18 January 2003 firestorm - Mount Stromlo stories Mark Bacon Mount Stromlo campus resident – interview, 5 February 2003

Bart Meehan – Mark, you lived in Residence 8 at Mt Stromlo?

Mark Bacon – That's correct.

B – How long have you been resident in that house?

M – We've been living up on the hill for about five years now, coming on five years. I'm married to Susanna Sabine who automated the 50" telescope, which is why we were there. We've both been part of the bushfire brigade which is why we both had both the training and the skills and the knowledge and a little bit of the equipment, to fight fire and why I felt confident enough to stay on the hill and fight the fire.

B – How long have you actually been with the fire brigade?

M – We had been with the fire brigade just about two, two and half years and only stopped going when our young daughter was born.

B – How old is your daughter?

M – She's now five months, just about five months. She's had a busy life.

B – I want to talk a bit about the 18th of January. First, tell me about what you saw earlier in the week.

M – We were on Mt Stromlo. We actually could see the fires probably not only early in the week, but at least ten days prior, because you could see the smoke from the back of the 30". That side of the hill you could see what was going on… but they were off in the distance, they were in the Brindabellas somewhere doing whatever they were doing before they came towards us.

B – So on the Friday (17th January) did you observe the fires and did you have any sense that the fires were coming on towards Mt Stromlo?

M – Yeah, you could see that from the ground. You could see, even earlier, on the 16th or the 15th, you could see that the smoke was getting heavier and the smoke was obviously coming closer. It was no longer a sort of vague fog or a dusting, it was getting denser and it smelt stronger. On the Friday you could tell that it was coming in our direction. It was just a matter of whether it would actually hit, or avoid us completely or burn out.

B – From your perspective, given your fire fighting experience, did you have any particular concerns? What were your thoughts on the Friday, did you think you might be in some bit of trouble?

M – On Friday there was what I would call pre-spotting ash coming down, which meant that the wind was coming in our direction and there were things that, if it continued, would turn into spot fires. So the Saturday I was much more concerned about spot fires in and around the house and up on Stromlo than actually having the fire front come through. And in fact, I called Andrew Thompson, who was up there with me. The phone call that I made to him when I got back from the gym was: "would you like to come up and give me a hand with the occasional spot fire?"

B – Andrew was your friend who stayed during the fire?

M – During the fire? Yes.

B –… and he's from the fire brigade as well?

M – No, he's not, he's an untrained volunteer.

B – So on the Saturday morning you said you were seeing the falling ash?

M – On the Friday.

B – On the Friday and on the Saturday?

M – Yes.

B – Let's talk about the Saturday now. In the morning we started, from a University point of view, to get advice that we needed to evacuate the site and that there was a considerable risk to the site. Around about 12 o'clock or so, they evacuated the Visitors Centre and the operational side of the site. When did you become aware that they were evacuating the site?

M – As a resident… I wasn't actually on the hill until about 1.30. I didn't come back from down the bottom until about 1–1.30. At that stage there was a vague notion that things were really bad. The message I got was that they'd evacuated the Visitors Centre, and that they were warning residents that they may need to leave. My wife had packed our car with our valuable papers and our photographs when I'd got home, and neither of us were enormously concerned. We'd basically gone about our normal business, and at that stage I gave Andrew a ring. I then wandered down and I spoke to Graeme (Blackman), who told me basically what had gone on in the morning and what he planned to do and what sort of things were happening. I informed him that I was going to stay and fight the spot fires and if necessary fight what was left of the fires after the fire front had come through. And that's the point at which I then returned to my house; Andrew joined us and my wife had already left with our young baby and gone with the other kids and everybody else.

B – Now around about, what 2–2.30 the police came up?

M – It would have been earlier than that because the fire front came through at about 2-2.30. I think it was about quarter past.

B – So the police came up around about quarter past one.

M – They would have been up there about half past one, quarter to two, something in that order. I must admit I lost track of the exact time. They came up, they started evacuating people, then about two o'clock or a little bit before two Graeme came through and told everyone to evacuate. The police followed him up to the top of the hill around residences 8 and 16 and so forth, and chased everybody out of the properties as best they could. I again informed them that I was staying and Andrew was staying and we were going to fight the spot fires, and that we weren't particularly concerned about leaving the hill. They thought we were nuts. They were terrified and at that stage you could see the flames over the back of the hill down beyond the fire track. There's a fire track half way down, a little bit down the hill. I would have said it was maybe 200 metres further down the hill… not very far? And they left in a great hurry.

