Monday night, 25 June

Now this was one bizarre night. After a full, long day at L’Abri, and having gotten back to the YDC, showered, fed and quite nicely settled for the night, I then got a call from Rod at about 8:30pm

He asked me if I could open the gate for him in the following half hour or so, as he needed the L’Abri ute to bring the tractor tire back to the site, as there were big fires occurring around the neighbouring area, to which the tractor was required to haul the fire fighting cart; He asked if I wanted to I could follow him up, at which point my curiosity was well and truly piqued

I got changed back into my dirty work clothes from the day and jumped into the ute when Rod arrived; at that point the fires were reported by the site staff to be at the edge of the far boundaries of the site, and not of critical concern, so we drove around town to try and find a place that was open that could fix the slow puncture in the tractor tyre

Half an hour later, another call to the site staff revealed entirely different results; the fire had violently changed tack, jumped, and one of the cabins already lost. This in itself was confusing... I mean... ‘lost’... they couldn’t possibly mean it’s gone...???

At that point, we then started immediately for L’Abri. As we got closer to the Karkloof mountain ranges, within which L’Abri is situated, we began to pass large, spot fields of fire, which was eerie

These sporadic fields became more and more frequent as they turned into forest areas, closer to L’Abri, exponentially increasing in ferocity and intensity as we drove on

So much so, that we could not simply get anywhere near the site on our first attempt



We went back a little further down to wait it out, together with other tractors, utes and water carts from neighbouring properties; a tractor appeared shortly after, with a large cattle trailer full of fire fighters

Fire fighters, being an ALL elderly female group, armed with garden hoes!! It was quite an amazing site, and I tried to take a photo of it, and being night, I thought to use a flash and this was the result


The air was simply filled with ash; it was not possible to be outside the vehicle for any longer than 5-10mins. Gale force winds (later reported by the news), violently shaking the ute, folding entire sugarcane fields right in half, as if they were merely blades of grass. Sugarcane just does not bend like that; here we were, in the middle of mountain ranges, experiencing winds far, far stronger than any I’ve experienced on Australian coasts. With such incredible winds fanning the flames, the Fire protection officer of the region was found later to have said “You cannot fight this fire. You can only manage it and try to save lives.”

After awhile of waiting the tractors and trucks went up again in another attempt, which we followed



The video ends about a third of the way to L’Abri, as we had to stop, jump out and move a tree that had fallen onto the road, which we found ourselves doing 3-4 times on the way up, with some trees still on fire

Continuing on we drove passed raging fires on both sides of the road; on the side of one section of the road there were large log piles awaiting for pick up, but now engulfed in superheated (blue tinged) flames and showering us in thousands and thousands of glowing embers, in a fascinating display. We had to drive all the more faster through this part, as it was just too hot

Eventually we make it to the L’Abri driveway, and what a difference to the early reports of non-event at the site; the driveway itself was lined with increasing flames and as we hurtled the ute down it, we could not access one of the roads as the fire was constantly leaping across it

This part was such a blur; we crash stopped the vehicle right outside the main cabin, where all the staff were assembled outside already; a man came running up to the car yelling that we needed to evacuate immediately; 4 guys bundled into the tray, 2 women, and infant and 1 guy into the back seats and three of us in the front, and having not even stopped for 5mins we were hurtling back up the flaming driveway again

At the point of the road we had to stop, as the fires on either side were just too intense to continue, and here we waited for 20-30mins

After it appeared that one road seemed to subside a little, we drove out of the ranges, again having to jump out 3-4 times to move objects littering the road, seeing every now and again the burnt remains of a animal

We drove the some of the staff into town, and then headed back to the site
This was a few hours later, and with my limited personal experience of fires on this scale, I’d thought for some reason that they’d have heavily extinguished themselves by then. We came across this sugarcane fire at an even earlier point in the road



The video ends at the point where we pull up to a guy that seemed to be co-ordinating the efforts there, and asked if we could get to L’Abri. He very politely and calmly said that he wouldn’t recommend it as “they were getting ready to run” themselves. I thought that was an odd thing to say (calmly as well), when I then looked around and noticed people were sprinting to their vehicles, frantically turning them around and driving them towards us, with those not attached to vehicles simply sprinting

At the flurry of activity we hastily chucked a u-turn too, pulled back and moments later that position was engulfed in flames

Eventually we made it back to the site to find the workshop, two garages of all the tools and heavy machinery, and the adjoining shed of wood material up in flames

We gathered that one of the gas tanks had already let go, and the drums of fuel, before we’d gotten there, as the heavy garage doors had buckled outwards

This part was a bit of a blur too; the tractor with the water cart was positioned right in front of the workshop in flames, unable to move without the front tyre, me and Rod frantically worked to get that tyre onto the axle, all the while hearing a remaining gas tank within the workshop only a few metres away still expelling its contents into a building completely on fire

Needless to say, Rod’s comments saying that as long as we don’t hear the gas making ‘popping’ noises we were ok did little to assuage my worries

We eventually got the wheel on and bolted, the water cart functioning and, after an already long day at L’Abri, at three in the morning we started to fight this fire, eventually getting the best of it after an hour by half past four, and after making sure the rest of the site would be ok, got back to the YDC at half past five in the morning

According to the news the following day the winds were measured at 100km/h by late afternoon, fanning flames up to 60 metres high, and at one stage around 200 fire fighters battling to contain a fire that was leaping in 500-metre “steps”

And somewhere in the middle of all of that was a little Asian dude in a diesel ute :S