Tuesday 22 January 1997

Rescue plan and neighbor's help saved house

By JASON KOUTSOUKIS

Up to 32 houses in Ferny Creek and Sassafras were destroyed by fire, which swept through about 2pm yesterday.

Police and CFA firefighters evacuated most residents but some stayed to save their houses.

Around number 11 Alpine Road, Ferny Creek, where Mr John Irving has lived for 18 years, trees and earth were blackened like charcoal. The only thing standing was Mr Irving's house.

His shed was destroyed, his car scorched and his garden ruined.

``My wife and I were listening to 3AW all morning. We knew the fires were all around us. We knew they were coming, but we didn't know where from.

``Then we saw the smoke on the hill opposite and thought `Now it's coming for us, we'd better get out.'''
Sending his wife to safety, Mr Irving battened down metal shutters over the windows, put sprinklers on his balconies and soaked the ground in front of the house with a hose as the fire approached.

``I took a lot of measures to save this house. I had fire-proof guttering and weatherboards and I had plenty of sprinkler systems to turn on around the house.''

But as the fire drew to the edge of his property, the heat forced Mr Irving to flee.

``We were only gone about 10 minutes. My neighbor and I rushed back here and my house was burning in three places. With hoses and buckets of water, we managed to put it out,'' he said.

``Living up here, you accept that there is a fire danger, but you never think it's going to happen to you.

``I've put most of my life into this house. Nothing would compensate for losing it. Without the help of my neighbor, all would have been lost.''

As Mr Irving extinguished the flames, he watched two houses around him burn to the ground. ``There was nothing we could do. The fire was just so quick.''

About 1.30pm, Mr Greg Kosh, a builder working in Emerald, received a phone call from his wife, who was at their Hillview Road home about 50 metres from where Mr Irving lives.

``My wife was hysterical. She said the fire was all around our house and didn't know what to do,'' Mr Kosh said.

``I downed everything, jumped in my car and got here as fast as I could.'' Taking 20 minutes to drive home, Mr Kosh was blocked by fire and forced to run through 600 metres of burning scrub to reach his house.

When he reached his house, he evacuated his wife and two children and then set about securing his home.

``It took a fair amount of stamina. I just put my head down, grabbed a hose and fought the fire with everything I had.''

Using a fire pump he had bought only three weeks ago and water from a 20,000-litre tank in special reserve for a fire, Mr Kosh saved his house.

Mr Kosh said he told his wife to wet all the bed linen, seal the windows with masking tape and turn on sprinklers and hoses around the house.

He said nothing would have induced him to leave his home.

``I've worked for this house all my life. It would just break my heart to see it burn down. I couldn't leave it,'' he said.

But the three houses around Mr Kosh burned down despite his efforts to save them once he had secured his own house.

``The community here will be devastated. I don't know where anyone will sleep. I don't know how they will get over this. Most of them have been here such a long time, now they have lost everything.''

 

 

Tuesday 22 January 1997

For some it was their baptism by fire

This is Knox. Urgent. We're on the corner of Mount Dandenong Tourist Road and Janiesleigh Road and the fire has completely got away from us. Can we have some assistance? This is Knox ...

By ELISSA BLAKE

``Right. Get in the truck. We're going,'' shouts John Poulter, lead firefighter with the Corio strike team. A convoy of trucks from Geelong City, Corio and Grovedale has been sitting by the side of Burwood Highway filling up water tanks.

They've already saved three houses in Belgrave and now they're in Upper Ferntree Gully and Upwey. Across the road, flames are curling around the entrance sign of the Dandenong Ranges National Park. The ``D'' has been scorched off the sign, the ``A'' is about to go.

A teenage boy covered in ash is still guzzling water from the fire truck Esky. He is Terry Cooper, a 16-year-old volunteer fire fighter from Corio. ``Get in,'' shouts Poulter again.

``He's only new, only just got off his probation. This is his first real job,'' he explains as Cooper scrambles on to the back of the truck. Cooper is just one of 20 volunteers with the Geelong Strike team. For some, this is their first bushfire. Others have seen dozens of homes go up in flames.

John Poulter, 42, of Grovedale, has been a fire fighter for 22 years. Today is his birthday. ``I don't think I'll be back in time for my surprise birthday party. I even had relatives coming up from Portland.''
The convoy of fire tankers moves slowly up the mountain toward Sherbrooke. Residents stand on the footpath watching the trucks toil up the hill.

Halfway up the steep Janiesleigh Road, the Corio tanker breaks down. Five firefighters leap out and repair the clutch. It takes four minutes. But the delay has given them time to spot flames leaping behind the nearest house - 18 Janiesleigh Road.

Within minutes the flames are into the roof, the walls, the balcony.

``Come on Terry, keep it together!'' shouts Poulter as the young volunteer struggles with the hoses. The 90-metre hose is run up the driveway only to become snagged on the letterbox.

It takes but 15 minutes for the house to become engulfed in flames. Another five minutes and only the brass bell on the front door frame remains intact.

The Corio unit surrenders the house and instead train hoses on 16 Janiesleigh Road. Then a helicopter drops 600 litres of water on the house - soaking Terry Cooper.

In the street behind, another two houses are ablaze. A neighbor attempts to smother embers flying across on to his property. A chubby dog waddles slowly down the hill and rests beneath a fire tanker.

``Now I can say I've been to a house fire and a bush fire. All on my first day,'' grins Cooper. ``But you have to feel sorry for the poor mongrels coming home to this. We saved the chickens out the back. They were damn lucky they didn't go up. Can you imagine that?''

Number 16 Janiesleigh Road has been saved. The owner, Louis Tsaf, has arrived to find his neighbors' home destroyed. ``They only moved in about three months ago. They came across from New Zealand. They never had a chance.''

 

 

Tuesday 22 January 1997

A deadly summer claims boy, 12

By DAVID ELIAS

A 12-year old boy has died in the first major bushfires of a potentially deadly summer.

His body was found in Ferny Creek yesterday afternoon but police were witholding details until relatives had been notified.

Last night the CFA said at least 44 houses in the Dandenongs were destroyed, another two were lost in another big fire at Creswick, near Ballarat, and hundreds of people were evacuated from threatened homes.

During a torrid afternoon of high north winds and searing temperatures, more than 1500 firefighters and six firebombing aircraft tackled blazes on seven main fronts and at least as many spotfires.

The most serious fires were centred on the main ridge of the Dandenongs and at Arthurs Seat. In Gippsland holidaymakers were forced to flee camp sites near the 90-Mile Beach at Seaspray as a blaze that has smouldered for eight days gathered new strength behind winds that at times gusted up to 60 kph.

At 7pm a cool change cut temperatures by 15 degrees but with a change in wind direction two of the Dandenongs fires continued to create havoc.

As CFA officials took stock of the day's damage they held concerns that this could just be a foretaste of things to come if the high temperatures return and the state continues to dry out during the next two months.
The chief fire officer, Mr Trevor Roche said: ``This is a real problem for us. There are six weeks of summer to go and there seems to be a pattern to the hot weather and no sign of significant rain ahead.''

Mr Roche appealed for public cooperation, especially from people in vulnerable areas to clear up around their homes.

The Premier, Mr Jeff Kennett, said he would be guided by the CFA on whether to declare a state of emergency.

As hundreds of evacuees gathered at recreation reserves and community halls in the Dandenongs and the Mornington Peninsula, the Red Cross set up a 24-hour emergency information service on (03)96868333 for people anxious to learn the whereabouts of relatives and friends.

The Department of Natural Resources and Environment said there were further forest fires near the Delatite Arm of Lake Eildon, at Creswick near Ballarat and south east of Gellibrand near Colac.

The CFA said there had also been fires at Broadford, Teddy Waddy on the Calder Highway and Heathcote.
The day of drama started shortly before 11am when a fire at Kalorama swept up towards the observatory on the Mount Dandenong summit.


Another blaze had begun in the park near Upper Ferntree Gully. It swept up the steep timbered face of the hill towards One Tree Hill and Tremont. Once the fire reached the top of the ridge the high winds scattered buring embers over populated streets towards Upwey, and Belgrave. Houses in the Tremont, Ferny Creek and Upwey region began to explode.

Later, Mr John Irving told how he and a neighbor fought with a hose and buckets of water to save his home in Alpine Avenue, Ferny Creek, when all else around him were destroyed.

``I've put most of my life into this house. Nothing would compensate for losing it. Without the help of my neighbor, all would have been lost,'' he said.

Almost similtaneously more fires had started in Kilsyth, Kalorama, Mountt Dandenong and Belgrave South.

By midday fire officers called for the evacuation of homes across the top of the main ridge of the Dandenongs from Montrose throught Kalorama, Mount Dandenong, Olinda, Sassafras, Ferny Creek and Tremont.

The Met closed the railway line between Bayswater and Belgrave and stopped running buses along the Burwood Highway between Fernteree Gully and Belgrave.

Roadblocks were set up on the Mountain Highway, the Mount Dandenong Tourist Road and the Basin-Olinda Road to keep all but essential fire fighting personnel out.

The CFA said more than 1500 firefighters had fought the blazes with no reports of serious injury. They had used 300 appliances and had lost only two vehicles in the flames.

But firefighter ranks were stretched and a call was put out over radio stations for off-duty officers to put themselves on stand-by.

Six firebombing aircraft, including two Canadian planes being held in reserve by the Victorian Government in Adelaide, were called in. A seventh aircraft with infra-red scanning equipment overflew the Dandenongs to determine the extent of the fire to help the CFA and the Department of Natural Resources and Environment with strategic planning.

 

Tuesday 22 January 1997

VICTORIA BURNS

VICTORIA'S summer of searing temperatures erupted yesterday into bushfires that killed one, destroyed 44 homes and forced the evacuation of almost 500 people.

