Australian Bush Fires

The extent of the Australian bushfires in 2020. Buchan is located in the southeast corner of the map, east of Melbourne, in the state of Victoria.

The burnt forest...

and charred sign.

The rental farmhouse in 2019.

and what it looks like now.

Have to maintain a sense of humour I guess.

Another part of their farm.

The new apartment they are building in the end of a large metal shelter.

The farmhouse that Dennis built and was their primary home.

And what it looks like now.

Dennis, Mary, Lucy and I after our dinner and drinks.

I arrived in Australia late December 2019, just at the height of the bush fires. I received several e-mails from family and friends in regard to my safety as the world news was focused on the fires. From the map they showed it looked like all of Australia was on fire, but in reality this is a huge country and the fire icons covered up areas much larger than the actual fires. That is not to say that the fires were not huge and horrible, but here in Melbourne I was unaffected other than by TV reports and a couple of days of smoke haze. On the news there were constant appeals for bushfire relief and when I bought tickets to the Aussie Open they asked for a donation, which I gave, but basically the fires were far removed from me.

That is until I learned about Buchan. When I taught in Mebourne in 2016, I worked with a woman and she told me about her sister who lived in what she called a beautiful area of Victoria: Buchan, Gippsland (about four hours east of Melbourne) where she rented out a farmhouse. So Lucy and I booked it and stayed there in 2016 and then booked it again for December 2018 when I came back to Melbourne. We met the owners Dennis and Mary and loved the farm and the setting. So when I decided to come back in December 2019 I contacted Mary and booked it for the Labour Day long weekend in March 2020. She said she would get back to me with the price. Then I never heard anymore from her. It wasn't until a couple of weeks later that I learned that Buchan was devastated by the fires on December 30th and Mary and Dennis had lost their rental farm, their own home farm on the property next door, all of their other barns and sheds, most of their livestock and all of their personal effects. Now the fires hit me. Therefore, I decided to take Lucy and go to Buchan on the weekend I had booked. I wanted to see Mary and Dennis and offer some support but, honestly, I was also very curious and wanted to see the area. So we set out Saturday morning March 8th.

It took us about four hours to get there. Just outside of Bairnsdale, about three  hours into our drive, we saw the first destruction of the fires. There were lots of burnt forest areas, but it was very interesting that the trees, that were not totally destroyed, were sprouting growth from their trunks which gave them a funny  green fuzzy look. But there was no doubt that the fire had ripped through here. When we got to Buchan the town itself appeared unscathed but when we drove out towards Mary and Dennis’ farm we saw lots of evidence of fire and burnt trees. In the two months since the fires the grass had all regrown and was very healthy looking; nature healing itself. It took a bit to find the right road but we did and drove up their driveway. Dennis was riding a lawn mover and it took him a minute to recognize us. He stopped and then Mary drove up from their house to see us. We talked to them for a couple of hours, and took us on a devastation tour of both properties and houses, where there is nothing but the foundations left. We saw where they are building a small two-bedroom apartment under their metal roofed barn. They made us tea (boiling the water over a garbage barrel) and we had some cake as they told us about their ordeal. They were there when the fire came and they tried to save the place before giving up and hiding at the edge of their little dammed pond under a blanket. Dennis talked about how they could hear it coming and then see it roaring towards them over the hills driven by the strong winds, and how a fire ball came over their place burning his hands and knocking him down. He showed us pictures of the huge blisters on his hands. They also told us of the support they have received from people, family, friends and strangers. They received bales of hay for their remaining cattle, someone brought a lot of tools to be shared by all the farmers who were burned out (about 24 farms), someone gave them a used car, a person in town gave them a small cabin to live in, an agency has come and begun the clean up of metal roofing and large items to be carried to a dump somewhere soon, the insurance company has been and is helping and the government has promised a grant of $75000 to begin rebuilding. They both seem understandably shell shocked and yet realistic at the same time. They had things to do and I didn’t want to get in their way, so I invited them for dinner at the Buchan restaurant/bar and they accepted. 

Lucy and I drove up to a lookout where we could see the damage of the fires over a wide area. Then we drove back to town and hung around waiting for them to come to town. We had a great meal at the restaurant, they both had salmon, Lucy had a steak and I had a great chicken parma. We enjoyed a few drinks and a lot more talk about their experiences. I can’t imagine ever going through what they did. I reminded them that this was the weekend Lucy and I had booked for our return visit and that Mary had said she would get back to us with the rates, but that she never did. I gave her an envelope with what I calculated was the payment for our booking and to help them in a little way. Then we broke up and they went back to their cabin and Lucy and I drove up to the motel where we talked about the disaster and the resilience of people.