B – So they basically said to you "you should evacuate", you said "no I'm going to stay" and they said "you're nuts", and they took off?

M – Well they didn't say anything about it, but they were terrified. At that stage I'd changed into my fire fighters uniform so I had the boots the oranges and the helmet on and the gloves and everything and it was obvious to them that I was prepared to hang around and they left in a great hurry.

B – OK. So now you're left… as far as you know, you and Andrew are alone on the hill?

M –As far as we knew.

B – We'll talk about the other person in a moment, but you're now probably fifteen minutes to half an hour away from the site being hit by the fire.

M – Probably less than 15 minutes. As I said I lost track of time. What happened then was that we did some very quick preparations, or what I thought were quick preparations. We turned on what we had in the way of pressure… noticed there was no water pressure… there was no power at this stage [and] retreated to the inside of the house.

B – The power had gone?

M – Power had gone before the fire front hit us.

B – OK

M – The water …

B – and the water pressure had disappeared as well?

M – Yes, and it was a significant time between the fire front hitting us, and losing both power and water. We then retreated into the house and basically waited for the fire front to go past.

B – Now, just on that, your decision to go into the house was obviously an informed one. You said this was the strategy that you're going to employ?

M – The strategy… the pre-ordained strategy and it's very commonly accepted, is that you don't fight the fire front, there was no point, and the speed and the ferocity of the fire front that I could see was that there were flames I would have said 40 metres high or more coming up that hill. There was no way in the world I was going to stay outside to face that sort of fire. When I went inside, and it was only a few minutes, maybe 10, maybe 5, that the fire front actually hit near us… it was beyond my sight. I could not see the size of it. It was just too big. The force at which it blew through …

B – Sorry, could you just clarify that… so you actually saw the flames but you couldn't see the limits of the flames?

M – There was no limits, no… it was just a wall of fire

B – Now at this point you're in the kitchen?

M – We were in the kitchen …

B –… you're observing this through your window in the kitchen?

M – Yes, the kitchen window is quite a small window and it's also partly obscured by the garage which was part of the strategy… but we also moved… we moved from the kitchen window through to our lounge room and into our study, all the time keeping an eye on those three sides as best I could and there just too much fire. You couldn't see beyond it… or around it for that fact. We then waited for the fire front to pass over. The garage wall fell down during the fire front coming through. Now I believe it was a combination of the pressure of the wind and the fire. The fire front skipped two cars, did a little damage to the second car then destroyed a third car and then got into the garage and the shed and destroyed everything in there. And then it seemed to pass straight over the house or around the house because it destroyed most of the garden around the house on both sides with a few of exceptions and then destroyed everything in the backyard as it went down the hill again. There was a small kid's ride-in car made of plastic and it survived somehow, whereas everything had been melted and destroyed. It in fact survived in a patch of grass that would have been maybe two and half metres round and there was this bright red plastic toy that was perfectly intact and very serviceable with this patch of grass around it and I have no idea why.

B – I think the randomness of some of the decisions the fire made have astounded us all.

M – Absolutely, absolutely.

B – I am interested to know how powerful the wind and fire was?

M – I can't give you an estimation.

It sounded like a jet engine.

B – So the sound was very loud?

M – Very, very loud.

B –… And it's just roaring through and it was strong enough to knock over a wall?

M – Think so. It would have been a combination of the heat and the air pressure. It broke… what did we lose? We lost three windows, but that would have been a combination of the heat and the air pressure and they broke out not in, so they were sucked out of the house as this thing went past.

B – would that have been oxygen being eaten by the fire as it was coming through?

M – I couldn't give you the technicalities of it. I don't know… but the force of the wind was enough to suck all the leaf litter off the ground and turn the air into a sort of suspension of combustible material and then it just left. It was off… gone… boom.

B – And so how long did it take to pass over in your estimation?

M – 10, 15 minutes.

B – And it moved through, it's moved down the hill, left the residence?