Late last night firefighters in the Dandenong Ranges were battling fires at Ferny Creek, Tremont, Upwey, Kalorama and Mount Dandenong for more than 12 hours.

After a south westerly cool change in the early evening brought temperatures down by 15 degrees the fires were still causing havoc and at 10pm the fire front at One Tree Hill Road, Ferny Creek, broke over its control lines.

The blaze was once again threatening communities in Tremont, Ferny Creek and Upwey where at least 35 houses had been lost earlier in the day.

At Goughs Bay near Lake Eildon another blaze threatened a pine plantation and electricity transmission lines. Other fires at Creswick and Golden Beach near Seaspray were also burning out of control but fire fighters had managed to contain a large blaze at Arthurs Seat on the Mornington Peninsula.

As every available fireman in the state was put on standby last night fire officers expressed fears that this was the prelude to a further two months of wildfire devastation.

The CFA's chief fire officer, Mr Trevor Roche compared the situation to days prior to the Ash Wednesday fires on February 1993 and said he was concerned that the outbreaks were so bad so early in the summer.

``This is a rea problem for us. There are six weeks of summer to go and there seems to be a pattern to the hot weather and no sign of significant rain ahead.''

Mr Roche appealed for public co-operation especially from householders in vulnerable areas to clear up around their homes.

The Premier, Mr Kennett was given regular updates on the situation during the afternoon but said that he would be guided by the CFA on whether to declare a state of emergency.

As hundrds of evacuees were marshalled on to recreation reserves and community halls in the Dandenongs and the Mornington Peninsula the Red Cross set up a 24-hour emergency information telphone service on 03-9686-8333 for people anxous to learn the whereabouts of relatives and friends.

The evacuees were being held at Ferny Creek recreation reserve, the Belgrave Football ground, the Mount Dandenong Hotel, the Upwey Recreation reserve and the Ferntree Gully Community centre.

However, families and friends returning to the area found it difficult to find information. All roads into the area were blocked, the train line to Belgrave washalted at Bayswater and the bus route along Burwood Highway cut at Upper Ferntree Gully.

For more than 100 people who could not get home the Department of Human Services arranged emergency accommodation.

From the air the view earlier in the afternoon gave no prospect of victory to the firefighters. Beyond the pyre of the Dandenongs, the suburbs shimmered in the heat, with long drifts of smoke marking other fires. The clouds on the horizon were high and white and far away. The ceaseless north wind ruffled the tops of the unburnt trees. The cool change that would bring a measure of salvation was nowhere to be seen.

Below, formations of firetrucks sent forth their squirts and a growing force of planes and helicopters scooped up water from nearby farmers' dams and sprayed it into the smoky gullies. But they were feeble Davids trying to stand up to a rampant Goliath; the fires marched relentlessly and mindlessly forward.

They save some houses in Belgrave but in Tremont, Upwey, Sassafras and Kalorama 44 houses were destroyed.

Along the ridge to One Tree Hill, where a fire had raged in the morning, houses had been reduced to smouldering ash by a malevolence leaping from the very bush that attracted their owners to the hills in the first place. The randomness was terrifying; neighbors' houses were seemingly unmarked.

By late afternoon, Ferny Creek had been saved. Now Upwey was ablaze, flames rushing down from the national park to engulf two houses and send up a cloud of smoke that even at 1000 metres was like a fog. Fire chiefs redirected their forces there.

 

 

Thursday 23 January 1997

`My friends are gone ... it's so hard to believe'

By JASON KOUTSOUKIS and TIM WINKLER

Graham and Jenny Lindroth were to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary next month.

Their house, at No.29 Seabreeze Avenue, Ferny Creek, was the one Mr Lindroth had always wanted. Dwarfed by eucalypts in the Dandenong Ranges, it had everything except the children they dreamed about. Mr Lindroth's parents had sold it to them.

Mr Andrew Raper, with whom both Mr and Mrs Lindroth completed horticultural apprenticeships and at whose nursery they met, said the house ``was his place''.

``I mean, he really felt that house was part of him and when he heard his parents were thinking about selling that was all he could talk about,'' Mr Raper said.

``Now that house has burnt to the ground and my two friends are gone. It's just so hard to believe ... this is a tragedy.''

Mr Lindroth started as an apprentice horticulturist at Mr Raper's Rhodo Glen wholesale nursery in The Patch, 10 minutes drive from Ferny Creek, about eight years ago.

``I've never seen someone so eager to know everything he could about plants,'' Mr Raper said. ``Graham was intelligent, single-minded and someone who loved what he did.''

A year after Mr Lindroth joined the nursery, Jenny Bell also started working at the nursery as an apprentice. ``Virtually the minute Jenny started here they became inseparable,'' Mr Raper said.

About two years after they met, the couple married at the Church of Christ in The Patch, where both were members of the church community.

According to Mr Lindroth's neighbor at Seabreeze Avenue, Mr Tas Boyce, Mr Lindroth played rugby with a club in Moorabbin, and a few years ago he won the pairs tournament at the Sassafras

lawn bowls club with his father.

``When Graham moved in across the road after his parents left, he kept up all the things his father did,'' Mr Boyce said. ``He cleared the gutters, he looked after the street. He was one of those people who cared about where he lived.''

After his four-year apprenticeship at Mr Raper's nursery, Mr Lindroth moved to another nursery, then to Norwood Industries at Knoxfield, where he specialised in documenting plant information on garden products.

Mrs Lindroth completed her apprenticeship, then took a child-care job.

``Jenny was good at her job and developed a special love for bonsai plants, but I know she wanted children,'' Mr Raper said. ``She loved them and spoke always about how she looked forward to raising her own. Yesterday I watched those fires burn on both hills surrounding my place. We spent all day frantically watering the plants, protecting the place. We finished the day with such relief and then I wake up to this.''

Mr Lindroth was the only son of Rodney and Lynette Lindroth, of South Melbourne, while Mrs Lindroth, from The Patch, was the second of Geoff and Jacqui Bell's three children.

In a statement yesterday, the families said Mr Lindroth, 26, and Mrs Lindroth, 24, had been devoted to each other.

``They were warm, caring, happy, young people with a great future and attitude to life,'' the statement said.

``They will be sorely missed by many many friends and family.''


 

Thursday 23 January 1997

Counting the cost

By DAVID ELIAS

Police are investigating the cause of the Ferny Creek bushfire that killed Graham and Jennifer Lindroth and their next-door neighbor.

The fire, one of three that swept across the main ridge of the Dandenongs in near-40-degree heat on Tuesday, is being treated as possible arson and may become a murder probe.

The bodies of the victims were found in the wreckage of the Seabreeze Avenue home of the young couple, leading police to believe that the neighbor, a woman teacher aged about 50, might have been trying to reach a cellar.

There were further concerns that a fourth person may have died but no details were available last night.

Working in wet and misty conditions far different from the hot winds that fanned the fires 24 hours earlier, a line search of police, state emergency services and fire brigade staff combed the adjoining properties yesterday. Piles of twisted galvanised iron and bricks were all that remained of the houses. Detectives were joined by a forensic scientist and two chemists.

In the lower sections of the Mount Dandenong State Park between Ferntree Gully and The Basin, police, under the direction of the arson squad, searched burnt-out scrub to ascertain where and how the fire started.

The head of the arson squad, Detective Senior Sergeant Adrian Edwards, said police suspected that the fire had been deliberately lit.

As rain fell, the Country Fire Authority and the Department of Natural Resources and Environment sent their firefighters home, leaving householders to count the cost.

The Insurance Council of Australia estimated that the payout for 40 lost homes and dozens of damaged properties would be more than $10million. The State Government said hundreds might claim relief ranging from $700 to $5600.

Before dawn, residents who had spent the night in evacuation centres began returning home. Most were lucky, their homes still standing and their properties little the worse for wear. Mr Ray Krumins, who had fled his house in Highview Avenue, Ferny Creek, at midday on Tuesday, was ecstatic.

Others, such as Mr Ben Wallis, found everything gone - house, furniture, clothes and photographs. ``It's too much. It's unbelievable,'' he said.

The Minister for Community Services, Dr Denis Napthine, who toured burnt areas yesterday, said families who had lost homes and belongings or incurred considerable costs defending their homes might be eligible for a $700 non-means-tested grant. Others might be eligible for means-tested help of up to $5600.

The federal Minister for Social Security, Senator Jocelyn Newman, promised that criteria for the payment of benefits would be relaxed to cut delays for hardship cases. Overnight, 300 of the original complement of 800 firefighters in the Dandenongs remained to douse burning embers, and yesterday afternoon almost 20 millimetres of rain completed the job. By 3pm yesterday, the temperature had fallen to 17 degrees, down from Tuesday's high of 39.7.

A new bushfire flared near Mansfield early yesterday but by mid-afternoon it was brought under control. The CFA said the fire, at Monkey Gully Road, six kilometres south of the town, destroyed 100 hectares of bush.

Another fire near Lake Eildon was also brought under control after destroying about 725 hectares of state forest. The fire apparently started in a pine plantation.

The state's firefighters have earned universal praise for their work, and yesterday the Australia Day Committee invited them to march through the city in the Australia Day parade on Sunday. The CFA said it was concerned that temperatures would again climb and that the fire danger would return.


 

Thursday 23 January 1997

Contact with the beauty and the terror

By MARTIN FLANAGAN

The morning after the fires, the Dandenongs were shrouded in a thick, low, milky white cloud.

