In the line of fire

Posted on 3 January, 2020

Heidi Silberman and her family were trapped on the south coast when the bushfire emergency began. She tells of fear, hope and the kindness of strangers.

Our New Year’s Eve started with a bang and a bark at 5 am. We were snuggled in comfy beds at the Gold Rush Colony in Mogo when senior tour guide Corey pounded on the door, setting off Ashley, our border-collie-kelpie-cross. We had to pack up and leave now. He’d been up all night monitoring the situation and couldn’t guarantee our safety anymore—they would call us if it was safe to return tonight.

Under a glowing red sky my husband Dave, our three teenage girls and I packed the car—at one point feeling a wave of heat hit. Just to the north of Mogo we saw a spot fire by the roadside. I called 000.

We stopped at a dog-friendly beach in Ulladulla to decide what to do next. The sky was blue above us, the smoke blown out to sea, but the water looked like an oil slick, thick with blackened ash. We breakfasted and waited for my sister and her two young kids (all on holiday from their home in Japan) to join us from Mossy Point. But soon the wind changed, the smoke returned and Bekky reached for her puffer. We decided to go home to Canberra.

We got to the other side of Milton, approaching a bizarre wall of burgundy-coloured smoke. “Something’s not right” said Dave, immediately winning the ‘Understatement of the Year’ award for 2019.

Fire trucks and police cars passed us. Suddenly three phones pinged in unison. We’d received texts from the RFS telling us to “seek shelter as fire arrives”. Bugger that. We turned back and met up with my sister at Mollymook Beach. Getting out of the car was like opening an oven door, but without the delicious baking smell.

Crying girls stayed in the car as anxiety took over. My niece and nephew, growing up in Japan, didn’t have the same context and enjoyed the beach as if it were a regular Aussie summer’s day.

Asthma and anxiety worsened so we went to Coles. What could be more relaxing than grocery shopping in air-conditioned comfort? In the biscuit aisle the lights flickered and died as the power went out. Anxiety rose as people grabbed things they probably didn’t need (chips and Oreos) and forgot other things (water). Everyone headed for the checkout as they stopped letting people in the store. In the carpark we met Wendy, a local who gave Bekky a spare P2 mask she had in her car and then led us to the Evacuation Centre just around the corner.

The Ulladulla Civic Centre was overflowing with people and animals. Volunteers were signing people up, setting out chairs, tables, food and drink, listening, administering first aid and generally being wonderful. We were in a place where other people would make decisions and the relief was palpable.

As the day wore on more and more people arrived. Locals who had already lost homes or were evacuating, but mostly visitors to the area, holiday-makers. People who probably should have stayed home. We should have heeded the advice to stay away if not needed, rather than the advice to come and stimulate the local economy.

Ashley made lots of new friends. Her waggy tail and one floppy ear making people smile as they moved around us. The atmosphere was subdued, but lifted later in the day when the NYE Harbourside Festival started up. Families enjoyed all the fun of the fair and it was great to see people’s minds taken off what was happening just down the road.

I changed my mind about the Festival when the doof doof music was still playing at 11 pm while we were trying to sleep with nothing more than picnic blankets and beach towels between our bodies and hard wooden floors. The kids fared pretty well, but I gave up and headed to the car at some point where I got a couple of hours’ kip lying on the back seat. One star. Would not recommend.

At least I didn’t have a snake in my car.

The next morning I heard a lady talking about how she’d been trying to sleep with their seven kids in their camper when the 12-year-old told her his pet snake had escaped. She had to try and find it without waking the others. Note to self: don’t take snakes on holidays.

We ate breakfast listening to an overtired bub crying in the arms of an overtired Mum. I pulled out my emergency supply of bubble mixture and miraculously the crying stopped as he reached out and popped the rainbow bubbles. Ashley found more new friends who had a BALL and were happy to bounce it for her to catch.

I wasn’t the only one watching this interaction.

A lady came up to me and said “I have a house nearby and I’m happy to put up a family with a friendly dog, and it looks like yours is. How many people do you have?” Lovely offer I thought, but this is going to be a deal breaker. “Eight…” She shrugged her shoulders. “Let’s give it a go!”

Marie-Louise gave us a wonderful New Year’s Day (once we’d called the NRMA to start our car, but that’s another story). Beds, a shower, a quiet space, but mostly a sense of normality. Being surrounded by anxious people makes one more anxious, but Marie-Louise exuded peace and we appreciated her reassurance. She told us we could stay as long as we needed.

Some of us napped, others read books, played board games and drank cups of tea. Later the air was less smoky so we walked to the beach with the dogs—Ashley had made a new friend in Nakita, Marie-Louise’s Border-Collie. The power came back on and we cooked dinner together.

I woke on 2 January, my birthday, to the news that the road north was open. We hugged our new friend goodbye and spent the day driving home saddened by the destruction—downed power lines and charred remains of houses, blackened earth right up to still-standing homes.

Gold Rush Colony in Mogo. Image: supplied.

Phone service had been restored and we learned that the Gold Rush Colony in Mogo where we had swum and walked and slept so recently was lost to the bush fire along with other businesses in Mogo and hundreds of homes along the coast.

And it’s nowhere near over yet.