M – It's left the residence… there were fires throughout the gardens, there were fires in the eaves of our houses. There were fires… everything that could be lit outside with some very odd exceptions was a fire. We moved out of the house once… we checked the house constantly during the fire front going through. Once it had passed …

B – Can I clarify that… you checked the house constantly inside?

M – Inside.

B – Okay

M – I did… I must admit I did break my own rule and go outside when the wall of the garage fell down. It fell towards the house. Now given that it's a little bit higher than the house it could have come down and knocked holes in our wall and caused a breach in the perimeter, so during the fire front, I actually went out to see what had happened. When I went out I had a wadded nappy sodden with water over my face, I had a full fire fighters uniform on, I had gloves, I had neck protection, I had everything I could possibly wear and it was too hot to breath. I stayed out there only long enough to see what the wall had done and then to come back inside and I didn't take breath while I was out there. Somehow I took a photograph and I haven't worked that one out. I don't remember taking a photograph but it's there… then we went back inside.

B – and so it's 15 minutes later and now that the wall of fire has moved down the hill, you've gone outside and firstly you've seen some fires in the eaves of your own house?

M – The first thing we did was we went outside and I did an anti-clockwise search of the house. I basically walked around the outside of the house to check which parts of the building were actually alight. There were three spots that were alight. There was a fire in the eave on the front left hand side, there was a fire just a little further along and then there was another fire in the eave above the study, which was a metal roof. We dealt with those pretty well in that order. We had three buckets of water and a fire extinguisher. We also had an aluminium extension ladder and a second ladder and we used those to get to the eaves. Now to get to the first one I actually had to smash a couple of roof tiles and use the fire extinguisher to put the fire out in that. The second one we just used the pressure of the fire extinguisher. The third one again I had to lift the sheet metal which I just tore out of its wood frame and squirted water around the inside and also added a couple of buckets of water just to make everything wet. After we'd done the full circle of the house we did a second search of the inside of the house and came out again and started checking everything once more. Now it's at that stage that Ollie turned up. He walked out of the smoke towards us.

B – Ok – Ollie is the student?

M – Ollie's the student who …

B – He was in the bachelor's quarters?

M – Yes.

B – Do you know what his full name is?

M – I do, I've got it written somewhere. I didn't bring it with me.

B – That's alright.

M – But he was observing on the 74" that night (the Friday/Saturday morning) and he was asleep and due to observe again the Saturday night. Apparently he woke up when the light got so bright he thought it was dusk and it was time to get up and get moving, only to discover that there were actually lots of smoke and flame and he decided that maybe to retreat from where he was, was a good idea.

B – I might come back to his story in a moment. We'll just talk about your particular experience. You've now basically dealt with the immediate threat to your own house and you have an opportunity to observe what's going on around you. Do you want to just describe that for me?

M – From where we were we could see House 18, which is just across the road and I thought it was well and truly alight. The first time I saw it there were huge flames near the front door and I basically said "well look I don't have the resources to deal with a fire like that". I would have said there were floor to ceiling flames across most of the front of the house from where I could see. The second time we walked around our house we then looked across the road and noticed that the flames weren't actually that big so we went across grabbed a second fire extinguisher from the front of that house and put out the fire that was at the front of the house. Apparently the first flames that I saw was a hessian dog bed that burst into flames and it had just burnt away very quickly and then set alight the front panelling of one half of the door. What we did or what I did was use the fire extinguisher that was hanging on the hook by the door and quite literally squirted it around until I thought I'd got everything. I couldn't get into the house because the house was locked up and unfortunately they're good old fashioned locks and doors, good solid doors, and I couldn't see any other places in House 18 that was alight. We then went back and checked our house again. By this stage we had Ollie. Ollie had walked across, we'd taken him inside, we checked him out to see if he was OK. He had a minor burn on his hand, which we gave him – we had a packet of icy-poles, which we gave him to cool his fingers. We then tried to work out what he wanted and what he felt he should do. The first words out of his mouth were "go back to sleep"… which was a comfort because my feeling was that we were the only people on the hill. The last thing I needed to manage was a third person who I didn't know, didn't understand, didn't know how they'd react, whether they'd panic or not, and him going "I just want to go back to sleep" was a real comfort to us. So we gave him a bottle of water and said drink this and sit there and went off [and] did everything else. Back outside once we'd done House 18 we then looked at the other houses. John's house was well and truly alight.

