and quiet I love. And the birds—heaps of birds. I love them. The little ones are gorgeous—blue wrens, yellow whistlers, they make nests everywhere. They are great. Looking at the countryside, I’ve been surprised by how quickly things have recovered. Things will recover well.


36

Robert Artini, 71, Flowerdale

We were told that there was fire coming our way but that we would be all right. So we were quite vigilant about everything, but not worried. We watered around the house about three hours before the fires came through and the pump was ready in the shed. But by the evening there was horrible black smoke, and then the fire was virtually on top of us. All the fences around us were alive with fire. We were very lucky it didn’t do anything more than that to our place. We didn’t lose anything.

My wife and our four-year-old grandson were in the house. We started panicking when we couldn’t get out because the smoke was too thick. We didn’t know what to do. But he slept through all of it and didn’t know anything had happened until the next morning, when he wanted to know why it was black outside and not inside. It’s funny to think about it now, but it wasn’t on that day.

I was landed with the job of barbecuing bacon and eggs every morning for people who had lost their homes. I enjoyed that. It was nice to be able to talk to some of these people who had lost everything and to see how bright they still were. They knew they had lost the house but it probably hadn’t sunk in yet. I don’t know how it would have affected us if we had lost our grandson. I guess we’re damn lucky.

You get a reminder of what has happened everywhere you go. The houses have been cleaned up now and the bush is springing back better than we thought it would, considering the devastation it did to the homes and trees. But I think it’s going to take a long time to forget about the whole thing.

I run the Yea Men’s Shed two days a week. Our 80 members do a bit of everything: we repair furniture for the community, we talk, we play cards, we read the paper in the kitchen. We work from 9am until 3.30pm and then we close up the workshop and we sit in the kitchen and have a hard-earned drink. We talk about things that sometimes men wouldn’t talk about to anybody else. It brings us together.


38

Bessie McMahon, 84, Kinglake

I was born in Kinglake and lived here all my life. We came here to the farm when we got married—that’s 64 years this year. My husband Jim just celebrated his 90th birthday here.

We never left the farm on the day of the fires. I was sitting here and the phone rang about 3pm. My grandson said: “Nan, do you want us to help with the fires?” I said: “What fires? There’s no fires here.” He said: “Nanna, there is. There are fires. Kinglake’s on fire. It’s on the air.”

So I walked outside and down to the end of the path and I saw the garage go up. I have been through some fires in Kinglake but there’s never, ever, been a fire like this one. It was a terrible, terrible ordeal on everybody.

What really, really made me feel proud was the way they all united as one. Everybody worked together and it was a fantastic feeling, I can tell you. It was just so beautiful.

I’ve been with St Vincent de Paul for 35 years or more. Kinglake residents tell me I have made it a lot easier for them. Just being there and giving them fuel, giving them medication. I just hope I have. They have lost their homes and I have still got mine. They have lost their families and I have still got mine. That’s the crunch of it.

But I am disappointed about how things are going here. There is still no petrol and people are having a lot of problems getting permits. There’s not enough going into getting Kinglake back.


40

Ted Hall, 73, Alexandra

I’m no stranger to fire. We have had a few here, but nothing like the Black Saturday fires. We were at home as it got dark and we could see the row of fire right across from the hill just out of Alexandra. I have never seen anything that bad before. When you see the damage that it did, it’s surprising that anybody got out of it.

There was a lot of goodwill around after the fires. Quite a few people went out of their way to help others. My wife, Val, and I went down to the hall and offered a room to anyone who wanted it for a night or a couple of nights. There was a chap coming up from Melbourne who was heading to Queensland, but they wouldn’t let him through Alex. I think he was about 65 years old. He came round for the night.

I was a shearer and I still shear the odd sheep. I did some shearing for a bloke who was burnt out at Narbethong, but he shifted his sheep to his sister’s place at Buxton. All the sheep were a little bit singed on the outside but it was 12 months of wool. When he got me down to shear them, the wool was a really dirty grey from the ash and it had a smoky smell to it. It was totally different to all the other wool.

Another sheep I shore for another bloke had two years of wool on it and that was what saved its life. It was burnt all over its back and around the sides, the tips of its ears were blistered and a little bit on the side of the nose as well. But it’s still going.

My left hand is a lump of steel. I lost it in a fish-mincer at the Buxton fish farm in ’62. But I still do everything I used to do before. I still use a chainsaw and still drive my ute, with no power steering. I had to do a test drive for the police at Alexandra, and they decided I could drive just as well as anybody else.


42

Robert ‘Bob’ Tate, 76, Alexandra

Alexandra is a lovely little town. We came through here on our honeymoon. I made some inquiries a few years later and we started a vet practice in the back room of our first house. We found another place and it’s still going as a vet practice. I’m retired now.

Our first fire experience was in 1969. It was a day that started much as Black Saturday did. Still, hot, with a promise of a very hot day and a very strong wind. It was an enormous fire that burnt out three quarters of the shire. The next two weeks, I spent vetting animals and saying what should be destroyed and shouldn’t be destroyed. I had nothing to do with the animals last year but we did have a lot to do with the support of people.

At half past eleven the night of Black Saturday, I got a phone call asking me to come down to the community centre in the morning and help with breakfast because all the evacuees from Marysville and beyond had gone there as a safe refuge. That was the start of Alexandra’s rotary club assisting all the fire victims. Some people had been down there all afternoon helping them but I knew nothing about that because we were here worrying about ourselves.

The breakfasts went on every day for about four weeks. We alternated with the Alexandra Lions Club. At the same time, donations of clothing and food were coming in. The rotary club took it on to receive those goodies and sort them out.

