2025 marks the 12th anniversary of the devastating Dunalley bush fire. During that event, the author recorded her first-hand experiences in a journal.
We called it Black Friday.
It is 40 degrees in Hobart and gale-force winds are roaring from the north. In the kitchen, I listen idly to ABC radio. Reports of a fire in Forcett, nearly 50 kilometres to the north, so far away. As the hours tick by the tone of the reports grow stronger, yet nothing alarms us.
At 2pm we wander up to our dear neighbours, Joanne and Danny. By now the smoke is visible to the north, the winds pumping it overhead like a bellows. We lounge about watching the blue waters of Pirates Bay, listening to the radio. The fire has passed through Dunalley. Danny turns up the volume. The fire has reached Murdunna. There is a fluttering in my ribs now, and Susie, bless her 10-year old gut instinct, declares, “I’m going to pack my suitcase.”
Something about her stridency urges me to my feet. Come on Grant – we’re going home to pack ours too.
We are moving like robots, very calm and controlled. We toss in portable hard drives, medications, clothes. We pay more attention to the two dogs, ensuring they have food, along with Luke’s pain killing drugs. Then at 4pm, two police cars hurtle up our gravel driveway. The policewomen’s faces are frantic, shining with panic – they lean out of the car windows, screaming: “Are you staying or going? Leave now! Go to the Nubeena refuge centre. The fire will be here in 10 minutes!”
In the car, we have the briefest debate. No, we are not going all the way to Nubeena. That’s 28 kilometres away! How will the dogs cope at an evacuation centre in the hall? What a nightmare. We will go to Kim and Warren’s house at Taranna, just across the Neck. The fire will never cross that tiny strip of land.
At Kim and Warren’s, this still seems like an adventure, a bit of a lark. Then we smell smoke, so strong our eyes are watering. The sky is transforming into a vista of purple bruises and pinnacles of blackness. It seems as if the heavens are moving. We stand on the road now, watching the northern end of Eaglehawk Neck. Jetty Road is ablaze, the whole slope of the hill lurid with red flames. A ball of fire has swept across the water of the Neck: the impossible is now real. Listen. It is like a freight train pounding along the track. It is the sound of dying.
At 11pm Danny rings us. “It’s clear up here.” Thankful, we dart home. What timing – 10 minutes later the police descend on Kim and Warren’s house, evacuating them to Nubeena.
Home. But it’s no haven. At 2am Danny is pounding on our front door, frantically yelling, “The wind is shifting, get out and come to our place!”
Our house backs onto a 60-metre cliff, with one access to the road. From Danny’s house, we can scramble down steps onto the beach at Lufra Cove, five minutes to safety. We urge Luke down our front steps; blind in the dark, he cries like a baby, terrified. Grant lifts him into the car.
At Danny and Joanne’s, we huddle together on their front lawn, ready to run if need be. There are kids, dogs, neighbours, all united in this sudden terror, yet at the same time, intensely alive.
Ash is falling like snow.
The sun comes up.
The wind keeps shifting.
At 6am we drive home again. There is no power, no mobile phone, since the batteries at the mobile tower on the hill have melted. Exhausted, we fall asleep. But then at 9am Danny is again at our door yelling, “Get out – the winds have shifted again!” We drive up to their house, and drag everything: kids, dogs, bags, drinking water, down to the beach. Danny’s son Aidan has his boat moored in Lufra Cove, and is planning how he might evacuate us by boat. No way, I say to Grant. There is no way we can physically get our dogs onto the boat. We will stay on the beach with the dogs. God, I suddenly remember “On the Beach” was the title of that horrific novel by Nevil Shute about the end of the world. I force myself to laugh.
The hours drift by, and around early afternoon the threat eases. Back home we go. We drag out the fire hoses and water the house, especially the gutters. But now we are like animals, sniffing the air, constantly watching the sky. The dogs pace anxiously. We eat something: toast and eggs cooked on the gas stove. No power means we will lose all the fridge and freezer contents, and like most people living around here, they are stacked with roasts, fish, chickens, even crayfish. None of that matters.
