Colour Our World Blackened

Note: This post was updated in January 2024, after I cleaned out my old phone and found some long-forgotten photos and screenshots from that time. I've marked them out as new additions, not because I think anyone will care, just on the principle of not being my own Ministry of Truth.

...A Dungeon horrible, on all sides round
As one great Furnace flam'd, yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Serv'd onely to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery Deluge, fed
With ever-burning Sulphur unconsum'd:
Such place Eternal Justice had prepar'd
For those rebellious, here thir Prison ordain'd
In utter darkness, and thir portion set
As far remov'd from God and light of Heav'n
As from the Center thrice to th' utmost Pole.
O how unlike the place from whence they fell!

– John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I, lines 61-75

Own work, not for media use.

The fires plaguing my country became real to me only slowly. When they first flared up it was honestly little more than a calendar marker, like the Grand Final when you don't follow the footy – "Oh, that time of year, is it?" They didn't really kick into gear until mid-December, when in the lead-up to Christmas I was working graveyard shifts at one of my two current workplaces. Around 4am I got a phone call from the usual graveyard guy, telling me that as a volunteer firefighter he'd been called up to go and fight the Braidwood fire north of Canberra. I wrote down the details he gave me and, when the site manager came in to start work a few hours later, I told them that I'd probably just picked up a couple of extra shifts. Sure enough, when I came in the following night my five graveyards in seven nights had become seven of nine (insert TNG joke here). Nine days of night was pretty tough, so thirty must be a killer. But that was how the fires began for me, covering extra shifts so a coworker could go fight one of them.

During those nights the smoke arrived. It was fairly gentle at first, as we suspected it was coming from one of the big fires near Canberra, 150km to the east of us. Some days thinner, some days thicker, so that the morning sun dawned ruby red as it leapt from the horizon, but always it was coming from far away. At the same time, the smoke hasn't left since...

On 21 December, a fire started in the Common just south of town, a patch of scrubland set aside for mountain bikers, bushwalkers and other incorrigible outdoorsy types. It was established that it started from yet another car that had been stolen, taken for a joyride and then torched in the scrub – there had been literally dozens of instances of this in the last 12 months, and the public mood these days is that if they found the guilty party the police wouldn't be getting involved. You could hang, draw and quarter the culprits in the main street and five thousand people would swear they didn't see a thing. Anyway, it seemed this time the person(s) responsible finally overdid it, because it was a hot day with some winds; a day with a Total Fire Ban in place. Sure enough, the Common went up like a dry tissue, a 50-hectare patch ultimately being destroyed only a few hundred metres from the town. The firies got it under control without much hassle though, and despite its proximity to the town was never rated above Watch & Act (i.e. yellow, one above Advice (blue) but below Emergency (red)).

Just over a week later – probably New Years' Eve 2019, if my old rosters are any guide – it was even hotter but muggier, as mild storms were forecast. Sure enough, a small, isolated thunderstorm developed southwest of town, and I pithily took to Facebook to wonder whether this storm would douse the still-smoldering embers of the Common fire, or give us dry lightning strikes and start a new one? Me and my big mouth...

Own work, not for media use.

The strike that started it landed somewhere south of Ellerslie Nature Reserve. That's where it first appeared on the RFS maps; my first news of it came on my way home from work, when I stopped in at my second store en route to pick up my roster. A local man filling his Pajero saw me as I was crossing the forecourt, saw my work shirt and called out, asking if I'd mind taking his cash and paying on his behalf, because his mate had a fire on his property that needed fighting. I said sure, took the money, paid the man’s bill, got my roster and thought no more of it; at the time it was just a grass fire, no bigger than the one on the Common, but much further from town. Not a huge deal.

