Kinglake-350 Read online

  PRAISE FOR ADRIAN HYLAND

  AND KINGLAKE-350

  ‘This is a masterpiece of storytelling about the most terrifying natural disaster in Australia’s recorded history. Even those for whom Black Saturday 2009 has already become another distant tragedy in a landscape of disasters will find this heart-wrenchingly compelling. Of its type, I have read none better. If the Victoria Cross represents our peak measure of valour, then the central characters in this special book emerge as Victoria Cross heroes in the heart of a bush community.’

  KERRY O’BRIEN

  ‘Every Australian, both rural and urban, should read this book. Adrian Hyland pulls no punches in describing the harrowing consequences of living on the planet’s driest and most fire-prone continent, and his account of the disastrous Black Saturday fires is a story of courage, dread and fallibility that will never leave you.’

  CATE KENNEDY

  ‘I’ve been waiting for a writer to look Black Saturday in the eye ever since the flames died down and, finally, Adrian Hyland’s done it. In this utterly moving book, Hyland has captured the character of a town caught, quite literally, in a fireball.’

  ANNA KRIEN

  ‘Kinglake-350 is about more than Black Saturday. It’s about families and communities, the vital nature of ecology and geology; it’s about the genesis of life itself. And while there are too many deaths in this saddest of tales, for the lucky ones the outcome was redemption.’

  LINCOLN HALL

  Adrian Hyland lives in St Andrews, in the foothills of the Kinglake Ranges, and teaches at La Trobe University. His novels Diamond Dove and Gunshot Road are also published by Text.

  KINGLAKE-350

  ADRIAN HYLAND

  textpublishing.com.au

  The Text Publishing Company

  Swann House

  22 William Street

  Melbourne Victoria 3000

  Australia

  Copyright © Adrian Hyland 2011

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  First published in 2011 by The Text Publishing Company

  Cover by WH Chong

  Maps by Guy Holt

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Author: Hyland, Adrian.

  Title: Kinglake 350 / Adrian Hyland.

  Edition: 1st ed.

  ISBN: 9781921758263 (pbk.)

  Subjects: Wood, Roger.

  Police—Victoria—Kinglake—Biography.

  Black Saturday bushfires, 2009.

  Wildfires—Victoria—Kinglake.

  Forest fires—Victoria—Kinglake.

  Natural disasters—Victoria.

  Dewey Number: 363.37099453

  Primary print ISBN: 9781921758263

  Ebook ISBN: 9781921834738

  This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

  For the invisible heroes

  and for those who are still suffering

  Contents

  People who appear in the book

  Abbreviations

  Map

  UNCHARTED TERRITORY

  HOME FRONT

  FIRE PLAN

  NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH

  BALANCING ACT

  INCIDENT CONTROL

  RED WIND

  CFA

  MAYDAY

  ARSON

  CAR ALARM

  FIRST STRIKE

  ROADBLOCK

  FIRE FRONT

  RED FLAG

  COOMBS ROAD

  SCRATCH CREW

  GODSPEED TO YOU ALL

  THE BOSS

  TANKER TWO

  HOME FIRES

  SURVIVAL ARC

  PHEASANT CREEK

  SNAPSHOTS

  FIRE: AN ILLUMINATED HISTORY

  THE SCHOOL

  FIREFIGHT IN KINGLAKE

  KINGLAKE: INSIDE THE SHED

  IN EXILE

  YOU HAVE TO KEEP BREATHING

  UNDERWORLD

  SILENT NIGHT

  SAVING PEOPLE

  DOWN THE MOUNTAIN

  CONVOY

  ON AND OFF ROAD

  BITTER HOMECOMING

  NIGHTMARES

  BUSHFIRE BRAIN

  RESURRECTION

  A REFLECTION

  UPDATE

  Notes

  References

  Acknowledgments

  People who appear in the book

  Kinglake police

  Leading Senior Constable Roger Wood (acting sergeant on February 7)

  Senior Constable Cameron Caine

  Sergeant John Ellks

  CFA: Kinglake

  Captain Paul Hendrie

  Linda Craske

  Trish Hendrie

  Kelly Johnson

  Di MacLeod

  Phil Petschel

  Carole Wilson

  Kinglake Tanker One

  Dave Hooper (crew leader)

  Paul Lowe (driver)

  Rod Elwers

  Aaron Robinson

  Steve Nash

  Kinglake Tanker Two

  Steve Bell (crew leader)

  Ben Hutchinson (driver)

  CFA: Kinglake West

  Captain John Grover

  Deputy Group Officer Chris Lloyd

  First Lieutenant Karyn Norbury

  Kinglake West Tanker One

  Karen Barrow (driver)

  Kinglake West Tanker Two

  Frank Allan (crew leader)

  Department of Sustainability

  and Environment (DSE) firefighters

  Tony Fitzgerald

  Aaron Redmond

  Sean Hunter

  Natalie Brida

  Abbreviations

  CFA Country Fire Authority

  D24 the unofficial term for the Victoria Police communications centre (it was originally intended to be housed in corridor d, room 23 of police headquarters but then shifted to the room next door: the name d24 stuck)

  DSE Victorian Government department of Sustainability and Environment

  SES State Emergency Service

  Vicfire the CFA’s radio communication network

  VKC the callsign for Victoria Police network control

  This awful catastrophe is not the end but the beginning.

