Flashback: The Victorian Bushfires, Six Months On

By Sandi Tighello

First published on 7/7/2009

I’d planned to write this piece a month and a half ago, fresh from visiting the charred landscape that is now Marysville, but I honestly, for probably one of the first times in my life, didn’t know what to say.

But today seems like a fitting day to find some words. For today marks exactly six months since the Black Saturday Victorian bushfires – the bushfires that cemented their place as Australia’s worst ever.

When I mentioned to a friend that I was heading to Marysville to take some pictures and see the landscape, I was told that bushfires and the aftermath they leave is not a spectator sport. I agree. But I was not visiting in the week, or month, after the fires – this was four and a half months on. When I trekked out to Marysville, I did so with one main intention – to see what it was like now that the benefits and collections had ceased, and the newspapers had stopped printing stories and images. What I found was an eerie panorama, a blackened town and a bitterly cold winter.

Today, being the six-month anniversary, news bulletins are discussing the bushfires again and newspapers are releasing tribute lift outs. And so they should. For when a story is out of the public domain for too long, people forget about it. People move on. It’s important that we continue to remember what happened; not all the time, not every day, just every now and again.

What shocked me most when I visited Marysville and Kinglake was the amount of people still living in caravans, still living in tents and portables. Some of these people have no possessions. Some of these people have no family. It’s very easy to say these things, or to read them, but to see them or heaven forbid feel them is an entirely different matter.

For this reason alone I felt compelled to visit the areas affected by the Victorian bushfires. And if that makes me a spectator, so be it. I wanted to visit in the weeks after the fires, but I stopped myself, because I didn’t want to seem insensitive, I didn’t want to appear nosy. But I was interested. As an Australian, as a human, as a journalist who is attracted to tragedy, I was interested. I wanted to hug all the children left homeless, left parentless. I wanted to empty my entire wardrobe and hand out clothing to people with nothing but ripped jeans and burnt shirts. I wanted to make biscuits for the fireman and pat their backs. But it doesn’t work like that. I knew of people working in the bushfire relief centres that were so inundated with clothing and goods and services they literally had too much stuff. Too much of everything with not enough staff or resources to deal with it all.

Two weeks after Black Saturday, a fire broke out in the Victorian Dandenong Ranges, and that was a fire too close to home. Roads were blocked, smoke billowed and my fiancé, driving at the time, turned his car around and headed to the family home to fight for it. He filled gutters with water, prepared fire hoses and pumps, and point-by-point put an action plan rarely performed into place. I spent the entire time doing something I had never done before; keeping up to date with radio and internet updates, assessing wind changes and relaying information to a community trapped, but ready to fight.

Thankfully, that particular day, the fire never reached my fiancé’s family home, and thankfully the only thing that burnt was bush and forest. But it got mighty close. And when my fiancé told me over the phone that the sky was orange and thick, filled with black smoke that was blowing right into his face, I cannot say that scared was enough of a word to truly explain my feelings.

I was asked, on numerous occasions afterwards, why my fiancé decided to stay and fight that afternoon. With the heat, with the conditions, with the horror and terror that affected so many people only two weeks earlier, why did he turn around and head back to base? The answer is, and this is element that people must understand, no one really gets a choice. No one gets a choice.

I guarantee you that no one, in the face of a thundering fire, decides to stay and protect bricks, mortar and wood, because they value a home over a life. It’s because they had no choice. Because the fire broke out next to them and there was no way to escape. Because the warning came too late. Because there was no warning. Because, even though they had warning, the fire travelled at such a pace, at such a speed, that no one stood a chance.

One of the worst things you can do when a fire is blazing is get in a car and drive – no matter how far you think you can go, or how much you think you can escape it. Hopefully all the people that died in cars on Black Saturday didn’t do so in vain, hopefully they have provided us with a lesson to never forget: don’t get in a car in the middle of a fire.

Fires are unpredictable. They build rapidly and continue quickly. I believe that unless you have stood in the middle of one, or stared at the face of one, or fought one, or felt true fear due to the impact of one, then you really can’t have an opinion on what people should or should not do during one. Because some things need to be experienced to be truly understood.

The thing I found incredibly amazing in the aftermath of the bushfires was the amount of people questioning why anyone would live in such areas in the first place. I think people need to realise that no one lives in the bush just because. People make a conscious decision to live there, because they love it. The Australian bush has, for a very long time and all throughout history, had an incredible impact on the psyche and character of its people. Some people just love it so much they want to live right in the thick of it. The bush and the mountains are almost hypnotic to some people, so poetic and beautiful, so tranquil, so right.

I don’t think anyone has the right to judge where another person chooses to live. And I don’t think anyone need be as ignorant to assume that people who live in the bush don’t already know the risks and hazards associated with it – in fact they do, more than the rest of us, so it’s best we let them continue making plans and rules and procedures, and keep the bureaucracy and politics out of it.

A month and a half ago, Marysville still looked like a war-torn town. I saw shells of buildings, shattered glass, scorched signs and burnt out cars. But I also saw something that I never expected to see – hope. Hope, in the shoots and sprouts of new life emerging from the charcoal tree stumps. Hope, in the faces of people rebuilding their homes, brick by brick. Hope, in the green grass slowly covering the flattened soil. Hope, with the sound of cash registers ticking over in the few remaining shops left operating. Hope, with the sound of children giggling and splashing through puddles.

What I hope, above all else, is that we never, ever forget about those directly affected by the bushfires and that we continue to support them. Because life is so much easier when someone’s got your back.