I have also spent a number of years now collecting the seed from the native trees around the area and propagating them in the spring time. I have been selling about 1000 a year. Last year, after the bushfires, somebody came in and wanted some trees for Marysville so I gave them about 500.


44

John, 69, and Clare Sinclair, 66, Molesworth

John: I’m the communications officer for Molesworth CFA. I was once a captain but I’m getting too old for that now, so I do the radio work. It involves communicating with the commanders and crews on the fire trucks and arranging relief crews for our truck. And there was a great deal of that done, of course, during the Black Saturday fires.

Molesworth crewed its own two trucks for 24 hours a day for 10 days. It’s only a small brigade—about 50 altogether, though a lot of them are Melbourne people—but I never got one knockback to go on the crew. A lot of people left their jobs in Melbourne to help. That was an impressive performance for a voluntary organisation.

Clare: Because we knew it was going to be such a horrific day, we did our outside chores early. We moved cows from a part of the farm that actually did get burned later in the day down to the river—that was a very good move. And then we sat waiting for something to happen

John: About 2.30pm, the call came from Yea for the Molesworth tanker to be manned, because the Yea tankers had gone to Kilmore. And we’d only been there 20 minutes or so before we were deployed to the scene of the Murrindindi fire—and that was the start of Molesworth’s involvement with the fire. I was stationed at the Molesworth fire shed for 16, 17 hours a day organising crews. Basically, my job was to make sure that our trucks were crewed 24 hours a day and that people weren’t doing too much so that they became exhausted. Tired firefighters get hurt, and we had to be very careful about that.

Our son was crew leader on a tanker deployed to Marysville and it was overrun with fire. He sustained some burning on the side of his face and down the side of his body. He said to me: ‘Dad, I’ve lost the truck’, and I won’t tell you what I said about that. I had no concern about the damn truck at all. But then he said: ‘and I very nearly lost the crew’, and I think that’s weighed on him a bit. So that was traumatic for us as parents.

The fire was still burning a week later. We could see it just out the back door, here up on top of the range. But we were very lucky. It only hit the southern end of our property from the Black Range. We have about 5km of frontage to the Black Range and the fire roared right along through the top of it, but fortunately it didn’t come down very far.


46

John Sharwood, 76, Cathkin

I’m a farmer, ex-pharmacist and chairman and treasurer of the Yarck CFA. We bought our property here in 1980 and have been involved in the area ever since. I’ve helped to put a meeting-room on the CFA shed and I’ve done other work in the area. It’s a very vibrant group of Yarck members.

On the day of the fires I was on duty from 9am. We had been sitting around yarning, thinking that nothing would happen until 3 or 4pm, so I went home for lunch. I went back at about 2pm and the Kilmore fire had started. Our small truck was dispatched with a strike team to Kilmore and soon after our big truck was assigned with a strike team to the Murrindindi mill.

I was the scribbler, or scribe, in the command vehicle for that strike team. The Murrindindi fire became a major fire and the small tanker was diverted and arrived at the Murrindindi fire about the same time we did. It was evident that the fire was going to go into the Black Range and that nothing would stop it. The two strike teams were combined and sent to Narbethong, then diverted to Marysville.

At Marysville, the wind changed and it became quite clear that nothing would stop the fire progressing in that change of wind. So we were all then dispatched to Gallipoli Park at Marysville. But by this time our small tanker had caught on fire and the crew from that had to abandon it. I was at Gallipoli Park and we had to wait there, just feeling totally useless, not knowing where our eight boys were for about 15 or 20 minutes. Eventually we got notification that the boys were all right, which was a huge relief.

We stayed at Gallipoli Park for about four hours, knowing that Marysville was being absolutely totally destroyed. Then we heard that Taggerty was being threatened, so we headed for Alexandra. It was burning on both sides of the road when we left Marysville. It was just an inferno. But Taggerty was saved by an incredible effort by the Taggerty boys.

It was not a good day. I got back here at our farm at 2 or 2.30am and all I wanted was to have a cold shower, but I couldn’t because there was no power or water. But I was very pleased to get home. It was a day that I will always remember, but not one that we’d ever want repeated.


48Photograph: RODNEY DEKKER

50

Graham, 68, and Lyn Clifford, 62, Thornton

Graham: Time on the morning of February 7 stood still. The wind was absolutely horrendous. It was just blowing back in your face. And during it all, we started to get a little bit of lightning and a little bit of thunder and a sprinkle of rain. There was so much smoke and clouds that it made its own weather.

I was on a truck sent to Marysville. We had a wind change and it blew back on us. We jumped back on the trucks and we had to hightail it down to Gallipoli Park. In the meantime, everyone did what we call a ‘crew safe’—where you grab a hose on the back and make an umbrella of water over the tanker—just to get out. I thought that was it, but I’m here to tell the story.

Lyn was by herself on the night because I was in Marysville. It was scary. I finally got through on the phone to her at the Thornton fire station and said: ‘Marysville’s gone’. She laughed and said: ‘where’s Marysville gone?’

Lyn: After it had all settled down a bit, we did what we called a ‘tour of duty’ to Marysville. The Marysville brigade was stood down because they had all lost their homes. Other brigades in the area were manning the station down there until the end of July. We were doing 48-hour shifts, looking after the station. There were no people in the town but it was full of police. And if they saw a smoking log in the middle of nowhere, they would call it in.

Our son has been in the CFA for years. He said to us: ‘Why don’t you go down and see if they want oldies at the brigade?’ Graham signed up six years ago and I joined two years later. If the young ones come, I am prepared to stay off the truck and let them go. We enjoy the companionship.


52

Maurice Pawsey, 81, Alexandra

My involvement with the fires was in the weeks and months afterwards. I was quite concerned about traders losing business. There were 2,500 tourist/residential beds at Marysville—and they had gone. And it was our supermarket, our fruiterer and our butcher who used to supply all those beds, so they had lost that trade.