B – The house was number… ?

M – That was 20. The bachelors quarters were gutted there was nothing you could do there.

B – Which is where Ollie was?

M – That was a huge flame. Actually I've got some photographs of that one. We then had a look at the pine house down the road which I think is house 14 or 16, I can't remember; and also there's a brick house down the bottom, they were both very much alight. The brick house lost its gas meter as well so there was this spectacular gas jet going up the side of the house, which was well and truly alight.

B – So it was venting the gas?

M – Literally venting gas… burning straight into the air. It looked like the afterburner of a jet engine. It was quite spectacular. We then went down to Graeme's house.

B – Just as a matter of interest, how long did the gas burn for?

M – I couldn't tell you. It was burning I would have said maybe two hours… maybe longer. We reported that when we eventually went off the hill. What time? We went down the hill probably at dusk – sometime like that. So it would have been 6 or 7 or even a bit later… and I don't know if they fixed it at that point. There were still a lot of fires at that time of the night… that time of the evening. Going back earlier… after we'd done a patrol of our house, gone around and looked at the houses closest to us. We then went down to Graeme's and there were two small fires there but we had no resources to fight them. There was no extinguisher by the front door so we couldn't use that one… we'd used up the extinguishers we already had and it was two fires. There was one in the eave which really needed pressure to get to, so the extinguisher could have done the job I think, and there was another fire in one of the side windows which would have been about the size of a large camp fire, maybe a bit bigger – there was nothing to do as we had no way of stopping it, unfortunately. Which is a bit disappointing. We just basically spent the rest of the day patrolling around looking at our house, looking at House 18, looking at whatever else was going on, staying away from the garage fires which were going on because they were cooking off and going pop and doing all sorts of unpleasant things.

B – Your carport next to your house was burnt?

M – Gutted.

B – And the car inside it?

M – And a whole lot of camping stuff, including a good collection of gas bottles.

B – Which were full or empty?

M – Worse than that they were half full, they were partly full.

B – And did they go up?

M – They didn't explode. What they do is there's a little plastic valve on the side of them and what they do is that valve melts and the contents, the cylinder vents out that gas valve so that was fine. The ones that went pop were things like spray cans of insecticide or whatever. We had… there's a new portable gas stove that has a sort of spray can cylinder and those went pop. There were a couple of empty fuel cans, which fortunately were left open, so they didn't go pop. But it was the paint tins and spray cans that went pop more than anything else. You could see the tins, that they've actually stretched and then the lids have burst open and they've gone pop. Very spectacular, very scary too.

B – At what point did you actually go up to the operational site to actually observe what had happened there?

M – Once we'd gone past Graeme's house and we'd looked at our house again and House 18 again we then… I actually took a camera out of my house and started taking photographs. At this stage John's house was still alight. All the houses were still very much burning. There was a lot of smoke coming from the top of the hill so we went up to have a look to see what was going on. We came up, we saw administration was well and truly alight. We didn't go down towards Woolley or Duffield building until much later. We went around behind administration towards the wind, from the direction of the wind – there was a lot of black smoke coming out of admin. There was a lot of black smoke coming out of the 50" as well and there was an incredible stink coming out of the maintenance area and the engineering areas. I basically got to the top of the hill and went "that's an industrial fire. That's too scary. I have no breathing apparatus. We're not going anywhere near that!". I was keenly aware that the 50" had a lot of lead in it, also there was a lot of copper and I was very aware that there were a lot of plastics and other materials within the maintenance buildings and things – all that whole area. So as far as I was concerned that was an industrial fire and it could just burn all by itself because I had no tools, no breathing apparatus and nothing to say that myself or Andrew would be safe going anywhere near it. So we let it go.

B – I assume at this point in the fire the 50" dome hadn't collapsed in on itself?

M – It had collapsed by the time we got up there.

B – Which would have been how long after the fire front had been through? An hour?

M – Probably an hour… probably less… 45 minutes to an hour would have been my guess. Everything happened very, very quickly and I know I was pumped with adrenalin, because I don't think I've ever been able to smash roof tiles with my fist and I don't know that I could lift sheet metal off a roof now without some assistance and some very good tools, but I was able to do both.