It got bigger. Over the following days it grew from 50 hectares, to 100, to 1,000. The smoke started to get noticeable, chafing the throat and stinging the eyes. By New Year's Day it was 5,000 hectares, and that night it kicked into overdrive: coming home from work that night, the sky to the south was one huge red glow, like Frodo and Sam's first view of Mordor. It was incredible. By the time I got up the next day, the fire had burnt out 25,000 hectares and was becoming a major threat to Laurel Hill, Batlow and Tumbarumba. I kept the app open at work that night and watched with disbelief as the fire tracked straight between Tumba and Batlow. By the time it reached the end of that run it had grown to 125,000 hectares.

New Year's Eve I'd served 642 customers, and New Year's Day I did another 580 or so, most of them evacuees from Batemans Bay. For these two days the smoke was thick and white and powdery, and the constant traffic through our doors meant it was as bad inside as it was out; I'm still coughing and speaking with a croaky voice because of it. I tried to pick up a mask from one of the local hardware stores but they were understandably all out, and the business I work for wasn't quick enough to provide them, so I just had to suck it up for now.

By now we were getting nervous, as weather reports were warning Saturday, 4 January, would be a horror fire day: 46 degrees and blowing a gale, mostly strong easterlies. Batlow would be right in the firing line; and since the fire had steadily crept north through Ellerslie Nature Reserve and up towards the main road, Adelong was in danger as well. On Thursday, 2 January, a couple of hours before work, I got a broadcast text ordering that Batlow be evacuated: that threw a switch in my head, and I started loading up my car, just in case.

Fire spread prediction map for 4 Jan 2020 (added Jan 2024).

It's quite a thing, going through your home and deciding what you want to take with you and what can be fed directly into an incinerator. I was glad I now drive a Falcon instead of the old Corolla, I was able to fit so much more of my stuff – all of my books for starters (made easier because the landlord's been renovating, so I'd had my stuff boxed up for over a year awaiting the order to move anyway. Like the soldiers of 1914, I was told I'd be out before Christmas; as in 1914, they weren't specific about which one...). I was able to save most of what mattered to me, but even so I had to leave two crucial things behind: a bookshelf that was bequeathed to me by my Nan, and my beloved Peavey bass amp, which belonged to the father of the Von Trapps of my home town. If you were going to practice music in that town in those days, you were doing it in their garage, where everything was already set up. They sold me the amp my first year of uni, after the dad (an ambulance officer by trade) did his back in and wasn't allowed to sling a bass guitar over his shoulder anymore; he knocked $100 off the $400 asking price because I was a student. So I've owned that amp since I was 19, and been using it since I was 16. They're only things, sure, but they're things with immense sentimental value to me, and they're simply not replaceable. But they were also too big to fit in an already crammed Falcon.

(One person cutely asked if my car would struggle on the hills loaded up with so much stuff; the answer was "sort of", as it had to change down going up one of the steeper ones. There's nothing like a Barra turbo.)

Friday, 3 January passed uneventfully, the calm before the storm. Then Saturday came, and an hour or so after I awoke (I sleep late because I work late, so just before midday), the winds picked up outside, and almost simultaneously the fire was upgraded to Emergency status. I was already packed and ready to go, so there was no point staying in Tumut: I posted to FB that I was pulling out and heading into work a couple of hours early, so no-one needed to wonder where I was. It meant a 10-hour shift, but that was okay; like everyone else I was in a bit of a state, so a place with unending menial tasks to do was perfect. I have far too much imagination, so the worst thing you can do to me is leave me alone with it.

That afternoon, around 3pm, we started getting power surges and blackouts that interfered with our computers and fuel pumps. Officially this had nothing to do with the fire, but the RFS map showed the black area had reached the Tumut 1 power station at Talbingo, so that claim seemed like an obvious and pointless lie. For about three hours we struggled with a backroom server that couldn't keep up and pumps that wouldn't run because they needed electricity to function. People would have to settle for however much fuel they got before the power dropped out again... or none, depending on the breaks. We could only put through sales by noting down manually what people were buying, adding it up with a calculator and taking it in cash. It's a point of professional pride that my cash variance at the end of that night was only $2 – a $2 coin that I found on the floor about halfway through the night and wasn't sure if it was from my till.

