Bushfires
My old school song began:
“By Box Hill Town where the roads wind down,
From the hills where the timbermen labour,”
Box Hill is in the foothills of the Dandenong Ranges and the Victorian Alps leading into the high country and snowfields. Surrounding us was a circle of rural towns embedded in the glorious forests of Australian Ash trees. In the deep valleys were crystal clear streams, the home of platypus, lyrebirds, and plentiful native flora and fauna. The roads wound through the valleys to picturesque towns like Healesville, the Mystic Mountains, the Black Spur, Narbethong, Marysville, Buxton and Lake Mountain. Around the ridges are Kinglake, Warburton, Eildon, and Mt Macedon, where my grandfather had his farm until it was burnt out by a bush fire, including his grand old farmhouse. Many of my cousins and friends have their properties in these areas, and a quick phone call over the weekend ascertained they were all safe.
But totally burnt out in this weekend’s fires were Narbethong, Marysville, Buxton and Kinglake. Hundreds of homes, guesthouses, church properties, schools, police stations, post offices and other community buildings were burnt to the ground. Although many still own the ground upon which their property stood, it is doubtful if some of these communities will ever be rebuilt. People went to these places for the magnificence of the bush and the tall trees and deep valleys. It will take decades for the bush to regenerate enough to attract tourists. I know all of these areas well and have visited them scores of times for picnics, bushwalking, youth club hikes, church conferences, Sunday School picnics and Sunday afternoon drives into the hills. Even in fairly recent times we visited to meet with family members. The descriptions of some roads, assembly areas for fire fighting trucks, were easy to picture. The corner of a road near Kinglake where fleeing cars crashed and a dozen lives were lost as their cars were incinerated is vivid in my mind for the numbers of times I have driven it.
More than 70 people died in the Black Friday fires of 1939 — and 75 on Ash Wednesday in 1983, 47 of them Victorians. But the official death list for this weekend has now topped 180, with many more bodies expected to be found in coming days. Some authorities are estimating 300 as the final toll.
Putting faces on those who died were former Channel Nine newsreader Brian Naylor and his wife Moiree. The 78 year old, who has been described as “the doyen of newsreaders”, was found near the body of his wife, Moiree, in the rubble of their razed home in Kinglake. Also killed were panelbeater Peter Avola from Strathewen, Rae Carter and George Jackson from St Andrews, and John and Sue Wilson, who died defending their home from a blaze at Barwidgee Creek, near Beechworth. Among the many missing was Reg Evans, 81, an actor who has played roles in Blue Heelers, The Flying Doctors, Homicide and Skippy.
Victoria’s morgue is full — with hospitals and universities being asked to store bodies until formal identifications can be made.
Schools at Strathewen, Kinglake and Marysville have been destroyed and dozens more will be closed this week. Worst hit was the once-pretty alpine town of Marysville, reduced to a tangled mess of smoking rubble and twisted iron. Most residents were evacuated to nearby Alexandra — itself under threat from fire. But some of those who left too late or stayed to fight the fire lost their lives.
In 1939 this whole area was ablaze in the worst bushfires in the history of European settlement. I was only a few weeks old, and a mile away, Beverley was one week younger than me. Both our mothers were desperate in the 110° F heat to keep both babies cool and hydrated. My mother told me she put me in a large pan, with half an inch of water in the bottom and covered me with a wet cloth trying to keep me hydrated and cool. Outside the skies rained ash, and burning embers, and thick smoke filled every eye.
That was my introduction to bushfires. Every three years or so ever since we have been involved through our ministry in organizing volunteer fire fighters, distributing clothes and blankets to victims, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for those who have lost their homes and properties, visiting the burns victims in hospital and conducting funerals for those who died. Sometimes the support and counselling went on for years and people fought to recover.
This Christmas we had our usual Christmas cards from one family who were heroes. Read about them in one of my Australian Short stories. These bushfire heroes were from my church at Cheltenham Victoria.
http://www.gordonmoyes.com/2005/04/07/just-an-ordinary-bloke/
At Wesley Mission, two of our staff, plus their sons, fought to save their house and two neighbour’s homes rescuing two trapped old ladies, one of whom could hardly walk, during bushfires in the Southern Highlands.