B – You mentioned to me when we met a couple of days after the fire that there was small fire near Duffield wing.

M – We didn't go past Admin or towards Duffield until all the fires there had basically calmed down and there was no… and also there was a wind change I think because I don't remember seeing a lot of black smoke towards the Woolley and Duffield buildings. We went up there fairly early in the morning and there was a group of… I think they were RAAF fire fighters – they were the first firies we saw on the hill. They actually… its quite eerie… they came up the hill with their lights on and the whole scene became very surreal because it suddenly turned into a red and blue flashing macabre montage of civilisation. But we followed them up the hill and when we got to the Duffield building (we came up the long way, up the road, because I didn't believe that off the road was safe in the dark). We came up the road behind them and there were trees down on the road… we cleared those… we followed them up the road; we got past the Director's residence; we got past the 50" then we caught up with them and they were squirting water into, roughly speaking, where the vax is… they were not having a lot of success at putting out the residual fires. They were using water and really you needed foam, and a lot of it, and they only had a light unit and a smallish tanker. We then wandered around the hill and discovered that there was a fire under one corner of the Duffield building. Now it wasn't… it wasn't what I'd call a big fire. It may have been twice the size of a dining room table – that sort of size, and through a combination of kicking dirt on it and going back and getting one of the light units to squirt its remaining water on it, we got the fire put out underneath there. It was under a collection of plastic pipes, which run under the Duffield building. I don't know if it was a significant thing or not, but that was about the only time it was really safe to go anywhere near… through the smoke… and the smoke was a bit scary.

B – Again, what time was this… was this on Sunday morning?

M – 2 in the morning… we didn't sleep Sunday… we went down the hill to have something to eat then came back within about half an hour and got through all the road blocks because we were wearing Firies' gear basically.

B – I'm assuming that as you travelled off the site much of the forest was still alight.

M – It looked like a camp site… it looked like a… in the dark you could see these very evenly spaced big camp fires all over the black hillside and they would have been 2, 3 metres apart and… it was something out of Lord of the Rings. The hillside was black and smoking and there were these campsites all over the place. It was very, very unreal.

B – I want to talk about Ollie in a minute, but just from a point of view of your wife and your little baby daughter who had left much earlier in the day… whereabouts did you send them?

M – They went… they had actually had an appointment to go to. We had my other kids coming up and we had an appointment down in the city in fact at 2 o'clock… so when I got up there about… just after 1… we basically swapped cars. She took my car, which had the baby seat in it, and went off down the hill with the kids and went off to get some photographs taken.

B – So there wasn't a plan for her to be evacuated? It was just coincidental?

M – It was coincidental… but yes, she was going to be evacuated. She couldn't stay in that smoke with a young baby. It would be very, very bad and certainly not the other children. It was not a good thing.

B – Now… just as an aside… when did she come back to the site, because you stayed there all the way through?

M – We stayed all the way through. We stayed… she came back that Wednesday, eventually, to actually see what was left and see how much of civilisation was available on the hill. But, Andrew and I had stayed every night… or we've stayed every night so far. What we did while we were there… we basically patrolled the hill every half hour… one or either of us or both of us would get up, wander around everywhere we could think of, check Sebastian's house, check anything else we could think of… and if we had some materials, we would have put the occasional spot fires out.

B –You had no services obviously, water and electricity were still out to the hill and the telephone lines were all gone because of the microwave link.

M – And you couldn't get mobiles to work either. Mobiles did not work because… well I believe the cloud of smoke, which contained all that lead and all that copper and all the carbon dust, just blocked signal.

B – What was your service provider for mobiles?

M – I'm with Optus. I think Andrew's with Telstra.

B – OK, so …

M – So we had nothing. We didn't even have 112, which you can quite often get in places where you don't get normal service.

B – Let's talk about Ollie. You mentioned before that you came out of your house and you saw somebody wandering towards you… before we talk about his story, what was your general impression when you saw somebody walking out of the dust and the smoke?