  History does not end so. It is the way its chapters open.

  St Augustine

  GIRLS AND HORSES IN THE FIRE

  (Kinglake, 7 Feb 2009)

  Nothing will come between them,

  those girls and their horses;

  not wind or rain, nor pillars of fire.

  If a hand should flick a match

  amongst leaves or trunks implode

  with the weight of heat, or lightning

  blast the wasted trees, still they’d run,

  these girls, through conflagrations,

  wreathed by flames and embers.

  Girls who run towards horses in fire,

  may you find your home in the equine stars:

  Pegasus, Equuleus. Hush, sleep now.

  Lisa Jacobson

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Thousands of people were involved in the Black Saturday disaster; hundreds of heroic deeds were performed. In focusing on the actions of a handful of individuals, I have attempted to produce an account of the day that will stand as a tribute to them all.

  UNCHARTED TERRITORY

  We were lucky at first.

  At the end of January
2009 the State of Victoria sweltered through three successive record-breaking days of 43 degrees-plus heat. In Melbourne the mercury climbed to 45.1 degrees Celsius, the third-hottest day on record. Birds fell from the sky, bitumen bubbled underfoot. The air conditioners roared from Werribee to Frankston, and sweaty citizens flocked to the beaches. And at first, apart from small outbreaks in bushland at Delburn and Bunyip State Park, the threat of fire remained latent.

  But the long blast of heat, the culmination of twelve years of drought, was a critical factor in what followed. It gave the fuel in the forests that final nudge, drying it out, pushing it closer to ignition point. Even thick logs and rainforest gullies, which under normal conditions would not burn, were parched and ready to contribute their stored energy to a conflagration. A spark was all the bush would need.

  There was a brief respite for the city of Melbourne itself at the start of February, as a sliver of cold air from the Southern Ocean drifted in and briefly cooled things down. But the synoptic set-up remained in place, hammering the rest of the state with one 40-plus day after another. Weather forecasters, scientists and fire chiefs were horrified at the potential disaster they saw building, and the warnings issued by the Bureau of Meteorology became increasingly strident.

  On February 6, Premier John Brumby’s earnest features filled the Friday evening screens.

  If you don’t need to go out, don’t go out…If you don’t need to travel, don’t travel. Don’t go on the roads…If you can stay at home, stay at home. If you’ve got relatives who are elderly, if you’ve got friends, if you’ve got neighbours, please call on them. Ring them…It’s going to be a terrible day.

  A weather balloon released four hundred kilometres to the west in Mount Gambier at 4 am the next morning detected high-altitude winds blowing at eighty to a hundred kilometres per hour. It was an ominous indication that they would descend and lash Victoria later in the day.

  Fire chief Russell Rees had the disasters of Black Friday (1939) and Ash Wednesday (1983) in mind when he compared the weather forecast with some of the ‘classic fire days’ of the state’s history and said, ‘The weather predicted is in fact worse. We are in uncharted territory.’

  The next morning the Age carried the prescient headline:

  The sun rises on our ‘worst day in history’.

  Black Saturday. Our luck was about to run out.

  HOME FRONT

  Roger Wood rolls over, drifting up from the bottom of a deep blue dream. He groans. Somewhere outside there’s a bubble of voices, kids laughing, up and about at the crack of dawn. It feels that way to him anyhow; he worked until 2 am last night, got home in the small hours. He’s tempted to catch a little more shut-eye but then he remembers about today. Not a day to be lying in bed.

  A screen door slams, a dog barks. He draws himself up, stretches, steps into the shower. When he comes out into the living room, still buttoning his police uniform, seven-year-old Darcy looks up from the couch, laughing. His arms are full of wriggling guinea pigs. ‘Dad…’

  ‘Morning, mate.’

  ‘Hey Dad, if we leave, I’m taking ’em with me, okay?’

  Roger smiles at that. Last time they evacuated because of the weather, Darcy took the guineas with him and they had babies. Maybe he’s hoping it’ll happen again.

  Jo, his wife, and nine-year-old Tiahn are at the table. Kasey, the eight-year-old, comes in from feeding the chooks. He joins the family for a bowl of cereal, adds a handful of strawberries from the garden. Jo’s been on the go for hours, battening down the hatches, watering, soaking, covering up, preparing the garden for what threatens to be a day from hell.

