Page 26 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 11 February 2020
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plan was. On New Year’s Eve, at about six in the morning, I received a text on my mobile to be prepared to evacuate. We received a landline call with an emergency beacon-type sound and we got a further text about ember attack.
At about that stage we decided it would be prudent to leave and we decided to go to the evacuation centre at Hanging Rock in Batemans Bay. If you do not know where that is, if you drive through Batemans Bay to near where the fairground sets up every year, there is the footy club and there is an oval on either side—I think rugby league on one side, Aussie rules on the other.
There were several hundred people that went there. I do not know what the exact number was. It may be a couple of thousand. But it was a mix of tourists and locals, and people were spread out, sitting in their cars and at the library that is there. There are some basketball courts, and the footy club, which is a two-storey building.
Already in the morning it was like an oven. The wind was blowing hard. The temperature was in the early 40s. It was a hostile place to be. But it was wonderful to see people supporting each other. Some people had water. We did. We had a lot of water. We were giving it out. Other people had food. They were sharing it. People were particularly mindful of pets, sharing pet food and so on. It was great to see the Aussie spirit in action.
About 11.30 in the morning a fire flared up on the other side of the evacuation centre, and a ground crew went there. The chopper, Elvis, was busy fighting that fire. That was only about 300 metres form the evacuation centre. We had fires coming toward us from one side and fires on the other side of the evacuation centre. Overhead were choppers; there were fixed-wing aircraft. Up and down the road in front of the evacuation centre there were fire trucks, ambulances, police vehicles, all with their sirens going.
At about midday the fire rolled into that area of Batemans Bay, or close to it, and day turned into night. The whole place went black. It was almost impossible to breathe. I have spent some time on the front line in these sorts of environments. In 1997 in the fires west of Sydney I commanded a military contingent fighting the fires. I have spent time in conflict zones, including Iraq, and, can I say, this was not dissimilar. This sense of terror, dislocation you can get, was not dissimilar. For many people who had not been in that environment before, it was quite clearly terrifying. I think that people who had been in the 2003 bushfires in the ACT can recognise the feeling.
Fleur, her friend Kate, her mother and the girls were in the evacuation centre. It was very crowded. I decided that the boys and I would move to our car to make sure there was more room for elderly or sick people. It was very difficult to get to the car. Some of you may have seen the stuff I posted on social media, with the sirens and the fact that it went from day to night.
The power went out. Being in the evacuation centre was not then a fun place to be. Mobile phones stopped working and it was pretty terrifying. A lot of people were upset. There were a lot of elderly people, people with oxygen masks, people in
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