M – Well… I consider him extremely lucky. The story that I got from him was that, when he arrived in Australia someone had given him a pamphlet about bushfires. He'd actually read it and it said all these things he didn't believe – stay in your house until the front's passed; you'll get back draught… and he went through the whole bit. He did all those things and he survived! Now the first I saw of him was when Andrew was standing in our garden waving. I was wondering what he was waving at and there was Ollie coming out of the smoke from the playground and he was coming across the road. Immediately we took him inside and got this story from him. We thought he was the luckiest man on the planet because he survived what was an enormous fire and from where we stood nothing should survive in the bachelors' quarters.

B – He had been working on the 74" that night?

M – That night ..

B… come back in, gone to sleep. Obviously people didn't realise he was asleep in the quarters?

M – I don't know. I don't know what happened. But the police had gone through… they'd used their sirens. I know that Graeme had gone through tooting horns and yelling and bashing all the doors and doing everything he could. I know the police did the same thing and they were the last ones off the hill. I am quite surprised he was missed.

B – So he wakes up he sees the light?

M – So to speak, yes (laughs)

B – Which is flames and so on in the ceiling?

M – I don't know. It could have been coming through the air vents in the side of his room, it could have been just shadow through the curtains.

B – Yes. So presumably this is as the fire front came through and he stayed where he was initially?

M – And got dressed, very quickly.

B – Got dressed very quickly. The fire front has passed through and he's then walked out, and what happened then?

M – He apparently left the building came across the playground which is a big flat grassy area, waited there for a while wrapped in his doona, which he'd wet down, and then saw us come out of our house and came across to join us. Andrew spotted him. I then wondered what Andrew was waving at, saw him… we then took him around inside, checked that he was OK. He was slightly burnt around the fingers to which we gave him the icy poles to put on his fingers… he could have eaten them too. We then gave him the water and, from my assessment of him, basically he was still very much in shock and very tired and I was quite happy for him to just sit on our floor. All he did was drink the water and lie on our floor until we'd done our patrols around the house and everywhere else. He didn't come out of the house until much later on, until we'd actually come back from Admin down the bottom of the hill and then things relaxed a little bit. It was obvious that we were out of immediate danger and we'd survived.

B – And what happened to him? Did you take him off the hill?

M – We took him off the hill that evening. He went down to friends of ours in Burdekin Street in Duffy – he stayed with …

B – Is that a case of jumping from the frying pan into the fire?

M – They'd done their bit… they'd also fought their fire so it was safer. So we fed and watered him and he stayed down there that night. He stayed there a few nights. He also contacted some friends he has in Ainslie. It was very difficult for him to get out of Duffy with all the roadblocks that were going on at that stage and it was difficult for his friends to get into Duffy so he stayed – I think he stayed 3 nights in the end. Then he went away, got some clean clothes and came back.

B – Through all of this, your wife obviously knew you were up on the mountain but didn't know exactly what was happening? When did she find out that you were safe? When you went off later that afternoon?

M – When we went off later that afternoon. She came up to one of the roadblocks and said "I've got to get up there". It was the following day and she was informed by the Fire… informed by the police that nothing existed on top of Stromlo and she said "My husband's up there!"

B – When you say the following day, this was on the Sunday?

M – I think it was the Sunday, yes.

B – So you actually didn't leave the mountain until the Sunday… it wasn't the Saturday afternoon you left it was the Sunday afternoon?

M – It would have been the Sunday afternoon, yeah.

B – The Sunday afternoon. OK. But just in the chronology sense, you were actually in the fire on the Saturday afternoon, stayed there through the night, did your spot fire things, you had that 2 o'clock encounter with the RAAF fire fighters…

M –… and they all looked about 16 or 15 years old… they looked so young.

B – I'm an ex-RAAF guy, 21 years – you don't look young for long.

M – Oh they did! There were… in the RAAF group there was a couple of old people… older as in, probably in their mid-thirties… looking very dirty and very dusty. They'd probably been on the go since whenever. And there was this crew of… there were a couple of girls… there were 2 or 3 girls and there was a couple of younger kids… younger men. They looked about, I would have said, anywhere between 12 and 15 or 16. They looked so young, and they were in creased, beautiful uniforms and they were there squirting water around very enthusiastically… not very effectively… but very enthusiastically. And we must have looked like… I don't know… something out of the horror movies, because we still had our oranges on and we were dirty and dusty and holding on to bottles of water and just looked awful. And we were very cynical 'cause we were watching all these things happening and going "Why are you bothering?" And it was just… the red and blue lights were just surreal!

