Fire

As a child I lived in what I remember as a Channel 7 house. My mum and dad would watch the Channel 7 news each night and since it was TV, and on, I’d often watch too. I guess we watched Channel 7 because they had the footy, but I don’t know. Perhaps it was the Good Friday Appeal, or even Moomba (which then was nearly the only annual festival). I grew up feeling that Channel 7 and Melbourne, even Victoria, were synonymous. Brian Naylor was the newsreader, this was the Brian from Brian and the Juniors, daytime TV and the nightly news. His defection to Channel 9 was a big deal, with Kerry Packer (Sydney money, greed and avarice) poaching him with a king’s ransom to anchor their Melbourne push for ratings dominance. He became Brian, and this city’s newsreader for at least two generations. He retired to Kinglake, only a few kilometres up the road in some ranges surrounded by stunning mountain forest.

There’s a 7 or 8 kilometre climb to Kinglake from St Andrews, mostly through national park on a beautiful, winding, constant gradient. I rode this climb 25 years ago, and now that I am back on the bike get up there every now and then, joining a lot of the local lycra convoys as it is one of the best local climbs. The road begins in dry forest, but once you cross the ridge near the top you’re into mountain ash (it’s not called eucalyptus regnans for nothing). Up there, along the ridgeline through Pheasant Creek, Kinglake West and down a narrow rough bit of bitumen into Whittlesea, a good 5 hour ride with a lot of bush. Other times if I’m after 6 hours I head out to Healesville then up Myers Creek Road to Toolangi, and right along the top over Mount Slide and through Kinglake to continue the usual ride. I’d usually stop at the Kinglake bakery to get a drink and something to eat, if only to spend a bit of money in a country town to help it along and not only be a city lycra poseur. Many also ride out through Hurstbridge then into the rolling hills below these ranges, through places like Cottles Bridge, Strathewen, Arthurs Creek, Yan Yean.

After Ash Wednesday Victoria developed fire policies that seemed to work. Everyone in the bush has a bushfire plan, when there’s fire the national broadcaster suspends programming and only broadcasts fire related information. Entire towns are given deadlines where you are to leave, or if you stay then you are staying to defend your home. We learnt that staying in your home is actually quite safe, though the most terrifying thing you will ever experience. In the more than twenty years since we’ve had big fires and very few deaths.

On Saturday Brian Naylor and his wife were burnt to death in the current bushfires. There are 106 others (there will be more) just like Brian. Mostly from around Kinglake. The Brian Naylor’s of the world are not supposed to be incinerated in their retirement. They are to die with care and respect, with all the dignity that a public life, wealth, and age confer in the first world. All those roads and places I know so well. Where I have thought of living as we have toyed with the idea of living out of the city. Cars, houses, stock, people. Gone. All those families, couples, individuals, caught in cars trying to flee or in houses that burnt around them. To have your children with you trying to save them and to be caught like that. To die crouching there. Even the city is sombre today.