And then we started to realise that people were not getting money out of the appeal. All of those people who had been burnt out—and a lot of them were living in Alexandra—were not getting any cash. They had lost their jobs in Marysville and while some were getting hardship payments, it wasn’t very much. They had very little money and were uncertain as to how they were to pay rent, get their food and so on.

So we came up with a voucher system. We asked the traders if they would accept Rotary Club of Alexandra vouchers and then claim them back on us. They said that was fine. We handed out $250 a family, and eventually put out $80,000 in those vouchers. We raised the money by ringing friends who were involved in Rotary clubs around Melbourne.

Then the shire rang us and said they would like 50 pairs of boots for Narbethong. A Rotary club from Balwyn paid for those. They also did a door knock and brought up donations of clothes, toys and food; it took us an hour to unload the truck. A week later they offered to donate 10 sheds if we’d help to build them. It turned into 20 sheds. We put it to our members—it would be a lot of work to find sites, dig holes and get building permits, plus we knew we would have to house and feed the guys from Melbourne. The whole club agreed.

We had guys running around digging holes, cleaning and levelling sites and getting permits. And, duly, one March weekend we had 80 guys come up to build. We housed them out at Eildon, gave them lunches, took them to the pub on the Friday and Saturday nights, and held a farewell on the Sunday. They came back and did the electrical wiring the next weekend. We estimate those sheds are worth $300,000. Our next step is to raise money and issue vouchers for plants.


54

Carol Ward, 66, Yea

We knew it was going to be a bad day. We were getting ember attacks here. You couldn’t see the house across the road for the smoke. We spent most of the time outside. It was hot, but we wanted to keep an eye on things.

We had a phone call at 1.10am to ask if we could do breakfast the next morning for about 250 people. But when we arrived at 6am we didn’t expect to see what we saw. There were people sleeping beside cars. We cooked breakfast for just under 400 and it became a daily thing for the next two weeks. We were there every day from about 9am until 8pm.

The generosity of people was just overwhelming. People delivered food and eggs and clothes. We had a BBC reporter stay one night because he just couldn’t get anywhere in town. The motels and the pubs were packed with displaced people. Then the army came and put up the tents—that was quite incredible.

We didn’t watch much on the TV. By the time we got home, it was shower, bed and up again the next day. And it was hot down there—I just remember having filthy feet from the dust down at the oval, and trekking back and forward to the cool rooms through the dust. But we were always able to discuss things and I think that takes the burden off how you feel.

We ran the local supermarket for 25 years and my husband, Brian, was with the CFA road rescue for nearly 30 years. But quite a lot of Brian’s friends were dying, so we thought we needed to do some things and not be so tired all the time. It’s good to be out of the shop and be a bit freer. We help out at the Red Cross now, but we do miss the people.


56

Craig MacAulay, 72, Molesworth

On the Sunday when the fire came from Narbethong, everybody came up here because that’s where we expected to be able to stop it. We tried to stop it further into the bush, but that didn’t work. They had dozers cutting fire breaks a good mile into the bush from where we eventually stopped it. The flames were up twice the height of that tree. I was just thinking: what the hell was the next thing I was going to do?

I was very worried about stopping the fire getting into the grass and getting down to my olive grove, so I camped up there on the ridge. We had four spot fires, two of which I was able to control myself, but for two of them I had to get onto the fire brigade radio and call up a couple of strike teams to help put them out. For every one of them I was sound asleep and the kelpie pup I had with me started howling. Lo and behold, there would be a glow in the grass. It’s amazing how dogs know that there is something wrong and he let me know. I would have slept through it otherwise as I was that tired; he was a gem.

Yea is only just down that particular valley and even though it is fourteen odd kilometres by road, it’s only about four or five kilometres as the crow flies. It certainly could have got into Molesworth and Yea with that south-westerly behind it, and if somebody hadn’t put the spot fires out they would have kept going. It’s still pretty bare in places: the heat was that intense not much has grown on the ground since.

I used to get very frustrated, because I couldn’t do things that I reckon I should be able to do, and when I thought back I was probably doing things that 20-year-olds weren’t capable of anyway. You have got to realise that you are only human: you’re not a machine and you just slow down a bit. A lot of people still have this idea that once you get old you’re useless; hopeless; a has-been. We all get aches and pains and as we get older you just put up with that, curse a bit more, have a few more beers—it helps!

My father used to say: ‘make the most of every day, but don’t make a bastard of yourself’. Even if you think you are young and invincible every day is another day and you have just got to make the most of it.


58

Rosemary Simon-Ralph, 69, Strath Creek

I think coming here was probably like coming home. Strath Creek is like that: the beauty; being in the hills; the people I’ve met. Here we have a community that is very much involved in life and involved with one another, and to me it feels like home.

It was a terrifying experience and we think we have recovered, but we really haven’t. The sound was like a jet-engine sitting on the house; with the odd explosion of gas tanks. It was raining leaves, so the sound was like hail from time to time as the leaves fell on to the roof.

I don’t think anybody would have prepared sufficiently. It was too sudden, it was too hot, and it was too wild. It was quite mad: the fire went mad, you couldn’t tame it. The whole valley was affected by the fires and I’m affected by guilt; we felt guilty about surviving. The way to overcome it was to cook huge meals for people, because we were the only ones with power because of our solar system.

I’m on the Community Recovery Committee as administrator. For me, the CRC has meant I’m using the left side of my brain. It’s a thing I never thought I’d do before the fires. My life has opened up and I’ve been able to take in more and put stuff into action. So on a personal level there have been huge changes; and at a community level, changes also.