Approaching Ferntree Gully, I saw a huge charred hole, ringed with scorched foliage, on the side of the hill above the town. Hills are big, but this gave you the sense that what went through here on Tuesday was even bigger. This is not a new sensation. When Melbourne had its first experience of wild bushfires (remembered as Black Thursday) in 1851, some residents of the young settlement thought the Great Day of Wrath had arrived.

The bush on the Olinda Road, where the fire had been through, was grey and smoky. Some of the thinner trees were as black as burnt matches. Other, larger trees - mountain gums - had toppled and fallen; despite the drizzle, their hollowed-out trunks still held a fierce orange heat. And, everywhere, there was the smell of bushfires - burnt eucalypt.

Here and there were the anomalies bushfires leave in their wake. A sign forbidding pushbikes and dogs from entering a national park and, behind it, the thin grey skeleton of a forest. Later, on One Tree Hill Road, I saw a yellow plastic sticker affixed to a letter box advertising a safety house for children. Behind the letter box there was no house, just two brick walls and a pile of warped corrugated iron.

The cloud became thicker the higher into the mountains you climbed. There were also more fire engines with names that read like a roll-call of rural Victoria: Yarrambat, Menzies Creek, South Morang, Emerald, Wattle Creek. Some passed with lights flashing and sirens blaring. A man in the Sassafras general store said he had been told they were going to Mansfield, but he didn't know if that meant Mansfield Road or Mansfield the town. One of the most frightening aspects of being caught in a bushfire is realising how little you know.

From Sassafras I drove to One Tree Hill Road, near where the deaths occurred, passing Sherbrooke Forest. Arthur Streeton came to this area to paint, drawn by the majesty of the tall trees. Not for the first time I recalled Dorothea Mackellar's oft-quoted line about ``the beauty and the terror'' of this land in which we live.

It was raining heavily by the time I reached the police roadblock, big drops falling in profusion. A woman journalist I knew stood cold and drenched where 24 hours earlier she had stood in smoke and insanely hot winds. I walked past Seabreeze Avenue (again, one of those strange anomalies bushfires expose) to investigate another of the fire's fronts.

A young woman was walking towards me with a child, a small girl of three or four with a towel around her head to protect her from the rain. The mother was talking to her in a low soothing voice and maybe she didn't realise the truth of what she was saying. ``We can sleep well tonight. We can rest easily tonight. We can sleep well until next time''.


 

Friday 24 January 1997

Lone firebug may have struck: officer

By CLAIRE MILLER
chief political correspondent

A lone firebug could have been resposible for lighting five fires within the space of an hour that claimed three lives and destroyed 33 homes on Tuesday, police said yesterday.

``Geographically, it would not be impossible for one person to travel throughout the whole distance lighting the fires,'' said Detective Senior Sergeant Adrian Edwards, of the arson squad.

Five fires were set over about one hour, beginning in Fussell Road, Kilsyth, at 11am. The fatal fire that swept up the mountain through Ferny Creek was the fourth one. It started about one kilometre away in Tobruk Avenue, The Basin, about midday.

Several vehicles were seen around the five areas when the fires broke out, and more than one person might be involved. The police do not yet have firm descriptions of suspects but they believe the fires were the work of adults.

Detective Edwards said forensic investigations had ruled out accidental causes for the fires.

On the question of whether murder charges would be laid over the deaths of Graham and Jennifer Lindroth and their neighbor Genevieve Erin, in Seabreeze Avenue, Ferny Creek, Detective Edwards said the investigation was still in its infancy.

``All available evidence and material would have to be collected and looked at and a decision made down the track.''

Police were not necessarily looking for local culprits as the five sites were all accessible from main roads and would not have required local knowledge, he said.

He said police spent yesterday in the hills interviewing residents. He appealed to the public for more information, particularly regarding the Tobruk Avenue fire.


 

Friday 24 January 1997

Suddenly, danger roared up the hill

By CLAIRE MILLER

Jennifer Lindroth thought she had time for one last phone call before she and her husband, Graham, abandoned their home in Seabreeze Avenue, Ferny Creek, on Tuesday.

``We've got to go,'' she told her mother, Ms Jacqui Bell, in North Bayswater. ``It's got dark. There's a lot of smoke. It's coming.'' But by then it was too late to flee the approaching flames.

Ms Bell thinks the call took place about ``11.30-ish'' when three fires were already burning across the Dandenongs. It is possible that the blaze that claimed the lives of her daughter and son-in-law and a neighbor was barely alight.

Police believe that fire was lit about noon in Tobruk Avenue, about a kilometre from Seabreeze Avenue. It came on the residents of Ferny Creek almost without warning, sweeping up the north face of the Dandenongs in minutes.

According to Ms Bell's partner, Mr John Chappell, Mrs Lindroth was unconcerned at 11am when her mother first telephoned.

Ms Bell asked her daughter to get out, but Mrs Lindroth replied that there was no one around, no sirens and no smoke. But Mr Chappell, speaking on 3AW, said Mrs Lindroth then called her husband and asked him to come home from work. She also called the parents of the two children in her charge as a council day-care worker. The children were being picked up as Mr Lindroth arrived home.

The couple had plans in case of a bushfire. They packed up, filled the gutters with water and started hosing down the house. ``These two have talked about fire plans,'' Mr Chappell said. ``They did have things in place. They were not going to stay in the house if the fires were bad.''

Plan number one was to get out. That was still their intention when Mrs Lindroth called her mother the last time. Plan number two was to hide underneath the house.

Their cars were packed, but with the bushfire sweeping in, the couple appear to have decided plan B might be safer than trying to escape on a narrow road through the smoke and flames.

They pulled down the steel doors on the garage and holed up amid the brick foundations. It appears they may have earlier offered sanctuary to their neighbor, Ms Genevieve Erin, whose body also was found at their house.


 

Friday 24 January 1997

Bushfire investigators face a grim question: Who killed Genevieve, Graham and Jennifer?

By SANDRA McKAY
city reporter

Arsonists ignited a chain of five fires within an hour on the slopes of the Dandenong Ranges early on Tuesday, causing the raging bushfires that claimed three lives and destroyed 33 houses, police revealed yesterday.

Suspicious vehicles were seen between 11am and midday in the areas where the fires were lit. Detectives believe one or more adults were involved.

Forensic investigations show the fires were lit with matches or a lighter. The first was in Fussell Road, Kilsyth. The fourth blaze - lit a kilometre away in Tobruk Avenue, The Basin - swept through Ferny Creek, killing a young married couple, Jennifer and Graham Lindroth, and their neighbor, Genevieve Erin, 50, as they sheltered in the basement of the Lindroths' house.

Survivors from Seabreeze Avenue said it was likely their neighbors had not realised the ferocity of the fires.

Ms Erin, a communications teacher at Eastern TAFE, was last seen running dazed along the narrow road.

Ms Jacqui Bell, Mrs Lindroth's mother, spoke to her daughter moments before the fire swept through Seabreeze Avenue, pleading with her to leave.

But Mrs Lindroth replied that there was no one around, no sirens and no smoke.

It appears the Lindroths had offered sanctuary to their neighbor, whose body was found in the foundations of their house.

Detective Senior Sergeant Adrian Edwards said police did not yet have firm descriptions of suspects, but murder charges could be laid.

``I think one only has to look at the devastation and the despair that's been left behind and it's very hard to comprehend that a person could

commit such an act,'' Senior Sergeant Edwards said.

Senior Sergeant Edwards said the police were not necessarily looking for local culprits as the five sites were all accessible from main roads and would not have required local knowledge.

In other developments yesterday, the Metropolitan Fire Brigade said it was forced to disconnect from the controversial Intergraph dispatch system at the height of the fires.

The Premier, Mr Jeff Kennett, said he would seek a briefing on what went wrong after complaints by the MFB's chief fire officer, Mr Jeff Godfredson.

Earlier, Mr Kennett said communications during the bushfire had been ``better than ever before'', but this was based on advice from the Country Fire Authority, which is yet to

switch to the privately run 000 system.

Mr Godfredson said his officers had to resort to whiteboards and hand-held scanners when Integraph buckled under the number of fire calls.

The Opposition emergency services spokesman, Mr Andre Haermeyer, said the system had been plagued with difficulties since its inception,

and an inquiry was urgently needed.

Mr Haermeyer, who visited fire-ravaged areas this week, also called for a statewide audit of fuel-reduction activities after complaints from CFA volunteers.

``It is quite clear that a lot

of the fuel-reduction and fire-prevention activities that have traditionally been undertaken by local councils and by government authorities have not been done as effectively as one would expect it to be done,'' he said.

A Dandenongs fire brigade chief said that firefighters' lives had unnecessarily been put at further risk because roadside slashing had not been done.

Australia's largest rural union, the Australian Workers Union, yesterday accused the Government of reckless negligence over what it said were cuts to fire staff numbers in the Department of Natural Resources and Environment.

The union said departmental staff involved in fire-prevention activities such as debris removal, block clearances and grass cutting had fallen from 4500 in 1986 to 350 at the end of last year.

The CFA's risk manager for the Dandenong Ranges, Mr Michael Hill, denied that a delay by the Yarra Ranges Shire Council in slashing roadside grass had contributed to the fires.

Mr Hill said clearing roadsides gave crews access to sites that were burning, but CFA trucks were not hindered reaching those areas this week.

He was responding to disclosures that fire captain Ken Stewart, from the Kalorama CFA, had written last week to his local MP, Mr Stephen McArthur, warning that bureaucracy had hampered fire-protection efforts before the high-fire-danger period.

The chief executive officer for the Yarra Ranges Shire Council, Mr Eric Howard, said roadside slashing had been delayed by the earlier-than-expected total fire ban days, which had meant that slashing had been prohibited.