Own work, not for media use. (Added Jan 2024)

I fully expected Batlow and Adelong to've been erased from the earth by the time I finished that evening – the firies had been giving us the full Batlow Delenda Est, warning that this area "will not be defensible" – but apparently only 8 houses were lost that day, along with both the town's small independent petrol stations. The footage of that going up is not quite Bay-esque, but it stands out even among most bushfire footage. I remember we met the owners of one of those petrol stations a few years ago they came knocking at my store asking various questions about our procedures, which was really suspicious until we realised who they were. Once the penny dropped we gently explained we were part of a franchise, not an independent like them, so even if we could discuss our procedures ours would be different from theirs. Apparently no-one was there by the time the fire caught up, but around 5pm on that horror Friday I was told "the Batlow servo" had exploded, right when we were battling with the power surges. Those two gents were the first thing I thought of.

Own work, not for media use.

Anyway, as absurd as it felt to head back towards the fire to sleep, my bed was back in Tumut so that's where I had to go. Thankfully by then the conditions had calmed down a bit and the fire was back to Watch & Act status. I can't say I slept well, thanks to the smoke and the calls to reduce electricity usage as the Talbingo power stations that supply half the state were temporarily out of commission; I really could've used some air con as it was still 37 degrees at midnight, but I figured as a single guy living alone, I was expendable. If me being a bit hot meant a hospital somewhere could keep the lights on, then that was probably a fair trade. I found a temporary solution by opening up all my doors and windows and sleeping in front of the open front door, letting the slowly-cooling night air wash over me, but around 2am the smoke arrived in force and I had to close it all up tight again.

The smoke the next day gave us a dark, orange day with air quality twice as bad as Beijing, apparently... but Tumut was still here. Adelong was still here, despite the fire reaching the cemetery on the outskirts of the town; and Batlow was mostly still here, despite losing several buildings and one man's life, as he volunteered to help defend his mate's home. And in the end, this too did pass. By 10 January the road to Batlow was open again, so I took it, and got the photos you see here. I didn't go into the town itself because I didn't want to photograph the ruins of someone's house, but I didn't need to, these were enough. I'm not sure how many houses were lost, but it was surprisingly few, and the orchards that power the town are mostly still standing. The firies must've brought their A-game, that's all I can say. And given it's now looking the fire might not reach Bondo State Forest either, the local economy might just limp through this.

Fires Near Me screenshot. Note that the long axis was created basically in one single night. (Added Jan 2024.)

I promise I'm not fishing for sympathy, because I need none and deserve less. I am NOT a victim of the fire: I haven't lost a damn thing. My car has been emptied again, and I gave my house the best clean it's had since I moved in while it was an empty shell. But the experience has still left a mark on me. I've been through the trauma of triaging my belongings and making the decision to run while I was still ahead of it, and had a glimpse of how quickly it all breaks down when the expensive and fragile infrastructure that defines a First World country collapses. (Hint: if you're heading into a fire area, get your petrol and/or diesel well before you arrive, because the local stations might not be able to supply you. And of course, in the absence of electricity, you'll need lots of fuel to run your generator, won't you? The Catch-22 will murder you if you're not thinking ahead.)

Own work, not for media use.

More than anything though, I feel like I’ve had a glimpse of our future, of the world of Climate Change. As I write this we've got several days of soaking, slow-moving rain storms forecast to move through the area, and the firies are telling us the blaze is more or less out... but there are still six weeks left of this godforsaken summer. And even if nothing else happens, there'll always be next summer. This will keep happening, and we'll always have not quite recovered from the last disaster when the next arrives, unless we make a decision to invest in the future rather than giving ourselves a tax holiday. So rather than just putting up some signs thanking the firies, would you all mind voting for MPs that will actually fund them? I've been telling people for years that you can't feed hungry children with a budget surplus, but now maybe we've got a version that will actually sink in: you can't fight a bushfire with a budget surplus.

So choose. Either vote green, or vote black. The future is what you make it.