I think I’ve got more courage as a result of my age and I think that is something people need to look forward to instead of thinking: old age. They might think as I think: this is a renewal. Now I think that 70 is the beginning of stuff, because that’s what happened. It’s been an amazing experience to do the things that I’ve done in the last twelve months. I mean, computer skills— for goodness sake, I was dragged kicking and screaming into this!

I don’t feel as though I’m about to be 70. I’m far more involved in my life and far more in control of my life than I’ve ever been before and I think that brings a new youthfulness in your thought and actions. It brings a lot of courage, because you’ve got to do things that you’ve never done before; you’ve got to step out.

He was a little shiatsu and he was a very, very special dog so he gave me some hair, which I’ve used in three brushes, and they all do different patterns. So thank you, Charlie. And Charlie’s memory goes on every time I use these.


60

Bruce Hinkley, 65, Strath Creek

I had a contracting business as a plasterer, but I gave it away some years ago and retired up here to Strath Creek to do a bit of farming. I came up here to retire as an easier way of life. But I might go back to work—it could be easier after the last 12 months! The people here are very conscious of others’ needs and they invite everyone along to functions, whether it be the Landcare group or the tennis club. They made me feel welcome.

Most of the farmers in the area were aware of what would happen if there was a fire, and we prepared ourselves fairly well to that degree. But the thing was, we didn’t expect an inferno.

I think we could have done a lot more if we’d been aware of how big the fire was. I’ve learned a lot through the fires. What I should have done, as compared to what I did do.

I was sitting down in the shed and at about 4pm I just looked up and saw this great, white cloud and there was a very eerie feeling, much the same as Ash Wednesday. At the time, I thought we were pretty safe until I saw a fire coming up over the hill and I thought: ‘Well, that’s it, we’re in for a big one’.

The wind blew it straight down to the neighbours’ house and it just engulfed that. I went down to save what I could down there and had no hope—everything just exploded. I tried to grab the dogs but they were so frightened that they just took off. I came back up to my place and there were just fires everywhere. I didn’t know which fire to put out first. It was just a matter of running from one haystack to the other and trying to protect everything. I finished up putting out fires with my jumper.

I kept my cool. I think if I did panic, I maybe wouldn’t be here today. I think the community spirit was there, where everyone helped each other. It took me a long time to console myself to the fact that people had died, and we lost a lot of infrastructure, but I think we all pulled together.


62

Andrew Shreuder, 82, Marysville

I’m an Anglican priest. I came to Marysville in 1994 and I was here for eight-and-a-half years as a priest, then I retired here.

The church is gone completely. There’s still a flag flying but it completely went—burned from the inside. I’ve seen some remarkable photos of people who were stranded there and took photos of the church burning. The building is intact, but the embers must have got in through the roof or something. It would have had its centenary in two years’ time.

I was here at home during the fires. Friends rang me and told me to get out. I asked where to go and was told the Cumberland. So I went to the Cumberland and there was not a soul there. If I’d stayed at the Cumberland, I wouldn’t be here now—it just went up. I’m not sure why I was told to go there. I got to the golf course and stayed until we were ordered to move out by the police. I went to Alexandra and stayed with friends there, lifelong friends of mine.

My car was outside the golf course. A log truck melted only 50 metres away from it, but my car hasn’t got a scar on it. My life is the most incredible story. The house burned up four sides but it is still here. I bought a unit in Alexandra, had it for three months, then sold it in five days for the same price I paid for it. It was pointless commuting between here and Alexandra all the time. I came back to the house just before Easter last year, almost three months from the date of the fires.

We have our Sunday service in the Roman Catholic building and on alternate Sundays we have a service at Buxton—the church is still there. But we’re slowly working on rebuilding our church at last. It won’t be a weatherboard church. I’m sure the authorities wouldn’t allow us to build a weatherboard. We hope it will be finished in 12 months, if we’re lucky.

There are some people who aren’t coming back. Opening the school should be good—get the kids back here, then I dare say some families might move in. But there’s not much employment. Prior to the fires, the major employment was accommodation places. It was very touristy, if that’s the word. The only place left is the motel on the main street.


64

Col, 67, and Georgina Lawrey, 63, Buxton

Col: Before the fire arrived, the wind was blowing an absolute gale. We talked about getting into the dam with a couple of doonas until the firestorm passed. We decided against it at the last minute, which turned out to be a pretty good idea because 25 Highland cattle with big long horns had all found their way into the dam in the dark.

We were fairly well prepared and had decided to stay on. We couldn’t see anything, but we could hear the roar of the fire coming. Then a police car came in with all its lights flashing and they asked me to lead a convoy of nine cars out in my big white truck because I knew the district. The smoke was so thick that the only way I could tell where we were was by looking at how many kilometres I had done. If I had run off the road, nine cars would have followed me.

We got all the way to Alexandra without any problems, but it was a pretty horrific time. Later, a couple of CFA members—two police officers and some locals—told us our place had burned to the ground. And then a fella I knew came over and told us how lucky we were to still have our house. We decided that if the place was gone, we’d go to Queensland and have our first holiday in 28 years. So when we got to the front gate and saw the house was still there, the first thing Georgina said was: ‘bugger!’ I thought that was fairly appropriate at the time.

Georgina: We slept in our car at Alexandra, much to our daughter’s horror. People were saying Marysville was burnt to the ground; Buxton had gone; everything was decimated. People were hysterical in the street. Col was very caring, but after we had settled down with pillows and blankets in our car, he said: ‘I suppose sex is out of the question?’ And that sort of broke the ice. I just laughed and said: ‘yes, it is out of the question’.