B – So your wife on the Sunday went to the roadblock, told them that her husband was up there and was told that nothing existed?

M – She was very unimpressed …

B – Yeah? So at this point what did she do?

M – I can't remember. I don't actually remember whether she made it up that night… that day. She may have 'cause it's all a bit of a blur. She came up… there was one time she came up… it was only for little while… and it may have been that day. Yes she came up basically for about half an hour, three quarters of an hour – collected a bundle of clothes and went away again and just checked.

B – So presumably at that point she realised that, while nothing may have existed on the mountain, you did? You and Andrew did.

M – Yes, but my wife has this misguided assumption that I'm harder to kill than cockroaches. And she knows that I've been trained so if everything else failed and the house was alight and every option was closed off to us, we would simply do what Ollie did – go find a nice flat spot that had been burnt, wait for the fire to pass and walk off the hill because the road would still be good… we hoped.

B – Well, …

M – There was no guarantee of that.

B – There's probably not much more I want to cover today but, just a couple of things – firstly, did you have any ill effects, with the smoke and things like that afterwards?

M – We did, we did. I had a medical check-up and the doctor said that my lung capacity had dropped by 12%. Due to smoke inhalation, and probably mild burns, and that I was to use a Ventolin puffer, which I had with me, and to just keep an eye on it. Just to make sure that I don't get a lung infection of some sort. Ollie also had the same sort of result. I think he was 6 or 7%, but given he's a smoker he probably won't notice. Andrew – same game – very, very similar sort of results – mild inhalation, mild burns. I think the biggest injury we had on the day was Andrew managed to get a splinter in his finger and stabbed the top his mouth with a corn chip. Which of course made the first phone call off the hill very strange. When we got clear air, someone asked us was anyone hurt and my glib response was "Ooh yes – we got one splinter and there's a stabbing with a corn chip", to which we got dead silence on the other end of the line. They were not impressed by that response. But other than that, pretty easy.

B – One last question. Given what you went through and you now are wiser after the event, would that change the decision you made, or would you make exactly the same decision that you did?

M – I am confident in the decision that I made. I would probably make it again the same way. I'm not sure that it's the right decision for other people. I think that decision was the right decision for me and I also gave Andrew, who I knew wasn't experienced with bushfires, the option several times to leave, to flee the hillside. I was very concerned when Ollie turned up because the faces of the people who left during the evacuation – they were terrified, they were absolutely terrified, and I wouldn't want them up on the hill to be part of any fire fighting force or be another responsibility because they would be more to look after and it was bad enough looking after 2 people or 3 people, than having to have someone who was panicking or having to deal with someone who needed comforting. I needed the independence of mind and the independence of action that came from my ability to know what was going to happen and I would repeat that decision. I would do it the same way and as I said earlier if everything went bad we would simply wait for the fire to go past, wait for it die down and then we would walk out.

B – There is one more question. Just on that basis other people that I've spoken with have indicated that it wasn't until they were actually in the fire that they realised just what sort of fire they were dealing with. That it was something beyond I guess their normal comprehension of a fire. What were your thoughts… you mentioned before that you couldn't see the limits of the fire?

M – There was no limit. It was just fire, ball of fire stuff. Very scary.

B – Did you get an impression during and after that, that what you had seen was something quite extraordinary?

M – Yes. During (the fire storm) definitely, afterwards – most certainly. I've seen "walls of fire" before. As a Firie I've seen big grass fires and some fires in crowns of trees and things like that, and that's quite scary, but nothing of this magnitude. There was fire everywhere, it had enormous amounts of energy and it had enormous amounts of speed. There was… even as the fire came up the back of hill and the policeman was telling people to evacuate, you could see the flames and they were quite large. There was nothing to indicate what was behind those flames, until it basically hit the wall. I couldn't… from where I was I couldn't see further down the hill so once it came to us it was a wall of fire. It sucked all the gumfph off the ground and just exploded. And that was it, very scary.

B – That's all I needed. Thank you very much.

M – OK, my pleasure.

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