Victorian bushfires remembered: After the ash had settled

This video and transcript contains footage and descriptions of bushfires and its effects, and may be confronting for some people to watch and read. Discretion is advised.

Transcript

This property here, my great grandparents actually bought with my grandparents. So I’m actually fourth generation on farm here.

This house, or what’s left of the house, my grandparents built that in 1938. We can’t replace it.

I’ve been a volunteer with the CFA for 30 years, so I got a call late on the first day, and they were looking for strike teams to go down to the fires that were heading toward the township of Walwa.

And then eventually, as the fire just kept growing in size and running, we then followed it from Walwa back to Cudgewa.

The fire had roared across the flats much faster than expected. It wasn’t burning traditionally, a lot of times it’s gone into finger with no rhyme or reason. And it’s actually burned as though we haven’t had rain in years.

About 4:30 in the morning, I actually got back here. We didn’t actually know what was burnt, or whether the rest of the crew had houses to go back to.

So I found all of this. My house burnt to the ground, mum and dad’s burnt to the ground, and all the sheds burnt to the ground.

Mum and dad’s cars were gone, I hoped that they were alive because there were no cars.

I still didn’t actually know where they were at that stage.

The next-door neighbour’s sons came down and came in and saw mum and dad when the fires came through, said “you’ve got to go now, the fires coming in a hurry.”

And they basically grabbed two or three things and they got out the door. They drove the 300m out to the road and when dad got out to there, the house had gone up behind them, so mum and dad have only got the clothes they stood up in.

The only clothes I had were the clothes that I was wearing under me turn-out gear for the fire brigade.

So I’d been in them for a couple of days by that stage, and started to get blisters on me feet.

And a simple thing would be to just go get some Band-Aids, but Band-Aids that I’d normally have in my first aid kit in me car, the car had burnt to the ground, so I had none of that.

So I had to go into the relief centre, and it was really strange, where we’d normally be helping everybody else, to actually have to go in there and then, “beg” is probably not the right word.

But asking them for food, when we wouldn’t normally ask for anything like that.

It was only thanks to running into one of the local police to be honest that I actually got fed and actually go Band-Aids.

I wasn’t quite sure where else to go and from someone that doesn’t normally ask for help, it was awful hard to go in there in the first place.

And then one of the officers sort of pointed me in the right direction and made sure I was looked after.

And it’s still been hard to go back and ask for help, so they’ve been really good at looking after us.

At this stage, we will rebuild.

I’m 4^th generation so I can’t see myself leaving the farm now, after all this time.

So we’ll just rebuild.

All the community will probably come together, and the grass can grow back, the fences and houses we can rebuild, but luckily there was no lives lost, so that’s one bonus.

Community stories

View more recounts from Community members affected by the 2019-2020 bushfire season.