Col: It has certainly changed our lives. I will work for another five years now, because I would like to get all my stock and plants up to scratch. Most of my customers have been burnt out and will desperately need advice and plants for their new gardens in their new houses. We have already given away thousands of donated potted plants and trees. Everybody is getting a chance to grow a few green plants in their garden again.


66

Bert, 89, and Estelle Shaw, 84, Alexandra

Estelle: That Saturday of the fires was so hot. We pulled all the blinds down to keep it as cool as we could and we kept looking at the clock saying: ‘that’s another hour gone, and another hour gone’. We never wished a day to go so fast. We got to near 5pm and all the power went off.

Our neighbours looked after us really well. They were coming in every little while to see if we were all right in the heat. She is a nurse, and told us to take off our shirts and put wet cloths at the back of our necks while she charged our phone up and told us that if they were going to go down to the football ground, they’d take us with them.

Later that evening, they came in and said they had just heard on the radio that they were asking for clothes for the people from Taggerty and Marysville who had arrived in Alexandra with nothing. I had new clothes that I hadn’t worn, so I gave them away, and Bert gave them shirts and things. We did what we could.

Our daughter called us and said: ‘I love you’. We told her we loved her too. She just wanted us to know in case anything happened. But it didn’t stop that day; it went on for a whole month. Nobody knew where the fire was going to go. It was just an awful, awful time. And we’ll never forget the day it rained—it was the most beautiful thing.

Bert: We’ve been married 59 years. We decided over the last 12 months that we would work in the morning and take the afternoon off. Neither of us is geared to sitting. We sit for a while and then we have to get up and do something. We’re a bit independent and we like to be on our own. But we don’t think we’re very old at all.


68

Helen Carter, 80, Alexandra

I’ve been here a bit over seven years, which I guess makes me a newcomer. I’m the president of the local branch of the Country Women’s Association. After the fires we thought about what we could do, because everything else seemed to be worked out. Our thing is food and company, so that’s what we thought we’d do.

The fire came close to the town. The smoke was a menace because you couldn’t pin-point where the fire was, but at night you could see the glow in the sky, so you felt like it was a bit close.

Because we’ve got paddocks around us I didn’t feel really threatened by it. A man from the CFA came: he asked was I all right and I said ‘yes’. And he said: ‘Well, you know I live just across the road and I’ve got a tanker and this and that.’ That was reassuring but, well, I’m a pretty controlled person myself. And because I’ve got things around my place like water sprinklers I thought I was in a pretty good position. My son and daughter-in-law came down because she was worried about being in their place because they’ve got trees right around their house.

I’d hear reports and had to keep asking my son: ‘Is that near us?’ And he’d say: ‘Mum, you should be more worried about it coming from Yea’ and things like that… So then I started looking in the opposite direction.

I’ve been through fires myself before. I remember back in 1939, when I was a child in Frenchs Forest, NSW. Also, later, in Booladilla. That was horrendous. I think it all depends whether you’ve ever been in a fire before. Because when you’re in a fire you think ‘This is the worst fire that’s ever been’. When we were at Booladilla, the wind changed and caught the fire. A galloping horse, a car, couldn’t have outstripped it. It just killed all the koalas, everything in its path. And we were all standing on the edge of the lake and the firemen were saying: ‘We’ve never ever seen anything like this’.

After last year’s fires, we tried to make our CWA rooms a refuge. If anyone wanted to get away from the crowds or where all the people were they could come and have a cup of tea or a meal. But everyone wanted to be with other people who’d been in the fires; wanted to feel connected with them. So we only got two or three, but that’s the way life is. You want to stay with people that you know. And they didn’t really know us. But we would have made them feel welcome.

We had a roster and stayed open for a fortnight. We sat and knitted and talked and hoped someone would want to come and knit and talk to us. But they were getting well looked after where they were.


70Photograph: ANDREW CHAPMAN

72

Gordon Willis, 78, Eildon

You can go many places in the world and have good scenery and good services. You can see the trees or look down the valley. But that means nothing unless you have the people to go with it. It’s the people that make it here.

I am involved with the local fire brigade, op shop and resource centre. I had to cut back on a few others because I invariably ended up on committees. We had been working in the op shop on February 7. We were sitting outside in the afternoon and my wife Shirley was taking pictures of the clouds. But it turned out it wasn’t clouds, it was smoke formations, and they were getting bigger and bigger. We came home and tuned into the airwaves and the reports started coming in.

It wasn’t until the next day that we really appreciated the severity of the fire. And it was only on the next day that we considered if it came any closer, we could be in trouble. We had a talk with the Blue Gums Caravan Park management and they said we should best prepare for a possible evacuation or stay and defend our property. In my mind, defending my property was more important.

The fire meetings we were having were rather dramatic. There was tension building up in the community against the authorities. We were being accused of not caring, accused of not participating in certain programs that they had already instituted.

Death is with us all the time. But this is a catastrophe, this type of a death. It’s unimaginable. And you are actually saying to yourself: ‘Thank God it wasn’t me.’ But you don’t want to say it out loud for fear people think you are hard-hearted. It’s a relief to know you weren’t the chosen one. People hold that in—they don’t want to say it. It’s survivor guilt, but it’s no shame.

I think there is a theory that old people have nothing to give. But they do. It is experience and it is judgement. It is having been there and done that before. I appreciate some of the young people and their commitment to us, but I think the whole community should realise that some of the elderly people have a lot to give, too. It is also beneficial for elderly people to become involved. It gives them a spark, a spirit.


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Muriel Paech, 90, Alexandra

I was on the first committee that formed the Alexandra op shop years ago. I finally took myself off the committee, and then I took myself off the roster and now I just sail in on a Saturday morning and do some work and sail out again. That’s very comfortable for me.