 

Saturday 25 January 1997

The fury of the fire

Bushfire. It's an Australian fear, an Australian nightmare in red and orange. David Elias explains the behavior of the Hill tribes.

THE Dandenongs have their own smells. In the forests after rain, the scent of eucalyptus makes the mountain air incomparably clear and fresh. In the autumn, there is the almost narcotic aroma of burning gum leaves as locals clean up their ample gardens and roast chestnuts straight from the trees.

On the Mountain Highway where Tobruk Avenue veers to the left and begins its steep climb towards One Tree Hill there is the smell that nobody likes, the bitter stench of incinerated undergrowth, charcoaled tree trunks and the earth scorched black. It is the stink of the bushfire that killed the young couple, Graham and Jennifer Lindroth and their next door neighbor Genevieve Erin.

Along the twisting sealed roads through Ferny Creek and Sassafras the distance from the summit at One Tree Hill to this corner on the Mountain Highway is about seven kilometres. As the crow flies the two are barely 700 metres apart.

Four days ago as the uncomfortable north wind gathered strength a sick, twisted individual stood at this spot and torched the dry scrub. It was callous in the extreme, the site selection calculated to do the maximum damage.

On a tinder dry day such as Tuesday was, a fire will assuredly spring to life and stretch upwards towards the small centre of population just beyond the summit gathering pace with every second. The steeper the hill the faster it will go and there is no steeper spot than the rise from Tobruk Avenue to One Tree Hill and no stretch of timbered scrub more difficult to get at once the inferno has started on its destructive way.

I know this because I have been at this exact spot before. On a similar day several summers ago the fire sirens echoed across the Dandenongs. Then a resident of Sassafras and a volunteer firefighter, I travelled on the back of our water-filled fire truck down Mountain Highway, too busy starting up pump motors and preparing hoses to notice the sharp twists in the road or any sense of being buffeted.

On that afternoon all the local brigades got to Tobruk Avenue in time to get the fire under control before there was any real damage. But it was only one of several deliberately lit fires in the Dandenongs that long hot summer that kept us on the go until we were all exhausted and in a mood to lynch anyone caught on the roadside with a box of matches.

In another fire I well remember we battled our way through Hughes Street, a ridge-top road between Tremont and Upwey and then watched in dismay as the flames edged towards a fire crew trapped in an inaccessible gully not many metres below, their truck broken-down and empty of water.

They were lucky. The fire at the last minute turned and they were saved unlike the 11 firefighters from Narre Warren and Panton Hill incinerated along a similar gully at Beaconsfield on Ash Wednesday.

Yesterday I returned to Hughes Street and found to within metres the same areas had burned just as had all the same sections of slope in the Dandenong Ranges National Park from the spot where the firebug had set his fifth blaze of the day at the corner of Wilbundry Avenue, Ferntree Gully.

The black earth and scorched trees indicated an eastward but upward path through the National Park behind Upper Ferntree Gully railway station. Where the Mount Dandenong Tourist Road climbs up sharply from the Burwood Highway through the Devils Elbow to Tremont the firefront jumped the road three times and found the top of the ridge where it could threaten the whole of Upwey, Tecoma and Belgrave.

The arsonist had clearly tried to torch the entire west face of the Dandenongs' main ridge, the face that most of Melbourne can see from their suburban streets, and it will take a lot to persuade me that he did not have an intimate knowledge of the terrain, especially the fire tracks, and the behavior of past fires and the danger he was putting people in.

For the thousands who live in the hills it is particularly disconcerting to think that he or she might be one of their own. Why would anybody want to destroy such beauty?

For volunteer firefighters the prospect of suspicion falling on one of them is unbearable. Could a young firefighter possibly be that impatient for a piece of the action?

Mr Alan Marks, regional fire officer, grew aggressively defensive at the very idea of it and instantly some past anger at the media was rekindled. ``A few years ago police charged a Metropolitan Fire Brigade member who had only recently moved to Selby. The media said a Selby fireman had been charged with arson. At the time I was captain of the Selby brigade and everybody was asking me about it when I didn't even know the man. In the end they couldn't prove a thing against him but the media said he was a Selby fireman.''

This week, as friends, neighbors and others across the hills, mourned the loss of the three victims there was another frequently asked question. Why live in an area that has been often described as one of the most fire hazardous places on Earth?

The answer is always the same. ``It's so beautiful,'' they all say. Many then add: ``It's a great place to bring up kids.''

For his 50th birthday Ted Greenwood packed out the since demolished Hideaway Restaurant in the middle of the Sassafras township. The guests, mostly locals from Ferny Creek and Sassafras, were asked not to bring presents but to select for him a small piece of leftover cloth for a coat of many colors.

Mr Greenwood, for many years a successful author of children's books, told his guests that each of them had in one way or another proved their strength of character. His invitation was his way of expressing his respect and his gratitude for making the community what it was.

There were people there from all walks of life from artists to artisans, lecturers to laborers. Looking round at them it was easy to see what he was talking about. They were the people who had fought for the place, had stuck their necks out, even risked jobs and careers, to oppose councils and governments and the money that sought to bulldoze trees and develop cluster housing.

They had striven to protect the small Sassafras and Ferny Creek schools from educational rationalists who advocated their closure. They had struggled to find ways to keep their teenage children in the hills and out of trouble.

And they had argued among themselves for what seemed an eternity over the relative merits of native and introduced vegetation in their piece of heaven on Earth. There were conservationists among them but not all of them were greenies and there were builders there who were not altogether anti-environment.

It's easy to see why Mr Greenwood and his wife, Lorraine, love the place so much and have never seriously considered moving out. They set up home in Hilton Road, Ferny Creek, in the early 1960s and can remember vividly the fires of 1962 and 1968 and Ash Wednesday in February 1983.

Their house is set back from the road on a big and sloping allotment so typical of the Dandenongs. Outside the sunroom they have used the contours to build a large deck that reveals a breathtaking view of the entire eastern side of Melbourne.

On a clear day the city skyscrapers are clearly visible, as are the shapes of Mount Macedon and much of Port Phillip Bay. The foreground shows the encroachment of the suburbs while the middle distance makes up a silent picture of where most of suburbia lives on postage stamps. At night the whole scene glitters.

Reminded of his long past birthday speech Ted Greenwood said the hills people had not changed. ``They are fiercely independent. They don't have the corporate desires of city people but there are still plenty of local organisations to join which they do and give strong support.''

Nothing appears to have changed during my years of absence from the hills. The Uniting Church congregation and the Freemasons, whose lodge was tucked away somewhere near Olinda, were supposed to share most of the power and influence but the lines were often too blurred to accurately pinpoint whose agenda was prevailing.

Both seemed to be pulling the strings at the fire station and occasionally one could sense an input from the Belgrave Rotarians. Meanwhile, the Horticultural Society ran flower shows that helped put the district on the tourist map and for the socially ambitious there was the tennis club.

Mrs Greenwood, as a former long-term principal of the Sassafras Kindergarten, watched generations of pre-schoolers grow up under the tall gums where children could still roam. She said that more than the average had become high achievers. Many university graduates and even a Rhodes scholar had gone from the kinder to the two primary schools where numbers always seemed to teeter along the fine line that determined mandatory closure.

A good many of the more successful students had also remained in the state system, riding Bus No.1 to Upwey High. They had since chosen interesting and often imaginative careers.

``The Ferny Creek people seemed to be the more upwardly mobile,'' said Mrs Greenwood. ``They were more into material things, nice houses and good jobs. The Sassafras people were more interested in intellectual pursuits and less concerned with money and cars.''

She said that the people in Olinda were different again and further over Mount Dandenong and Kalorama attracted other types.

All were, of course, seeking a lifestyle that gave them more room to breathe and more space for their children. The hills have always attracted newcomers looking for the beauty they offer but there are many old families who seem to have been there forever, know no other their community organisations like the Horners and the Schaubles and the Clarksons.

Uppermost among these was the dynastic Storrie family who arrived with the bullock teams, ran the first taxis and saw the place develop from the horse-drawn era to the present. Their wives ran the corner store in Sassafras while the men worked the garage and built houses.

Brian Storrie, 62, and head of the line since his uncle Stan died six years ago, runs the Sassafras garage in much the same way as his father did. Here you won't find any modern diagnostic equipment but you will meet the most friendly and discreet individual who was born with a talent for fine tuning cars by ear.

He has never lived anywhere else except in the house behind his garage. ``I did once think about moving when I was 40 but the thought soon passed,'' he said.

Richard Cromb was the 17-year-old apprentice to local plumber, Colin Clarkson, when I moved into the district. The Sassafras Ferny Creek Fire Brigade never had a keener young fireman or a more useful man on the maintenance of things like pumps, pipes and hoses.

He moved away for a couple of years to Mount Buller for a change of mountain air but came back because ``It's just so good here''. He still works for Colin Clarkson and he's still with the fire brigade to which he says he's virtually married. He's been captain for seven years and was the man in charge at the local level on Tuesday, which he says was probably the worst day of his life. ``As far as I was concerned it was worse than Ash Wednesday because it was on my patch and people died here,'' he said as he climbed aboard his fire truck to continue the tedious and potentially grim job of checking every house in the district against his street-by-street records just to make sure there are no more bodies lying around.

The Greenwood's daughter, Meredith, moved away when she grew up and met her husband, Peter Rendell. ``We lived in North Melbourne and West Melbourne and Kensington and went out to restaurants every night in Carlton and Richmond and the city.

``When the three children came along we had to think about it all over again. There had been the Coode Island fire and Kensington Primary School was evacuated twice because of fumes. We decided there really was no other place like the Dandenongs where the kids could have a big yard and get dirty in the mud.''