  ‘Should we feed the horses?’ asks Tiahn. At her age, horses are never far from her mind. The equine population on the property fluctuates depending on what old strays they’ve brought into the fold. There’s eight of them at the moment, ranging from a Shetland to a Clydesdale, and a pair of rescue pigs acquired from Edgar’s Mission.

  He looks outside. ‘Nah, not yet.’ The wind is already bristling the paddocks, stirring angrily, whipping up the dust. ‘It’ll just blow away. We’ll feed ’em tonight.’ He looks towards the dam. The day’s going to be a shocker, and the fire-fighting tank has been out of water since the pump down there started playing up. He has to go to work soon; he won’t be here to help out if a fire comes.

  He checks the clock. Time for a few quick repairs? Emphasis on the quick.

  He steps out onto the veranda, pauses for a moment to look around. His home is an eight-hectare property on the outskirts of St Andrews, in the foothills of the Kinglake Ranges, about forty kilometres from the centre of Melbourne. He bought the farm twenty-five years ago, when he was only twenty-one. He and Jo raised their family here and you couldn’t imagine a better place to do it. The kids can run wild, feel the wind in their hair, the grass under their feet. Roger has always loved horses, and he’s passed that on to his kids: sometimes they spend all day galloping round the farm, taking long trail rides up through the surrounding hills. Birthday parties, family gatherings, he’ll hitch the trailer up to the tractor and take them on hay rides, laughter eddying in their wake.

  Roger and Jo have been together for thirteen years. Good ones, but not without grief. Their first child, a boy named Jesse, was diagnosed with a malignant rhabdoid tumour at eleven months, and they watched over him helplessly until he died four and a half months later. Roger and Jo both know the value of their relationship, their family.

  The three youngest go to school in Strathewen, nine or ten kilometres away. It isn’t the closest option, but they chose it because it’s a tight-knit little school, nestled in the bush and blessed with beautiful gardens and caring teachers; more of an extended family than a school. The oldest boy, Dylan, has just completed Year 11 at Eltham High. On weekends the family might wander down to the market, meet up with friends, maybe enjoy some Thai food, catch a bit of country music at the pub.

  There’ll be no socialising today, though. Roger has to get to work, and in this weather there won’t be much of a market anyway. There won’t be much of anything except this withering bloody heat. The forecast is the worst he’s ever heard. The worst anybody has ever heard: temperatures in the mid-forties, ripping northerly winds, humidity barely registering.

  Mid-forties? Can that be right? Coming on top of the three days over forty a week ago—and the twelve years of drought before that— it is a day to strike fear into the heart of anybody in rural Victoria.

  Wood jumps into the four-wheel-drive and heads down to the dam. Starts up the pump, a Honda twin-impeller, which runs for a few seconds then dies. He tries again. Same result.

  Damn. Fuel blockage. He’s got neither the time nor the tools to fix that right now. He can’t be late for work, not today. He drives back up to the house, finds Jo out on the veranda.

  ‘Get it going, Rodge?’

  ‘Sorry, hon; no time.’

  She isn’t impressed; he knows that look. ‘I’ll try to nip down some time during the day, make sure you got water.’ He checks his watch. ‘Gotta go.’

  He puts on his equipment belt, retrieves the Smith and Wesson .38 from the safe, slips it into its holster. He climbs aboard the Pajero and heads north-east towards Kinglake.

  As Roger Wood drives up the thirteen-kilometre road that locals call The Windies (with a long i, because it winds) he finds his thoughts drifting towards fire. Naturally enough, since the day feels like it’s on fire already.

  He thinks, as he sometimes does when making this ascent, what a bugger of a place it would be to get caught during a bushfire. The road is a death trap, literally: he’s seen a lot of death on it. It’s narrow, full of hairpin bends, often blocked by landslides and fallen trees. There’s almost nowhere you can overtake. You’ve got a sheer drop to your left, fifty, a hundred metres in places, an even steeper slope climbing away to your right. The vegetation is thick and varied—red box and peppermint gums on the lower slopes, towering mountain grey gums in the upper reaches. It
would pump out an unbelievable amount of heat if it ever went up. Some of those trees are fifty metres tall; the radiant heat alone could kill you from hundreds of metres away.

  The road is dangerous even without the added complication of fire. He’s attended a stack of accidents along its serpentine bends and narrow lengths. They had a weird one not long ago. A group of leathery motorcyclists roared up the hill en masse, raced through Kinglake, completed the great loop back down the Melba Highway. It wasn’t until they got back to their outer-suburban homes that they noticed their mate at the tail-end of the column was missing.

  Somebody eventually spotted the missing bikie at the foot of a mountain grey some twenty metres from the road. God knows what speed he’d been doing, but he’d missed the turn, sailed through the air, collected the tree. Wood ended up sliding on his backside as he went to check the body. Stone cold, of course. So steep was the drop, they had to get the State Emergency Service to winch the poor bugger out.