Immediately after the fires, our church hall at St John’s was used to store everything. Clothing just piled in until you couldn’t even sweep the floor. Rotary set up a roster and we were just giving clothes away. Some of the survivors were very, very shocked and traumatised. The fact that someone, anyone, was giving them something—they couldn’t take that in, because they had never had to have anything given to them before.

About a week after the fires, I started coughing. And I coughed and coughed and coughed. My doctor tested my chest and nothing was the matter. It was that dreadful stuff we were breathing in. Instead of a clear blue sky, it was grey and mucky—soot and ash coming in from Marysville. There were several people with bad coughs. If it ever happens again, I will stick my gas-mask on.

I think it was tremendous the way everyone helped and did what they could. It was just outstanding. And I think it’s regrettable, in a way, that some of those committees are trying to blame people. I think, personally, they all did the best they could. We had never had anything like this on this scale before.

Here in Alexandra, people that do mix around are reasonably happy. A lot of us are arthritic or we have got conditions of some description, but if you join something or other and you get involved in it, whichever way you can, that keeps you younger mentally.


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Ray Donkin, ageless, Buxton

We first sighted the fire about 3pm. I could see a giant smoke ball over the back of the Black Range. I thought to myself: ‘Good God Almighty, that’s a fire and a half’!’ It was like an atom bomb. Then the wind changed and my daughter and I started trying to put out spot fires. But it didn’t take long for me to realise there was no way we could stop it. I must have thought I was bloody Superman to have even considered it.

I tried to save my hay shed but the fire just beat me. The lot went up—the tractor, the boat. When I look back on it now, I think my mind was shot to pieces. I headed into the town because there was obviously nothing I could do here. And on my way, I noticed the service station and restaurant were still there and a small fire was going out the back. But there were no fire trucks at all. The street was dark and there was the most eerie feeling.

I had no food and only the clothes I stood in. I got an apple off someone up the street—that was my Saturday night meal—and when I woke up in the morning I wondered if it had been a bad

dream. I just couldn’t believe it. And then I thought about the very simplest thing—I didn’t even have a toothbrush.

They say a crisis brings out the best in people and the worst in people. A fella I didn’t know drove in here one day, just after the fires. He unloaded a heap of food and a little generator, which has been absolutely wonderful in helping to repair things out in the paddocks. He even left me a slab of dog food for my dog. And I know not his name or where he came from.

I had some luck in that my two cabins were still here. If they had burned down, I think I would have just walked away. To lose everything is like someone coming up and snatching 40 years of your life away—at least, that’s what I felt. You think you’re over it emotionally until you start thinking about it again and then you remember things. It’s a big task for people my age. It is a very long way back.


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Denise McKenzie, 64, Strath Creek

I’m the local communications officer for the Strath Creek-Reedy Creek CFA. Our brigade members knew it was going to be a bad fire day. But I don’t think many members of the community were prepared. I had lots of phone calls from hysterical women with no idea what to do. If people aren’t prepared to come along to meetings, there’s not much more you can do.

On February 7, our tanker was deployed down to Wandong for asset protection. And I still can’t remember what time the fire hit Strath Creek, but I had several calls from people saying the fires were in my front paddock. They could see the fires coming over the hill and there were just no resources or time available. Everything was stretched to the limit.

Later in the afternoon, people started to ring me to say there were fires in their back paddocks. I rang the tanker and asked them to try to come home because the fires had come here and we had nothing. But even if we’d had 100 tankers here I don’t think we would have saved much—the fire was moving too quickly.

I stayed at my house—I would never leave. I figure our place is defendable, but then I think a lot of people in the fires thought their place was, too. I insisted that some of the males in this house stayed home to help me, because I’m often by myself during a fire.

It was a pretty emotional ride for me. Pagers went off constantly throughout the night. I read all of the messages but I only tried to get a tanker to go to reports of people trapped in houses. Just going to a fire was pointless because the whole area was on fire. About 3am, one of our local firemen, who had been asking for help because his house was about to burn down, literally staggered into our kitchen, put his arms around me, and cried. So did I. All of these homes that were burning were my friends’ homes.

I think the community is travelling OK now. I think everyone was just shocked for those days, wandering around quite stunned. But the community here is the best part about it. We have some very good, close friends that we’ve had for over 30 years.


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Jenny, 70, and Les Dovaston, 71, Marysville

Jenny: We had the houseboat up at Eildon. And then, after the fires, it became our home ... The timing was cruel: we were going to get that café moving on, and we were going to get people coming in and sharing our dream.

But, no, I never really felt that we wanted to leave. I think possibly it would have been different if we’d lost the café building completely. We love it here; Lesley really enjoys being here. I go to Healesville and I can’t see any sky. I love the big sky here; I love looking at the stars at night. It’s just a beautiful, peaceful place to be … I’m not sure how many of the trees will survive. There’s been so many changes: fire does that.

I knew it was serious when he said: ‘Get out of here. Get what you want inside and get out.’ I grabbed his wallet and a jar of lollies … I was only halfway down the path when I looked back and the house was alight. He’d said get down in the water: if the wind changes we’ll be in trouble. And we were in trouble. Black—it all went black. And it was only 6 o’clock.

We’ve been up here 10 years and it had taken that long… He’d made the house up there; it wasn’t totally finished, but it was just beautiful. Lesley knew it was important to me. He’s not a person who brags, but he said to me: ‘Did you know this could nearly be in Home Beautiful.’ It was incredible; a big kitchen looking over the mountains; just a beautiful, beautiful space … And it all went: it was a massive, massive blaze.

I had a counsellor, and was telling her how the flames had really affected me, sleeping and waking up to these flames, and she said to just sort of fold the picture back, try to cover it over … A couple of days later this rainbow appeared, both ends were on our property. And it was the most vivid, vivid rainbow … I have never in my life seen such incredible colouring. I felt as if I was in the middle of this rainbow. And that night I put the rainbow over the flames.

