Living with Victorian Bushfire Alerts

Words truly can’t describe the emotions a crisis like this engenders.
Since that fateful February day when the sky turned dark and the wind swept the streets with a sense of foreboding, country Victorians have been in a suspended state of nervous tension.
In the words of Victorian M.P. Fran Bailey, whose constituency covers most of the ravaged areas: what can you say when a man comes up to you and says he found the bodies of 17 of his friends?

I really can’t go through many more days like Friday. For 99% of the year your home is your sanctuary and there is nothing to fear. But in the current circumstances, it’s the pot at the end of the rainbow – the place you want to be when you’re anywhere else, but where you can’t relax when you are.

Friday was predicted by all to be a dangerous day and the warnings were so intense that I received messages and calls from friends and family far and wide. “Get out of there,” they said, “Now, tonight or at least before 10am tomorrow.”

One of my email messages was telling me that there would be Relief Centres open all Friday – including the local Town Hall at Kyneton. I had no intention of resorting to that. But on Thursday night, I was strongly urged to do so by a member of the Macedon Ranges council staff at the local Malmsbury Planning meeting.
Back home, the calls and SMS kept coming until midnight. When I settled down to sleep, I found I couldn’t and started planning to pack my car.
By 6am the sense of urgency had escalated, at the same time as the day dawned without sign of the heat and wind expected. Nevertheless, I packed 3 of my favourite paintings in the car beside my grandmother’s chair and took off with a loaded car to spend the day in Kyneton.

At the town hall, the staff were not particularly welcoming and gave an outright “No” to my request for the internet encouraged by the staff member the night before. I turned away dispiritedly, still desperately wanting to be quietly working at home and headed for the friendly faces at the local cafes. The supportive owners of Slow Living invited me to spend the day. I plugged my computer in and alternated between my comfortable proximity to the healthy food and Little Swallow Café over the road. All of this was intercepted by hourly sessions sitting in my car listening to fire updates on the radio.
A friend at the café offered to plug me into the internet at his house, so I eventually took advantage of the offer and continued working in pleasant circumstances in the dining room of his charming bluestone cottage a few streets away. So the day dragged on…. and the reports, with thankfully no serious fires.
I had a meal at a Kyneton restaurant, with a weather eye on the anticipated South East Change – this was the biggest threat to my property. It was surreal – the filling in of time before I could safely return to my home in the country with my lack of outside water. The pump to my bore is currently in pieces at the fixer’s place, while he recuperates from a back problem.

The next day I thankfully unpacked my grandmother’s chair and the paintings and my bag of clothes. The box of other treasures remains there. I was wrung out by the end of the day, limp and drained, yet there had been no serious fires and no further losses.
I have just received an SMS from the Victorian police. They have sent messages to 5 Million Victorians. Extreme weather is expected tonight and tomorrow, high wind and fire risk. We are instructed to listen to local ABC radio for emergency updates. It’s on again.. . How much longer are we country people to be subjected to this tension? Don’t even mention Global Warning.