It's as if she never left. She is president of the Ferny Creek School Council, worrying about the level of enrolments. ``We would have had 200 for the first time ever next week but the homes of nine families were destroyed on Tuesday. They all say they are coming back but we will just have to wait and see,'' she said.

The enrolment figure was stunning because it reflected the amount of development that has taken place on One Tree Hill. It was always considered the most fire-prone of all the little pockets of development, yet it was where the newcomers have continued to settle and build up-market homes.

``I've always maintained that nobody ever left the hills because they were afraid of fires,'' said Ted Greenwood. ``It's the rotten winters that drive them out.''

 

 

Saturday 25 January 1997

Police get tough on bushfire sightseers

By JASON KOUTSOUKIS,
crime reporter

Police yesterday blockaded Ferny Creek following complaints from residents that hundreds of sightseers were flocking to the fire-ravaged hamlet in the Dandenong Ranges.

Ferny Creek was the worst hit area in Tuesday's bushfires and the site where three people were killed and 26 homes destroyed.

Police were also concerned yesterday that too many people travelling through the area might disturb clues vital to their arson investigations.

Inspector Ian Meates, of Knox police, said some ``ghoulish onlookers'' had been asking residents to pose for photographs in front of their ruined homes.

``This has been such a shocking week for residents around here, and when we had calls from them we thought we should do all we could to do something to help them,'' Inspector Meates said.

Parking in One Tree Hill Road in Ferny Creek has been banned and police have set up road blocks at Alpine Road, Mount Erin Road and Corner Avenue preventing public access to the worst affected areas.

Access has been restricted to local residents or people with specific business, such as electricity workers, communications technicians and building assessors.

``We are just appealing to people to curb their curiosity and avoid going up there. Just stay behind at home and consider how the people are feeling,'' Inpsector Meates said.

Police were no closer to identifying arsonists responsible for igniting a chain of five fires, which devastated parts of the Dandenong Ranges and destroyed 33 homes. But Detective Senior Sergeant Adrian Edwards, of the arson squad, said police were examining ABC News footage of a man running from a fire.

He said the actions of the man in the footage appeared suspicious.

Vehicles that may have been connected with the fires were seen between 11am and midday in the Dandenong Ranges and police believe one or more adults may be involved.

Detective Sergeant Colin Brockwell, also of the arson squad, said police were still unable to release descriptions of any suspects.

Meanwhile, the Country Fire Authority's deputy fire officer, Mr John Nicholson, warned that Victoria was still ready to burn and faced another six to eight weeks of extreme weather.

``All throughout Victoria conditions remain very dry and vulnerable to fire,'' Mr Nicholson said. ``Fires this week were not just in the Dandenong Ranges but in Mount Martha, Ararat, Heathcote, and also in the Wimmera region.

``So just judging from that you can see how dry conditions are right across the state. Victoria is ready to burn,'' he said.

Mr Nicholson also warned people not to wait until they received official warnings before deciding whether to evacuate from their properties.

``When you get a hot, dry day with a strong north wind blowing, people have to be aware that there is a high fire risk,'' he said.
``People should keep their senses about them and constantly be on the look out for smoke or any other warning signs and be prepared to make their own decisions about when to evacuate,'' he said. ``It is possible to save your home but you have to be well prepared.''

 

 

Sunday 26 January 1997

Hellfire in the hills

John Schauble of the Sunday Age is a lieutenant in the Sassafras-Ferny Creek fire brigade. Last week, as fire engulfed his neighborhood, he saw things he'd hoped never to witness. He experienced fear and sorrow. This is the story from the firefront.

The first lungful of superheated air comes as such a shock that it hardly registers. It is when you suck in the second that you taste the smoke and start to cough and splutter as your lungs search for oxygen that isn't there any more. Your eyes fill with tears as the smoke begins to burn.

In the background, the roar of fire makes it difficult to hear. And you know from years of listening to people talk about it, training and lesser fires that the time has come to get out.

In part, it is fear that keeps you alive during a wildfire. Any firefighter who says he or she is not afraid is a liar or a fool. Or dead.

Last week I saw things happen to our community that I hoped would never happen. I remember looking down one street and thinking, ``If anyone is down there they are going to die''. I had to leave a house on fire, full knowing there probably would be nothing left when I returned. I looked at the trust in the eyes of one woman we convinced to leave as I told her we would look after her house.

A big wildfire is a mean, capricious thing. You see it in front and then it is behind you as well - spotfires started by burning debris spew from the main fire. In a street of houses, one will burn while next door remains standing.

In one street you could see a house destroyed, its garden blackened, but the washing hangs untouched on the clothesline.

A handful of people I know, and many I don't, lost homes and all their possessions. Three people died.
Good friends saw things that no one should see. I am numbed by what occurred in Ferny Creek and the Dandenongs this past week.

I can't find the words to describe some of the things I've seen or the choices I was forced to make. For hours one day I functioned on a mixture of adrenaline and instinct - and fear.

People keep saying we firefighters are heroes. I wish they would stop. I don't feel like a hero. Instead, I am possessed by unutterable sorrow.

THE temperature had hardly dropped to the mid-20s overnight before it started to climb again. Tuesday morning's forecast put the maximum for Melbourne at 41, with low humidity and northerly winds gusting to 60 kilometres an hour ahead of a late change. The fire weather conditions were reported as extreme. It was the second day of total fire ban.

In the hills, 600 metres above the city and suburbs, it was only a few degrees cooler. In the morning I took an updated weather forecast to the fire station and rang the office to say I wouldn't be coming in. Other brigade members had decided to take a day off too.

The wind was picking up, but I went home to do some work. It was cooler there. My wife, Jenny, had decided to work at home too. We went outside to where we had a portable pump and some fire hose set up by a tank near the house and ran through the drill.

Like many CFA families, we have a scanner that lets us tune into fire traffic on the radio. By late morning, the scanner picked up a steady stream of messages as Knox group sent tankers to grass fires in The Basin. Our brigade hadn't been turned out, but I knew it would not be long. Jenny and I said our goodbyes, little aware how much living each would do in the days ahead.

At the fire station, I breathed a little easier when I saw that the crew sent to Mount Martha, where a fire had started late the previous afternoon, had already returned. Several others volunteers had come to the station when news of The Basin fires came in.

Pulling on my yellow overalls, I slipped a scanner and a mobile phone into the top pockets. Minutes later, the station siren started to scream.

Sassafras Tanker One is the latest version of the CFA's standard bushfire fighting vehicle. In commission less than nine months, the four-wheel-drive truck carries 2000 litres of water, diesel pump, hose, fittings, knapsacks, tools and two multi-channel two-way radios. It can carry three crew in the front, and three on the back sitting under a rollover protection canopy.

While the authority provides the basic truck and fittings, the local brigade must find the money for any extra equipment. The only key addition we had made was a chainsaw.

Alan Potts, another lieutenant, and I conferred briefly on the make-up of the crew for the truck. I would go as officer-in-charge, Brian Stevens would drive. The rest of the crew were women: Helen Millar, Roanne Dewar and Bronwen Emanuel. A few years ago one woman would have been rare, three on one truck unheard of.

Brian is in his early 40s. He drives trucks for a living and is accredited by the CFA as a driving instructor. He is also an ex-captain of our brigade. Neither of us would pretend to be great mates, but on the fireground I trust his judgment absolutely. I was glad he was driving.

Helen Millar joined the brigade after the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires, along with her husband, Brian. Unlike many who joined up and drifted away, they have stayed. She looks much too young to be a grandmother. Helen is the brigade's secretary and was the first woman to become president of a CFA brigade.

Roanne Dewar, 19, and Bronwen Emanuel, 18, joined the brigade as junior members when they were in their early teens. They were well trained, but this would be their first real taste of wildfire.

My family moved to the hills nearly 40 years ago. As a boy I had been evacuated during the big fires of the 1960s. I first joined the fire brigade more than 20 years ago as a teenager. I left the hills for the bright lights of the city for a few years. When I moved back in the mid-1980s, it was only a couple of weeks before I had joined again. It was as if I had never left.

A pager message directed us to send a truck to Olinda fire station to join a strike team - a group of trucks that travels in formation to a fire outside their own area. We never actually found out where we were meant to go. By the time we reached Olinda, reports of a fire at Kalorama came over the radio. The strike team was abandoned and individual trucks raced off to the mountain village about five kilometres away.

The fire was called in as being in Inverness Road. We could see the smoke, but the fire was elusive in the early minutes of confusion. A control point was quickly established at the local oval, our truck was redeployed and sent into Jasper Road, and finally into a narrow road called Erith Lane. We stood in front of some houses, while the flames pushed through the scrub and homes below. It was the first of many waiting games we would play that day.

In some parts of the hills, the terrain demands that firefighters wait for the fire to come to them rather than chase it. As we waited, we helped an elderly woman hose down her home. She would be safe, even though her gutters overflowed with leaves. The fire was heading away from her place.

Sassafras Tanker Two had joined the Kalorama fire. The captain was on board. Richard Cromb is a plumber by trade, but his life is the fire brigade. Although he is only 42, he has been a volunteer for 25 years. His involvement stretches deep into to the CFA as an instructor and trainer. He is known and well liked throughout the organisation. He has also trained in incident control, meaning he is capable of playing a command role during a major incident.

Richard called us down to refill a water tank that was supplying trucks below. Before we had a chance to determine where he wanted us, a chilling message came across the radio. A fire was reported burning near Mountain Highway somewhere below Ferny Creek. Our patch.

Brian Stevens edged Tanker One back on to the Mount Dandenong Tourist Road. Somewhere behind us other units were being redirected towards Sassafras and Ferny Creek.