Saturday night we do shifts, lurching like zombies to our feet at 5am to water the house again. We refill buckets at the rainwater tank. Now we sit outside, watching. Watching. Never have we taken such a close interest in the topography. We analyse wind direction, speed, slope of the bush.
Sunday night is spent sleeping in our clothes. We set the alarm to keep waking us, so we can check the bush and the sky. The horizon to the west is alight. There are fires burning to the north, west and south of us. From the sky, black leaves are falling, like mutant snowflakes. The lawn is covered with them. I cradle one gently, noting how all the soft tissue has burnt away, leaving a skeleton of veins.
Monday, we organise group meals, pooling our resources, since we are now effectively trapped on the peninsula. We crave comfort food – hamburgers and chips. Does anyone ever crave tofu and brown rice in a crisis? The sky seems full of helicopters, monster dragonflies zooming overhead. Sirens blare constantly along the highway. We listen appalled as the radio announcers recount the storm that swept through Dunalley, the incinerated birds plummeting to earth.
Grant and I keep watering down the house.
The dogs pace.
Now each day merges with another. No power, no phone. Day 5 we drive to Murdunna and get mobile phone coverage. Along the way, we observe where the fire reached. It got to within one kilometre from our house: saved by a change of wind and large patches of wet temperate rainforest.
We drive to Dunalley, where a recovery centre is set up. Such impressive organisation: Centrelink, donated supplies, SES, and volunteers. We chat about how lucky we are to live in Australia. Tentatively we collect some donated goods: bottled water, UHT milk, bread. We are teary with overwhelming gratitude.
One day we have cause for laughter. A van pulls up out front, and disgorges four hardy souls: an earnest Red Cross volunteer, complete with clipboard, an important looking man wearing a fluorescent jacket emblazoned with the giant letters HUMAN SERVICES, and two ministers of religion. The Red Cross woman takes our details, and asks if we want anyone notified we are okay. The religious chaps gaze steadily at us, a look of concern on their faces. They keep asking is there anything we need? Yes, we cry, we’re out of red wine – would they by chance have some in their van?
Uneasy laughter all round.
Things start to improve: mobile coverage is back, and power is restored well ahead of prediction. But it is now Day 12 and the fires are still not completely controlled. I go to a meeting at Taranna organised by the fire brigade. They are predicting another bad day tomorrow. Carefully the fire officer points to his map, explaining containment lines, the fires still burning in inaccessible areas. The locals ask questions, but there is a prevailing calm. The fire officer chooses his words carefully – no need to panic, activate your fire plan, identify your nearest safe place.
Everyone claps the firies, the police, the SES. They are genuine heroes.
Now we are swamped by a profound, limp-limbed exhaustion. Grant carefully rolls up the fire hoses, but they are not put away. They lie there, poised like enormous yellow snakes. We examine the vegetation around us, dissecting the risk levels. We plan our future schedule for major clearing.
Suddenly the days seem glorious. The birds are singing again, and we realise with shock that throughout that crisis the birds were silent. The dogs settle back into their routine, although they observe us carefully, as if their pack leaders are just recovering from a bout of insanity.
We cook lavish meals, and drink lots of wine. Around us, the bush shimmers. We still relish its embrace, but it has a looming presence now, a darker aspect. Ignited by a firestorm, it has demonstrated mighty power, a capacity for unflinching destruction. I think about Yeats’ poem, Easter 1916, where he describes the effects of the uprising on the Irish revolutionaries. His last words haunt me, since they capture the way I feel now about the bush: All changed, changed utterly; A terrible beauty is born.
A former University academic specialising in history and cultural studies, Dr Jillian Brannock is now a freelance writer and radio presenter. Her weekly radio program, The History Show, is broadcast via the Internet on printradiotas.org.au/listen-live.
In February 2024, the Australian literary journal published her essay Hannah Arendt and the banality of evil. One of her short stories was longlisted in 2024 for the Fabel International Short Story Award.