Now this weekend, Marysville, Narbethong, Buxton and Kinglake were razed to the ground, being among the 800 homes that were destroyed, killing over 180 men and women and children, and putting scores more into burns units in Melbourne Hospitals, many of whom will never recover. Victoria has witnessed this country’s greatest natural disaster. Worse than Black Friday. Worse than Ash Wednesday. That is the grim sum of a catastrophe that already exceeds all others — and which threatens to grow worse. Around Victoria more people have died than in any previous natural catastrophe — one so lethal that authorities are treating it like a major terrorist attack.
The fires destroyed Narbethong and then Marysville, then Kinglake house by house, street by street. In an hour, Marysville was no more. Every public building including the police station, post office, telephone exchange and much-loved guest houses and a hotel, had been destroyed.
In these areas were many church properties, not only local churches, but church youth camps, conference and retreat centres. Many of these have been destroyed, the total number is yet unknown.
There have been reports received that the Evangelisation Society Association camp centre at Marysville, 97 km northeast of Melbourne, was wiped out, but all staff and campers were safely evacuated. The Christian Venues Association reports the following have also been lost: Camp Narbethong at Narbethong, ESA Camping & Conference Centre, and El Kanah at Marysville. They believe that Breakaway Camps at Taggerty has also been lost. The situation remains volatile and the remaining properties in the area are still under threat.
The Marysville Anglican Christ Church and vicarage, and St Peter’s Anglican Church in Kinglake were also obliterated with the Roman Catholic Church losing its churches at Kinglake and Marysville.
At Whittlesea, the Mobile Mission Maintenance Australia has suffered extensive damage. The Administration Centre and Conference Centre have been destroyed completely, three housing blocks, which house at least 12 families have been destroyed, vehicles have been destroyed, 30 cattle have been lost, 12 small housing units have been destroyed, but one housing block remains, which houses three families that can now provide space for an Administration Centre.
What can you do?
Pray for the survivors. Recently I heard from some of the people we supported after the disastrous South Australian bushfires three years ago. They have still not recovered. Farms are not back into production. Houses are still waiting to be rebuilt. Survivors have seared memories that will take even longer to recover. Following the bushfires that burnt so many houses in Canberra in 2003, streets are still full of vacant blocks where houses once stood.
Donate money. They need cash now. We donated first thing Monday morning when the banks and donation lines opened. So many of us will receive money from the Federal Government to encourage the Nation to spend out of this recession. At least tithe that unexpected money and send it to bushfire relief.
This is a link to the Victorian Bushfire Relief Appeal of the Australian Red Cross.
http://www.redcross.org.au/vic/services_emergencyservices_victorian-bushfires-appeal-2009.htm
Give away any belief that there is no such thing as climate change, for our world is going to have rising temperatures, hotter summers, more bushfires, and a drier continent. Ideological views that this is not happening should be shut away for good. Climate change increases the intensity of fires and lengthens the bushfire season, scientists and environmentalists warn. Research by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO has found that bushfire seasons will start earlier, end slightly later and become more intense in coming decades. By 2020, days of extreme fire danger are forecast to increase by 5 to 25 per cent if climate change is low and by 15 to 65 per cent if it is high.
An old mate in an email reminded me today:
Bushfire (The Australian Spirit)
My last saucepan
Amid the ashes
A last possession
Bent
But never enough to stop me
Boiling the water
Whilst
I lost everything
We’re not losing our cup of tea
We’re not giving up
Still
There is hope
Even if my house has gone
Others
Are hanging on
And I must help
I’ll build again
There is no time for feeling sorry
Only for pouring the tea
For heroes
By Paul Buttigieg, 2006
It is daylight again, and the fire is past, and the black scrub silent and grim,
Except for the blaze of an old dead tree, or the crash of a falling limb;
And the Bushmen are riding again on the run, with hearts and with eyes that fill,
To look for the bodies of Constable Dunn, Flash Jim, and Boozing Bill.
From “The Bushfire” by Henry Lawson
Rev The Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes, A.C., M.L.C.