As the trucks sped back to Sassafras we could hear the Upwey captain, Peter Marke, on the radio reporting from down the Mountain Highway. The fire he was describing sounded like it was in the One Tree Hill area. Peter has been captain at Upwey for 25 years. He knows these hills and how the fire runs through them. If I could talk to him, his information would define what we did next. The radio frequency we were working was becoming jammed with increasingly frantic traffic.

I tried anyway: ``Upwey Captain, Sassafras Tanker One.'' ``Go ahead, Sassy Tanker.'' ``Peter, is this fire heading towards the top of One Tree Hill?'' ``Roger on that, Sassy Tanker.''

It was all I needed to know. The decision was made.
We tore through the main street of Sassafras. People were standing in front of shops and outside houses watching the smoke rising to the south. As we reached Ferny Creek and looked across towards One Tree Hill, it was clear from the extent of the smoke column that this was a major fire. Helen had joined us in the front cabin. No one said much as we turned into One Tree Hill Road.

There were a few cars making their way towards us, but no sign of any other fire trucks. Not only were we heading into a big fire, it looked as if we would be the first truck near its head. By now the radio traffic was so intense that the transmissions were scarcely intelligible. Whatever decisions we made would be unaided from outside.

Brian suggested we go to the picnic area at the top of One Tree Hill to get a view of where the fire was going. I thought we might get a better idea in Mount Erin Road and Janesdell Avenue, where the park ended and the houses began. We drove down past the end of Seabreeze Avenue to the intersection of Mount View Road.

And there it was. The fire was into the trees at the bottom of Mount Erin, the flames running up the trunks. We were looking at what must have been the head of the fire. It could have taken this fire only a few minutes to race up from where it had first been seen.

``Let's go down and have a look,'' I said. Brian pulled the truck into Mount View Road and we reversed the 50 or so metres to the corner of Janesdell. It was a precaution - if we had to leave quickly, we would be pointing in the right direction. It was safe enough still to nudge the truck around into Janesdell, but I could see that the house on the corner was starting to catch fire.

The garage of the house next door was already completely engulfed by flames. I hoped to God there was no petrol stored there. The home behind it was surrounded by trees already ablaze. Between the smoke and the flames, you could see no further down that street.

It was time for me to make a decision. I told the others in the cabin I thought we could still save the corner house. Brian and I left the cabin, Helen stayed, trying to make some sense of the radio traffic.

I banged on the crew cab, telling the two on the back to get off. Bronwen and I ran out hose to the house. Roanne took care of the pump. Brian went to the next house to see if anything could be done. There were flames in the gutters of the house and some decking at the door had caught alight. We played water on these areas and seemed to be getting on top of the fire.

Brian was now behind us, between the house and the truck. I don't recall what he said exactly, but there was no mistaking what he meant. It was time to go. What had been a safe position a few minutes ago would no longer be so in a few minutes. I only wanted a minute or two longer to finish the job, but there were no minutes to give. The house was still on fire.

Brian Stevens had been through the Ash Wednesday fires. I had not. I wasn't going to argue if he thought it was time to get out. If Bronwen or Roanne or Helen had said they wanted out, I wouldn't have argued with them either. We pulled the hose back towards the truck. The heat and smoke was becoming intense.

Another decision. ``Leave the hose. Get on the truck.'' The disconnected hose was dropped by the roadside. I made sure Roanne and Bronwen were on the back. Brian made a dash for the driver's door and I jumped into the passenger seat. We arrived simultaneously. A gust of smoke and hot air chased us into the cab. The truck lurched forward and we were gone from there.

Even as we drove off, the wind was pushing fire through the trees dotted between the homes in the tail end of Mount Erin Road. The fire was now deep into the streets ahead. We pulled up again at the corner of Mount View Road. A Channel 10 television crew was parked on the side of the road. Brian yelled at them to leave. A few doors up the street, I saw Helen's husband and a couple of other brigade members.

They had come up into the fire area from the station in Brian's car with hose and fittings, and hooked into a hydrant. A woman was stuffing pets into her car. I told her that if she was going, she had better go right away. She insisted on collecting her neighbor's pets. ``There's no time for this,'' I thought. Brian Stevens went to help her get the animals.

I spoke to Brian Millar and told him I thought he and his crew should leave. He said they would stay for a while. At moments like this you can do no more than trust your colleague's judgment. We left him a radio. I turned back to the truck. I can only imagine what Helen was thinking.

The television crew was still there. Again they were told to leave. They said they would look after themselves. I don't think they realised just how much danger they were in. I knew they had a job to do, but I marvelled at their idiocy.

For us there were other priorities. It was clear that there should be no fire crews any closer than One Tree Hill Road until the front had passed and they could move in to try to save the properties that remained. Brian swung the truck into the bottom of Seabreeze Avenue and headed for Corner Avenue. Halfway along we met a police car and told the young officer to get anyone he could out and then to leave himself.

At Corner Avenue, a fire truck from Upwey was set up. I told their officer they should pull back to One Tree Hill Road until the danger passed.

Beyond Corner Avenue, Seabreeze was just flames and smoke. After what we had seen down at Janesdell Avenue, I knew there were houses along Seabreeze that could not be saved. As we pulled out into One Tree Hill Road, I told Brian to head up to Merimbula Road.

We saw a couple of trucks setting up as we sped back towards Dunn's Hill. On One Tree Hill Road, we found Richard and the other Sassafras Tanker. We gave him a quick account of what was going on in the streets behind.

In Merimbula Road, Brian and I began going house to house. Where we found people we told them that their home was directly in the path of the fire. Neither the police nor the fire brigade can order people to leave their homes. All you can do is tell them the fire is on its way. What they choose to do next is their decision.

At one house I found a bloke who used to be in our fire brigade. He said he and his brother would stay, but agreed that his grandmother and sister should get out. At the time I didn't think much of his chances, given the state of the yard, but if anyone was going to survive, I knew he would.

Other trucks had started to arrive at the end of Merimbula Road by now. The fire was closing in and spotting in front and behind us. Below us came a series of dull crumps, like artillery fire. This was most probably the sound of gas bottles exploding or perhaps fuel containers. To me it signalled the end of someone's home and spoke of the intensity of the fire.
I knew then that not entering those streets had been the right choice.

We must have stayed along Merimbula Road for an hour or so. A strike team from the Dandenong area arrived and set up in a paddock to our left. A tanker from Maryknoll decided to make a stand at one house. We said we'd watch their backs. In front, tongues of flame licked up from Alpine Road below. Some shot up 20 metres into the air. We doused spot fires as they hit the paddock and piles of rubbish in people's yards.

I grabbed a knapsack and went back down the road, knocking out small spots. Other crews were working their way down from behind us. We were playing another waiting game.

I HAD spoken to Jenny a couple of times on the mobile phone. Our home was quite safe from the fire at One Tree Hill. A friend had brought his children to our house, so I knew she was not alone, but I was unnerved by news that another fire in the national park had entered streets in Tremont and Upwey. The thought of my wife at home with someone else's children and the prospect of fires spotting towards our place could have meant consequences that did not bear thinking about. Helen was still monitoring the radio. I told her to ring Jenny and tell her it was time to leave.

The fire ripped into the end of Merimbula Road and spotted over us into the area around the telecommunication towers on Dunns Hill. The main front was passing through Highview Road towards the 40 Acre Paddock. Roanne had copped a couple of eyefuls of ash and muck and was suffering. We were out of drinking water. The crew had been on the go for more than four hours in oppressive heat and frightening conditions.

Here was an easy decision. It was time for a spell.

It was a kilometre or so back to the fire station. Sassafras Tanker Two had pulled in to change crew also.

Roanne was packed off to have her eyes washed out. Helen and Brian said they'd had enough. Bronwen was prepared to come back out. It was a relief to see Brian Millar. I asked if he would drive for us and he said OK. In the distance I saw Richard. He looked drawn. I only had a truck to worry about. This bloke was in command of a whole fire.

There were a few other crew available. Gary Hill was there. I didn't know what to say. His wife, Sylvia, had died of cancer two days earlier and he was standing there waiting to go out and fight a bushfire. He just got on the truck. I needed at least one more. Simon Neill junior was standing in front of me. So was his father, Simon Neill senior, who was trying to find crew for his truck too. I looked at his father. ``Go on,'' he said. ``You take him.''

The 40 Acre once belonged to the Nicholas Aspro family. It reverted to the Crown some years ago and is mainly used to agist horses. It also forms a strategic break between the bottom end of the national park and Sherbrooke Forest.

Between where the fire had been and the paddock stood only one more house, a large home belonging to the Koeppen family, owners of the Cuckoo Restaurant in Olinda. As we weaved through the cluttered intersection at Sherbrooke Road on the way back in, I had seen Karin Koeppen standing in the middle of the street talking to a policeman.

We had taken Tanker One back up into the Dunns Hill area when a radio message from the fire controllers called us on to a house fire at the township end of One Tree Hill Road. It wasn't until we were hailed by another crew at the end of the driveway that it became clear it was the Koeppen house they meant.

Our families had long ago been friendly, but I had not been to the house since I was a boy. It stands at the end of a long driveway, beside which stands a large chestnut grove. Brian backed the truck in. At the end we found an Olinda tanker almost out of water. The house wasn't on fire, but the bush below was well and truly ablaze. I lost count of the number of trips we went back and forth shuttling water.

At one point I ended up on a hose line with a young firefighter from Olinda I had helped train as a recruit only months before. In a surreal scene, we fought back flames on the tennis court as the Australian Open was being played out at Melbourne Park.

Across the top of the 40 Acre was a line of a dozen or so trucks from West Gippsland. As the fire licked into the paddock, they would knock it back. When spot fires started, they would chase them down. They fought with hoses and knapsacks and just plain guts. Above us, small planes and helicopters shot in only metres above the treetops to bomb the approaching flames.