What happened didn’t shake my faith. There are tragedies all the time; road accidents; every day people have to face tragedy. And we didn’t lose our lives; we lost friends, but that’s a totally different tragedy … We cope with things differently. How some manage I don’t know.

I don’t feel hard done by. It’s sad, of course, because of what we lost. But we’re still here; still alive. We’re still going. Getting past the three-score-and-ten. We’re on the bonus trip now! We’re still clearing, getting better. Some days are a lot worse. But you pick up the dream and carry on.


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Dennis Cosh, 77, Narbethong

In the morning, the smoke was that far away we never took much notice of it. Shows how things can change in just a day. It was luck, pure luck, that we were both outside the store because there was no warning: no ash, no smoke. Fire hit the back buildings like a train. It was just instinct—there was no fear involved—to jump in the car and go, towards Healesville. That was the only opening that was available.

The following day, we tried to come back up. There was someone from the SES stopping people. Once he knew who we were, he let us through—and all you had where Henry once stood was a pile of ashes. The intensity of that fireball melted everything in the kitchen—my stainless steel mixing bowl, my beaters, my beautiful table. I don’t think anyone could ever comprehend the fire’s intensity. Had we been inside, we would not be here today.

We had a big poster up saying: ‘If I need sympathy, I go to a priest. If I want caring, I go to the Salvation Army. Vacancies for volunteers’. And underneath was Henry in a coffin and the words: ‘We will rise again’. When you get to my age, time is not on your side. I had planned to have this building up and operating within three months. Had I known it was going to take over 12 months, we would have just walked away. Never even given it a second thought.

The most difficult thing, apart from not doing anything for those 12 months, is actually taking anything from anyone. It goes against our philosophy to take anything. I remember going down to the Healesville centre and they said to get some clothes and find something to eat. I walked back out again and broke down.

But it’s no good looking back or going to the Wailing Wall and thinking: ‘Why me?’ The minute you say ‘Why me?’ it’s a case of you thinking ‘Well, why wasn’t it someone else rather than me?’ It’s very hard. I’ve got nothing, absolutely nothing. At my age, 77, and you’ve got nothing? But I can still be happy.


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Norm Berndt, 81, Flowerdale

We expected something to happen that day. I had gone down to the Flowerdale CFA station in the afternoon but there were no trucks there. I advised a few people to get out straight away, but I came home because I couldn’t leave my wife, June, by herself. I knew the wind had changed and it was coming in our direction, but I didn’t anticipate it was going to come as quickly as it did.

I don’t know exactly what time it happened. There was a noise like a 747 but we could not understand where the plane was and we couldn’t see anything. We could just hear this terrific roar. Then a big ember landed in the backyard. I put that out and then everything seemed to happen all of a sudden. The ferns were alight, the trees alongside the paddock caught fire and then there were fire stones flying along the side of the house.

I went down to the hayshed at 3am. It was alight everywhere, and the whole roof had fallen in on an angle. But my brand new $63,000 tractor was standing there. I managed to drive it out of the shed. Later, when I was taking buckets of water to the hayshed, I tripped over a stone and fell on my face. But I was so mad that I had lost two buckets of water. I put out a lot of little fires that way until 6am. I saved machinery in the hayshed, but I lost over $300,000 of equipment from my main workshop.

The day after the fires was so quiet. There was no bird life, no animals, no traffic and no people. It was eerie. About four or five days after the fire, my wife and I went for a drive. There were no houses anywhere. It was unbelievable. We arrived at the fire station, and I will always remember the fellows saying: ‘You’re alive? We didn’t know you were alive.’

I had about 15 men turn up to help me clean up my 16 kilometres of burnt fences. Then people came from all over. I had some kids—they were about 19-21—from an agricultural school in Wagga Wagga here for a week. When they went, they came and put their arms around me. I still get a bit weepy about it. That’s just one of those things you don’t forget. We have done two years’ work in one year—about 4000 working hours. These people have really helped.


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Jim Sherlock, 91, Marysville

That Saturday afternoon was hot. It was very hot everywhere, of course, but I felt pretty safe. My neighbour told me things were not too good but I told him I was happy to stop here. I had plenty of water around and the radio was giving a pretty good rundown of what was happening all the time.

Late in the afternoon, they said there was going to be a wind change and Marysville and Narbethong could expect ember attacks. Then the wind changed. It was blowing a gale and the front came over the ridge just behind us. I never heard noise like it. I stayed inside until the front went through.

The garage and my workshop were ablaze. The eaves caught fire within an arm’s length of my ladder, which I was able to put out, and there were small fires around the base of the house. I just patrolled around the house; putting out any bits and pieces I could see until dawn. And the police and forestry came to check on me at various times during the night.

I spent the next night in Eildon, a week in Mansfield and two months in Alexandra. I was involved in fires all through my life in the forestry, but nothing like this. This was far worse than anything I had ever seen or imagined. But I believe in God, and someone was definitely helping me that night.

I always intended to come back here. But I was one of the fortunate ones—I had my own place to come back to. While it was knocked about a bit, there was no structural damage. I’m too old to make a change. I have been here just on 50 years and I’m used to the place, and I guess people are used to me, too. It’s a good set up and I can’t imagine myself anywhere else. When you’re on a good thing, stick to it.

I don’t talk about it much. Young people have got a different way of looking at things. I’m in contact with people my own age and I know how they go about it. But I dare say everyone goes through it. Marysville will recover. It will take quite a while, and it won’t be the same, but there’s a feeling of hope and things are starting to pick up.


