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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 1 Hansard (30 January) . . Page.. 44 ..

MS MacDONALD (continuing):

A most unusual comment came from the four-year-old daughter of Meg and Ross when she turned to her mother and said, "How did the fire know where our house lived? How did the fire find our house?"She then turned to her aunt and said, "Has your house gone?"Her aunt said, "No, my house is in the Blue Mountains."The daughter responded, "So the fire doesn't know where your house lives."There is going to be a lot of soul mending for not just the adults who fought these fires but also the children of our community who have seen a lot of damage and a lot of hurt.

I have seen many scenes of devastation that I wish I hadn't. The day after the fires, Brendan and I went and had a look in Torrens and two houses were lost. I went to Kambah, Mount Arawang, Mount Taylor and Duffy. I went to look at Duffy because I was told I should do so. I was going to go to Chapman, but I just did not have the heart after seeing the devastation in Duffy. I was driving round the streets of Duffy and I looked around and thought, "These poor people, to have lost this,"but the community has pulled together.

I would like also to place on record with those of everybody else my thanks to all the people in the Emergency Services Bureau, the firefighters, the police and the volunteer firefighters who put their life at risk, ordinary citizens, in helping to defend their own houses, their neighbours' houses and strangers' houses in lots of cases. I would also like to thank those people who made all sorts of donations-who gave their time, goods, a listening ear, food, water, fruit, muesli bars or whatever else was needed.

I would also like to thank the driver of a maxi taxi who came to my house on the Saturday night and picked up three mattresses from my garage to take over to the evacuation centre at Narrabundah. I was happy to give over those mattresses, but had no way of getting them across and this taxi driver was driving around looking for things to do to help out.

I would also like to thank a young gentleman by the name of Daniel Hughes, whom Vicki Dunne would know. On the day of the fire he went to the place of a mutual friend of ours, Tony Pead, who is overseas. He knew that Tony, who lived in Weston Creek, was overseas and he went over there and cleared out Tony's gutters, blocked them up, filled them up with water and minded Tony's house to make sure that it was okay. The following day, without prompting, he offered to Brendan and me to come over and clear out our gutters. (Extension of time granted.) The following day he cleared out our gutters, which is probably just as well because I do not know that Brendan or I could have got up there, to tell you the truth.

Many people have already mentioned radio station 666, or 2CN as it used to be known, and the other local media. I have to say that I think that 666 did a superlative job. Driving back from the coast, we could obtain very little information until we got within range of 666. Finally, we were obtaining information, to the point where we found out where the road closures were and were able to get back to our suburb of Chifley, knowing that we could not go down Hindmarsh Drive because it was closed at certain points.

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