I had seen the worst of this fire. The rest of the day passed in almost a blur. We found a communications hut on fire at One Tree Hill, borrowed a door-breaking tool from an MFB crew, and chopped our way in. It was one small save for the day.

By late afternoon, I was simply running out of fight. The wind had dropped ahead of a cool southerly change, which would throw much of the the fire back on itself. We headed back to the station where I relinquished control of the vehicle. I'd lost track of what was happening on the other fire front closer to my place. I found Richard and asked if it was OK to go and see if my own house was still standing. He could hardly say no.

I grabbed another firefighter, Theo, and jumped in my own car. The closer I came to home, the clearer it was that it would be there still. Theo and I started the pump and poured a few thousand litres of water around it.

We then went to check his property on One Tree Hill and those of a couple of friends. I rang Jenny and told her the news. I could almost feel the relief in her voice. The police had evacuated other people from our street not long after I suggested she leave.

Back at the station, I walked to the incident control area and was immediately appointed to liaise with the media. Journalists and photographers who got through the roadblocks had besieged the incident controllers. Talking to them and guiding them to safe parts of the fireground would be my lot for the rest of the night.

On dusk I returned with an ABC reporter and an `Age' photographer to Janesdell Avenue, the street we had fled. Not a single house was standing. Down from where we had stopped, what had been homes were piles of ash and sheets of iron. The desolation was absolute. So was the quiet. A wind change had shifted the breeze to the south. By then it was almost still. Gone were the flames and smoke.

It was oddly peaceful. A kookaburra was searching for titbits in the ashes.

The house we had tried to save was on the ground. I didn't know it at the time, but the other Sassafras tanker had gone back there after the fire front had passed, found it alight and tried to save it again. But it was too far gone.

The reporter asked if I felt guilty that I had left houses to burn. I told him the alternative was for the five of us to be burned to death. Another young reporter asked me if these fires were worse than Ash Wednesday and seemed disappointed when I said there was simply no comparison to be made between the two.

Up until then, the best estimate was that we had lost 20 houses. When we got back to the station, one of the command team pulled me aside and said ``something'' had happened up in Seabreeze Avenue. It became clear within a few minutes that at least two people, possibly more, had perished in one of the houses there.

After 13 hours on the fireground and all that we had been through, the news just swept aside all sense of achievement.

For the first time in the history of our community, people had been killed in a wildfire. Even though we always knew it could happen, it was a difficult thing to grasp. I felt an overwhelming sense of failure. I felt tears welling in my eyes and walked away.

IT WAS after midnight when I found that Jenny had made her way back from an evacuation centre at Belgrave to some friends' home a kilometre or so away. I rang and said it was safe to come to the station and that I'd been cleared to go home for a few hours.

At home the power had failed. The house reeked of smoke. We talked for a while about what had happened to each of us that day. I took a shower and crawled into bed. I wanted sleep, but it wouldn't come. The night was punctuated by the sirens and the sound of fire trucks grinding up the main road.

I wondered if I had failed my crew, if I had led them somewhere we should not have gone. I wondered if we had been brave enough, if I had let houses go when we could have saved them. I wondered if there was more I might have done. These questions haunt me still.

SHORTLY after 7am on Wednesday I went back to the station. Richard was conducting a briefing around the bonnet of his Landcruiser. No one had slept. The main priorities would be blacking out affected areas and we could expect fire calls throughout the day. Most would be false alarms. The first one came a few minutes later.

During a large fire like this, the CFA can rapidly muster vehicles and men from across the state. I saw trucks from south and west Gippsland, from central and northern Victoria. There were vehicles from places I had never heard of, places probably where the only public building was the CFA shed.

I spent part of the morning guiding a strike team from northern Victoria into the fire area to black out any hot spots. There really wasn't much for them to do, but they had come from half a state away to help.

By lunchtime it was raining. It was almost exactly 24 hours since the fires had started. As the rain streamed down, most of the strike teams from further afield were released to leave. The only thanks they wanted was the knowledge that we would do the same for them. A steady parade of trucks passed by the front of our station. A group of us standing at the doors waved our thanks and again I found myself fighting back tears, this time of thanks.

Days after the fire, I still have trouble sleeping. I become uncomfortable unless I have a mobile phone with me when I leave the house. The smoke has left a persistent cough that will take a day or two more to clear. I find myself replaying parts of the fire over and over in my mind.

Did we do enough? Did we stay too long? Not long enough? Could we have saved this house, that street? I have to be content with the belief that the decisions you make in retrospect might be wiser, but the ones you make at the time are the right ones.

Our community is probably a long way from coming to terms with its collective loss. The final count of property losses on Friday was 34 homes destroyed, plus assorted outbuildings. And we must grieve for the three people who died.

The forecast is for more hot weather today and tomorrow. People are understandably nervous. On Friday night, three trucks turned out to smoke coming from the rear of a house in Upwey. They found a family enjoying a barbecue.

 

Wednesday 29 January 1997

As in life, couple remain as one in death

By CLAIRE MILLER

Mathematics was not one of Jennifer Lindroth's strong points, her father, Geoff Bell, recalled yesterday. Once he asked his little girl the sum of one plus one. ``One,'' she replied.

Years later, Jennifer met and married Graham Lindroth, Mr Bell told a thanksgiving service in memory of his daughter, 24, and son-in-law, 26, who lost their lives in last week's bushfires at Ferny Creek.

``I'm going to miss my daughter's life and crooked smile,'' he said. ``But Jen, you and Graham had an unconditional love and your total devotion for each other proved to me that you knew you were right all the time. One and one can be one.''

More than 800 people gathered in the mudbrick Church of Christ at Mount Evelyn to pay tribute to the couple, who were found in each other's arms in the basement of their Seabreeze Avenue home. The body of their neighbor Genevieve Erin, 50, was also found in the ruins.

Graham Lindroth's father, Rod, said his only son typically was giving his wife a bear hug to make her feel safe and secure. The couple will be farewelled at a private service today as they were found - together. ``They will be cremated together in one coffin and will still be in each other's arms,'' Mr Lindroth said.

In an emotional service punctuated by lively anecdotes and warm memories, family and friends told of an inseparable couple who brought love, happiness and laughter into the lives of those around them.

Graham and Jennifer Lindroth had a wide circle of friends and shared many hobbies, including rugby union - both represented Victoria - golf and gardening. Mr Lindroth, a horticulturalist, particularly liked box plants: a potted shrub graced the altar along with rugby jumpers and a basket of roses, Jennifer's favorite flowers. The couple were on the brink of starting a family.

In an earlier press conference, Rod and Lyn Lindroth and Geoff and Jackie Bell said they believed their son and daughter were caught by surprise as the fire roared in from an unexpected direction while they were still hosing down their house before escaping.

The couple were well prepared but the bushfire was upon them so quickly. ``They just didn't have any chance at all,'' Mr Lindroth said.

The Lindroths and Bells praised firefighters, the police and emergency services for their efforts last Tuesday and said had it not been for them many more people may have lost their lives. They were grateful for the support and sympathy they had received.

``We have really come to realise that although we obviously feel this tragedy much more than anybody else, it is Melbourne's tragedy too, and in the same way as in any bushfire, it is Australia's tragedy,'' Mrs Lindroth said.


Friday 31 January 1997

Fires probe centres on four vehicles

BYLINE:By JASON KOUTSOUKIS,
crime reporter

This motorcyclist, captured on television film speeding around a bend in the Dandenongs on Tuesday last week, is wanted for questioning over the deadly fires.

Police asked yesterday that the picture be widely distributed in the hope that the motorcyclist would come forward, or that someone might recognise him and go to the police.

The motorcyclist was filmed in One Tree Hill Road, Tremont - close to Alpine Road - about 12.30pm. Alpine Road was hit hard by the fire, losing four homes.

Alpine Road also intersects with Seabreeze Avenue, where a young married couple, Graham and Jennifer Lindroth, and their neighbor, Genevieve Erin, lost their lives.

Detective Sergeant Colin Brockwell said yesterday: ``He was filmed by a cameraman at Channel 10 ... the bike has come very quickly around the bend near Alpine Road and, looking at him, he was certainly in a hurry, and that was about 12.30pm.''

Police said the motorcyclist was riding a green trail bike, possibly a Kawasaki KX125, sporting an oval racing number plate above its front mudguard bearing the numbers 191. No standard registration plate was visible.

Detective Sergeant Brockwell said the rider had been identified at two, and perhaps three different places. He said it was important that police clarify just what the motorcyclist was doing in the area.

He said the trail bike was one of two seen near the fires.

The second one was a yellow 125cc model, with a black canvas bag tied to the rear. It was seen about 11am on the Mountain Highway, between Tobruk and Claremont avenues. Its rider and pillion passenger have not been identified.

Police have also issued descriptions of two cars spotted close to the fires. They are seeking the drivers of:

A dark burgundy, late 1970s stationwagon with a cream roof. It was seen near the Mount Dandenong Tourist Road, Kalorama, about 10.30am.

A white Japanese utility seen in Tobruk Avenue, The Basin, about 12.20pm.

Investigators believe the fires in the Dandenongs - five in all - were lit by arsonists between 11am and noon on Tuesday last week.

``We've had numerous calls with similar descriptions on these vehicles, and have been able to identify them as being important to our investigation,'' Detective Sergeant Brockwell said.

``The main thing is with these vehicles ... they come up on multiple informations calls. Someone will ring up and say `Look, this may seem minor but I saw this car here'. Why is it that it keeps coming to different people's minds that it just doesn't seem right?''

Arson squad investigators have examined hours of television footage of the fires, as well as audiotape recordings.

