Bushfire Survivor, Warrawillah, NSW

Our family lived in a lovely little off-grid home in Warrawillah on NSW’s MidCoast. My partner, Aaron built it himself with much care and consideration for the environment.

We had recently finished building our daughter's first bedroom. The light switch was really low so the little one could reach it. It was purple and she loved it.

But on Friday 8th November 2019 everything changed.

It was Australia’s warmest year on record and we’d been in drought for many years. About a month before, the Rumba Dump fire was ignited by dry lightening strike in Tapin Tops National Park about 20km west of us. On November 8th however, this bushfire changed to an ‘emergency’ rating as fire conditions became severe. There were also two more ‘emergency’ many ‘advice’ level bushfires burning within a 30km radius of our home.

About midday, as the wind whipped up, we saw black plumes of smoke funnel directly over our heads and cover the sun. Burnt leaves started falling in our yard. Our family, including my partner and 2 year old child knew it was time to leave.

In the weeks before we’d made a bushfire survival plan and had been checking the RFS Fires Near Me app regularly. In these last moments at our house, the app said the Rumba Dump fire was 17km away. It was clear from where we were standing it was not. I called Aaron’s parents down the hill and told them we were evacuating. They decided to stay.

We did not have the water or the resources to try and fight this fire. By the time this fire came, I had been filling 20L water containers in town for months to boost our drinking water supply.

As Aaron, my daughter and I travelled along the road to town we found frantic friends gathered on the roadside in the first spot of phone reception. They were calling people, looking for family members as the fire was already on their property. We knew at that moment the situation was dire and we were very relieved to have evacuated. There were no helicopters, water bombers or fire trucks in sight.

The speed and ferocity at which the fire came took everyone by surprise.

The information we had was unreliable. When the Fires Near Me app went blank in an area we could see was burning, we knew it was bad. Really bad.

There, at ‘reception bend’ we tried to get in touch with Aaron’s parents to tell them they needed to get out. We couldn’t reach them. We drove on to Wingham, the station wagon fortuitously loaded with our camping gear for our weekend ahead.

My daughter and I stayed with a friend. Aaron went back to the fire to find his parents.

Many harrowing hours ensued as the emergency fires raged all around the town and overtook outlying communities. The Fire and Police Scanner Radio app blasted through the house as we learned in real time whose houses had been lost. I never heard my own.

At about 6pm I got a text message ‘shelter while the fire arrives.’ I later learned that our house had already been lost by this time.

It was after midnight when Aaron called. Disorientated, in a dark alien moonscape, he climbed the steep and flaming hill past the burning piles of rubble that were our home, gardens, car, studio, shed and tanks.

Over a fuzzy and broken phone line I heard him simply say “It’s all gone.”