Pinery Fires 2015

The day of the fires I had picked my 5 year old grandson up from kindy and went back home. The air conditioning was on and the TV on ABC Kids. My friend and my elder son rang me and told me what was happening. I had no idea. I brought the 3 dogs in on leashes, put the cats in cat cages and the guinea pigs in a picnic basket and we stood in the hallway wondering what on earth to do. From the front door things looked normal in the garden but thick smoke where the road was.

From the kitchen window I could see a house 3 doors down completely on fire. I rang my neighbour but she had gone out for the day before the fires started. My husband tried to come home but was blocked by police at Roseworthy who told him Templers houses had been doorknocked and no residents were left. This was obviously not true for either statement, however, two police on motorcycles eventually came to briefly check the house and give us an escort to safety.

I loaded Edward and animals up into the car (one cat escaped) and drove between the police and the surroundings were horrific. Individual hay bales burning fiercely amongst blackened fields, trees burned and burning. The old Temperance Hall burned in, Templers and a house that was once part of the North Star Hotel closed in 1918, and then a well-known roadhouse for many years.

We stayed at our daughter’s that night and returned the next day. We were very fortunate, house and garden untouched, our missing cat and pet chicken were fine. There are still burned trees and signs of that horrible fire. We don’t live there now but that isn’t because of the fires… I do fear fire a lot more than I did. We lived in an area that had never had a major fire before and to think it was started by man and not nature and caused so much destruction, loss of life and danger is just terrible.