Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 1 Hansard (30 January) . . Page.. 43 ..

MS MacDONALD (continuing):

We got back at 10.30 pm and we remained oblivious until the next day of how close the fire came to our own house that day. On driving back to Canberra, I evaluated what things I might grab if I still had a house to come back to. Apart from my wedding photos, I kept thinking that the most important part of my life, my husband Brendan, was in the car with me. Later, I thought of a few irreplaceable items of sentimental value and, with everybody else here, I grieve for those people who have lost their irreplaceable treasures, such as family photos, children's art and craft work, family heirlooms, and anything else that cannot be replaced by insurance dollars alone.

Having got home, and with our house still standing and at no eminent risk, my thoughts turned to how I could help. I believe that this is the way most people felt, as has been shown by the extraordinary generosity of donations, to the point where evacuation centres have had to say, "No more. Please stop sending things in."In the following days, I met people at the Erindale evacuation centre from the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, college staff and public servants, and I truly express my admiration of all the wonderful work that they were doing and the courage that they were showing in helping to deal with the people who had lost their houses.

On Tuesday at the Burns Club I met people from Kambah and for some of them it was the first time since Friday that they had had a hot meal. The Burns Club is to be commended for having put on a hot meal for those people and for having done a letterbox drop to the houses which were affected by the loss of electricity loss, some until Wednesday or Thursday of last week.

I also had the privilege of meeting Meg at Mount Arawang. Although Meg and Ross had managed to save their house, an old parks and conservation depot, they lost all of the sheds around their place. Ironically, they had just had the house painted by ACT Housing, so they had most of their property within the sheds. They lost two light-horse saddles, which can never be replaced. They stayed and fought the fire, even though their water supply was attached to the electricity. As soon as the electricity was gone, they lost their hoses, so they were fighting the fire with backpacks of water, which provided no resistance against a fireball.

Ross decided to stay. Meg looked at house and said, "There is no point in staying as we can't do anything. We're going to have to go."Ross refused to leave the house that he had lived in for 23 years. I said to Meg, "When you left, you must have thought that he'd gone, that he must be dead."She said, "I said to the kids down on Kambah Oval, 'I think Ross is gone.' I went back to look for his body. I didn't go back to look for him, I went back to look for his body."

I cannot fully measure the depth of despair that she must have had in going up there to look for her husband, whom she thought was dead, but she went to look for him. As it was, he had collapsed and two police officers had taken him to Canberra Hospital. Amazingly, their house was still standing. I might add that the other thing that amazed us all was that, during the fire, they had three pillows on the clothesline and those three pillows survived. It was just amazing thing that these three pillows and the house survived the fireball.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .