a firery tale

On New Years Eve, I ducked into town to grab a few things and on my way saw smoke, a little further on I saw that our neighbour had lit a pile of rubbish near his house in a cleared area, 

I shook my head what was he thinking!

No sooner had I pulled in the drive way another vehicle pulled in, the guy told me he was with the bush fire brigade and had called it in and two trucks were on there way.

I thought no problems this will be cleared up in no time.

The fire at this stage was at least 500 metres from our place.

About half an hour later we started to smell smoke.

A friend called in who is in the bushfire brigade and said he had been up to look, he'd been called in but the engine wasn't there yet, but they should have it under control in no time.

 I set the big boys to some clearing up and getting things ready just in case.

They did a great job fixing up stuff that I hadn't even realised were there including some petrol cans under the edge of the shed.

 The firies came back and said they would back burn from our fence line and looked at access points and then left again. 

 The fire was just peaking through the trees at this stage.

 They came back with the engine and thought they might burn up the fence from the front, in order to protect our property.

 Aided by a slight breeze, the fire had other ideas, it started to get closer and closer at the back,

 

the boys were wetting everything down,

Then the fire got really close to the side near the vege garden.

 

The firies quickly moved the truck to the back and started to battle the flames.

Thankfully they were able to get that under control, 

but our poor beautiful silky oak is looking rather scorched  along with a few other trees.

The fire had now started to get much closer at the front.

Next another smaller truck arrived and they started to back burn at the front.

 

The smoke and ash got really bad at this point and we were shut inside and very hot, 

at one stage I couldn't even see out the kitchen door onto the veranda from all the smoke.

They left after this to go and save some other houses that were in danger but said more trucks were on there way and they would be back to check when they could,

 

 but to keep an eye on things and keep watering down.

A short while later they were back up in the back corner trying to stop it reaching our back fence line, we ended up with three trucks in the back paddock.

 

Eventually they left and this is what we now look out on.

The jacaranda tree and the wattle tree have been scorched, but the fire actually didn't come into our yard.

We are very grateful that the Bushfire Brigade were there to do their job!

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