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John Vietz, 70, Marysville

We came here partly for the wrong reasons. Sooner or later, your son stops needing to be brought up here to ski because he comes up on his own. But we still had this house and we just loved it. We are treasurers of the Marysville cultural community, which organises four concerts a year. I am not really an accountant, I am an engineer, but it’s been pretty good.

We had been walking with our walking club at Mt Bulla for a week before the fires. On the Friday night, we came here and played cards. We didn’t listen to any warnings that night or in the morning. We had to collect our dog at the kennels down in Melbourne, so we left about 9.15am. If we had realised it was going to be so serious, we probably would have collected a few things that had meaning to us.

Our insurance company rang me about four weeks after the fires and said they had been looking at the aerial photos of Marysville. I said: ‘Yes, we don’t have a house, do we?’ And he said: ‘I’m glad we’re not telling you something you don’t know’. I had confirmed it by looking at the aerial photos in The Age about a week after the fires. I could pick my house out. The neighbours said it just exploded. They saw it in their rear-vision mirror as they left.

We wanted to come back. We put our caravan on our block about eight weeks after the fire, and we would come and clear up because there was so much to do. We put down a deposit on a kit home on July 1. We just faced it, because someone had to come back and start. I build and my wife, Faye, spends her time planting and gardening.

This was not what I planned to do at 70. We thought we’d be caravanning around the place and seeing our grandchildren. But we still just love it up here and I’m an optimist. I never think anything is impossible. If you are prepared well enough, you can do it.


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Max, 73, and Nancy Leslie, 70, Buxton

Max: The town had become a bit complacent because we had had total-fire-ban days that turned out to be cooler than expected. I think everyone thought they were ready, but we were nowhere near prepared for what we got. No one was. We were not prepared for a firestorm. We were only prepared for a bushfire, and there’s a big difference.

Nancy: About 10 years ago I told a friend, Malcolm, that in a fire Max would probably be away somewhere else on a truck and that I would be left to defend the house. Malcolm had recalled this and, at 6pm on the night of the fires, he arrived. His own house was burning in Marysville, he told me, but he would wait for Max to get home. I’ll never forget that—he remembered all those years later that I’d be on my own.

I think Max and I were pretty cool. We knew what to do and we were busy. At one stage, we were just sitting out there on our deck-chairs, watching the flames and the sparks come down on our shed, which is very close to the house. The wind had dropped and we coped very well.

A lot of our friends have disappeared. Their houses got burnt, they have moved to other areas and they don’t want to come back. Our age group—they don’t want to rebuild. A few of them lost their lives, too. But one morning at church, the pastor didn’t turn up. We started telling our stories, which we’d never really taken the time to do—to talk to each other. People are friendlier.

We have set up a drop-in coffee shop at the church. We had a coffee maker donated to us and we are helping people to make friends because they have lost a lot of friends. We need to get back on track and resurrect the community. The new normal, they call it.

We’ve now been married for 45 years. I’m prouder of that than anything else. It’s great to have a good marriage.


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All photographers involved in the Beyond Age project would like to thank the following people and organisations for their help, trust and cooperation:

n Firstly, and most importantly, all of our subjects and their families. Without you, Beyond Age would not be possible.

n All the Murrindindi locals who offered advice, encouragement and suggestions.

n Murrindindi Shire Council for their commissioning and contributing to this project.

n Also the CFA, Rotary and Lions Clubs involved with their various communities.

n Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority, CFA, Rotary and Lions’ clubs and their members.

n Olympus Imaging Australia; in particular, Jessica Brown for having faith in the project. Also product specialist Richard White, for training us in the use of their sound recorders.

n The MAP (Many Australian Photographers) Group for helping with logistics and support; in particular Joseph Feil and Julie Millowick.

n NEW North Gallery and Printing, Fairfield; in particular Michael and Susanne Silver, and David Johns.

n Anna and Andrew Wolf for their excellent design work.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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CONTACT USPHOTOGRAPHERS:

Alan Attwood 0409 432 736 [email protected]

Julie Bowyer 0407 821 383 www.jabphotographics.com.au

Andrew Chapman 0418 557 590 [email protected] | www.bigcheez.com.au

Rodney Dekker 0412 998 173 [email protected] | www.rodneydekker.com

Susan Gordon-Brown 0407 366 332 www.susangordonbrown.com.au

Brent Lukey 0427 483 836 www.brentlukey.com.au

Morganna Magee 0410 695 177 [email protected]

Dale Mann 0431 750 809 [email protected]

Jaime Murcia 0419 371 104 [email protected] | www.jaimemurcia.com

Kristian Scott 0431 395 330 [email protected] | www.kristianscott.com

Ellen Smith 0418 335 935 [email protected]

W RITER : Hanna Mills [email protected]

General enquiries: [email protected]

MAP Group Inc. 93 Howard Street, North Melbourne, VIC 3051

mapgroup.org.au

To contact individual photographers about their images, please use the contact details on the Members page on the website.

Published for MAPgroup by Anna Wolf.

All text and images – Copyright MAP Group Inc. 2010

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BEYOND GRIEF, there is acceptance. BEYOND DESPAIR, there is hope.

BEYOND AGE, there is wisdom, experience,know-how and leadership.

The devastating Victorian bushfires of February 2009 claimed the lives of 173 people. Since then, residents and property-owners throughout the Shire of Murrindindi have rallied together

to reclaim their homes, their communities, their relationships and the landscapes they love.

Many of them are senior citizens, who have demonstrated through their resilience, wisdom and sense of humour that age often means nothing more than numbers.

From CFA volunteers to church-wardens, shearers to scone-makers, older members of the Shire of Murrindindi continue to play their parts in helping communities rise from the ashes.

These are their portraits—and some of their stories.

Documents

Beyond Age