Bush Fires, part of gardening in Australia?
By eleven o'clock, a very strong wind had blown up and grains of sand were cutting our cheeks and getting into our eyes and making us very uncomfortable. Temperature had climbed to 40C or 103F. We decided to go home and as I left the beach, I glanced southwards. I saw ominous red and black smoke that foretold a bad bush fire was burning some miles away. And I became very frightened. To get home we had to transverse the private driveway to my parents' home. I looked towards their house before turning into our small street, my father was no longer alive and my mother was in Sydney attending a conference, so the house was unoccupied. I saw bush animals scurrying across the driveway, there were bandicoots, possums and kangaroo rats. Beyond the house, on top of the wooded hill was a single plume of white smoke. I turned the car around and drove to the local High School. Dressed in my swimming costume and unknown to the staff, I demanded to see the headmaster. I look back now and realize that the poor man must have thought, in the beginning, that he was confronted by a mad woman in bathers who was raving on about bush fires and telling him to let the children go home. After all, the sun was shining brightly outside and there was no sign of any fire. The time was 11.20am
On the way back to our house, I scanned the skies but there was still only the one little puff of smoke. I decided to ring Kees and his secretary informed me he was at a meeting with an architect. I rang the architect and when Kees came to the phone he asked me what I could see and after I replied "A puff of smoke" he said "Well, if you get really worried, give me a ring and I will come home" I then said "I am ringing you Kees because I am worried" and hung up. Kees apparently excused himself immediately, got into the car and drove to our suburb. That took him twenty minutes. His car was the last private car allowed through along the main road. By the time he arrived at the house, sixty foot flames were rushing down the hill and the whole world had turned into a hell of blackness and orange flames. The sun was completely
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