``We have a number of avenues of inquiries that we're following, and at this early stage we are quite positive of a result,'' Detective Sergeant Brockwell said.

A police caravan has been set up outside the CFA station in Forest Road, The Basin. It will be open between 10am and 6pm today, tomorrow and Sunday.


Saturday 01 February 1997

I'm no firebug, says teenage hero

By JASON KOUTSOUKIS,
crime reporter

Pier van der Merwe is not an arsonist. He is a hero, a teenager who helped save his parents' house by dousing it with water as the flames of the Dandenong Ranges fires raced ever closer.

When he was captured on television film speeding around a bend in the Dandenongs at the height of the fires, police thought he was acting suspiciously. In fact, he was acting on police instructions to evacuate the area.

``I was actually following my mother who was in a car,'' the 16-year-old said yesterday. ``We were riding straight to the fire refuge in Ferny Creek after being directed by police to evacuate our house as soon as possible.''

Little did Pier know that on Thursday morning police were holding a news conference in Melbourne to identify him as a person wanted for questioning in connection with their arson investigations. Police said the motorbike rider was spotted at two or possibly three places near the fires last week.

Detectives asked that Channel 10 film of the motorcyclist riding his trail bike around the bend in One Tree Hill Road be distributed to the media in

the hope that the motorcyclist would come forward, or that someone might recognise him and go to the police.

The tactic had an almost immediate and chilling impact. ``I found out I was on the news when my neighbor came across screaming and yelling `You're on the news and they think you lit all the fires','' Pier said.

``I didn't believe him at first, but when I saw all the other news I was worried. But then I decided I couldn't get in trouble for it, so I just rang up my parents and told them everything that had happened and we rang the police straight away.''

Pier lives just 200 metres from the spot in One Tree Hill Road where a Channel 10 camerman filmed him as firemen battled the flames spreading through Tremont and Ferny Creek.

Pier said that as the fires spread towards his parents' house that Tuesday, his mother had loaded the family car with a few personal possessions and taken with her the neighbor's children, James and Tom Lanyon. He decided to follow on his ``most precious possession'' - his green trail bike.

He noticed a television camaramen filming him as he sped along One Tree Hill Road and thought he might appear on the television news that evening.

Inundated yesterday with calls from friends who saw reports of a ``suspicious'' motorcyclist, Pier said he didn't think anyone really thought he could have lit the fires. ``Nobody that knows me would actually think that I started it or anything, but you never know what anybody else is going to think who doesn't know me, so that's a bit of a worry.''

Mr Alan Ross, the principal of Billanook College where Pier is a year 11 student, said the idea that Pier was in any way responsible for starting the fires was an impossible allegation. ``He is one of the bright young leaders of the school and a boy of integrity,'' Mr Ross said.


Saturday 01 February 1997

After the fire

Last week John Dunham and Beh Kim An were victims of the Mount Dandenong fires. They lost their house, their garden, and one of the country's most important private collections of Indian art. They speak to RACHEL BUCHANAN about their tragedy. Pictures by CATHRYN TREMAIN.

AT 8am on Tuesday last week, the day of the big fires, Beh Kim An, his partner John Dunham and their two slippery-grey Chinese Crested dogs, Ling Ling and Po Po, left their home among the eucalyptus at the top of Scenic Crescent, Kalorama, and set off for work in Melbourne at Madame Fang, one of the three restaurants they run.

The north wind was blowing and it was very hot. These factors, and a feeling for prophecy, caused Beh, a head chef, to make this comment to his staff: ``If there is a fire today, I will not be surprised. And if there is a fire, our house will be burnt, the first one.''

The power of words. The power of the wind. At 6pm that night, the fire that had burnt over the western side of the Dandenongs that morning blew up over Montrose Reserve and engulfed the home of Beh Kim An and John Dunham. The fire destroyed one of Australia's best private collections of Indian art and literature, and Dunham's family history and memoirs dating to the 17th century. It also destroyed Beh's recipes, 25 years of notes on the exquisitely simple food that has made Shakahari, Isthmus Of Kra and Madame Fang so successful.

Their house was burnt. It was the first and, due to a change in wind and water bombs from helicopters, the only house in Scenic Crescent to be destroyed.

The couple saw the remains of their home on Wednesday morning. As Beh tells it, those first moments were like watching a black-and-white movie. It was eerie. The burnt eucalyptus gave off a powerful, refreshing smell. Their garden of bacon and egg plants, many species of kangaroo paw, orchids, native mint and wild cherry, was gone.

Beh looked at this and thought that what you spend years creating can just go. In seconds. ``It makes you realise we have just this moment, just live in this moment very, very precisely. Don't miss it,'' he said, three days after the fire.

THE TWO men arrived in Kalorama 25 years ago. Dunham, a lecturer in Indian history and philosophy at the University of Melbourne, and Beh, a chemistry student at RMIT, were looking for a refuge, somewhere private and quiet.

They found Phoenix Cottage, on Scenic Crescent. For sale: $19,000, including a swimming pool. The cottage and the street were well named. In 1935, and again in 1962, the houses on the site had been burnt to nothing in bush fires. Phoenix Cottage, the third house on the land, was named after the mythical bird, which burns to ashes every 500 years and rises from the fire again.

And the street name? It is an understatement - Scenic Crescent has to be seen to be believed. The dirt track twists up off Mount Dandenong Tourist Road in among the gum trees, and the homes have views of Mount Evelyn Forest, Mount Macedon, the Yarra Valley, Port Phillip Bay. A 180-degree vista on a clear day. In the mist, as it was earlier this week when the smell of burning still lingered, the bush seemed to embrace the houses left standing and the one that was not.

Back in 1971, Beh and Dunham were serious, in a '70s sort of way, about living in harmony with the environment. They accepted that in the Dandenongs fire, too, was part of that environment. It was something that happened every 30 years, something that was good for the bush. The pair only grew indigenous plants in their garden, they refused to chop down trees, even when they grew so tall that the views were obscured.

Alistair Knox, an architect who built mud-brick houses in Eltham, designed an extension for Phoenix Cottage. He used yellowbox timber from the old ballroom at the Exhibition Building and built a veranda with beams that sloped up on either side like a Buddhist temple. The house was so captivating that it was featured in the Australian House and Garden magazine.

``When we moved there, it was 10 years since the last fire,'' Beh said. ``Fire was very much a part of everyone else's experience, but it was not part of ours.''

Their neighbor is James Govett, aged 85. Last Tuesday morning, he stood at the front of his asbestos, tin and wood house with a hose in his hand, listening to the fire roar over the western ridge. The police came and saw Govett with the hose. ``They said, `That's no good. Get out'.'' He got out.

This was the third bushfire on Scenic Crescent since Govett paid Ë15 pounds for his block of land in 1928 when he was an 18-year-old bank clerk. The first fire happened before Govett built on the land. The second was in 1962.

By this time, Govett had quit banking and had studied at the Chelsea School of Art in London to fulfil his ambition of becoming a painter. He was working as a portrait painter and had finally built his house on Scenic Crescent. A week after it was finished the fire came and destroyed everything. Govett hadn't even been insured.

He looked at the mess and decided to start again. What else could he do? His cousin, a lawyer, lent him Ë500 to rebuild. ``Well it was my property, the only one I had, and I liked it up here,'' Govett said this week, looking out from the balcony where he feeds king parrots every morning and night. The burnt trees and black grass stop only two metres from his house, which contains hundreds of oil paintings of subjects ranging from a young Graham Kennedy to a Spanish ballet dancer dressed as Pan.

From the balcony, the unburnt lawn is like a charmed circle. Only a week before the fire Govett had helped another neighbor to dig a narrow fire-break track and to burn off some of the undergrowth. Maybe this, and the asbestos, saved his paintings and his home.

Reg and Irene Easton, who live further down Scenic Crescent, lost their cottage in the 1962 fires. Smouldering leaves floated over their heads two days before fire reached their home. This time, there was not even any smoke. The police just came and told them get out as quickly as they could. ``We walked out as we were,'' Reg Easton, aged 86, said.

``It is only a miracle that we are here now,'' Irene Easton said. ``If we lost it (their home) again, we couldn't start again. Not at our age. I think God was on the side for the people around here.''

When they first moved in, Beh and Dunham had taken part in fire drills and assemblies and talked to people in their street about the last bushfire. Beh remembered one woman who said she could not live through another fire.

``Oh yes, I remembered what she said: `Everything I have is gone, I have nothing to cling on to', but the thing that moved me is (what) she said: `I wouldn't live anywhere else. I like this place so much I will start to rebuild.''' Beh said.

TWENTY-five years is a long time to live in one place, and Beh and Dunham liked to hunt, to horde and to collect. Dunham started collecting books as a schoolboy. Two rooms were filled with his collection, which included an 18th-century translation of a book written by a Muslim advocate who lived in Mombasa, two volumes of a rare British edition of gold-embossed college books for Maharajas, and Sanskrit manuscripts inscribed on the original palm leaves.

Dunham had traced his family's history to 1650. ``I had gone to England, I had gone to the graveyards, I had the memoirs of my great-grandfather who had lived in India. All of this was in a trunk brought out by my father when my family came here from England,'' he said.

Beh had collected notes and completed chapters ready to go to the publisher of his book on contemporary Asian cuisine and how Mediterranean cooking has influenced Asian food in Melbourne.

Dunham and Beh have travelled and collected art and ceramics in South-East Asia, Morocco, Japan, the United States. Every summer between 1978 and 1988, they took a group of Melbourne University students on study trips to India.

``We really scavanged all over India,'' Dunham said. ``We were really collecting seriously - bronzes, paintings. We probably had the best private collection of Indian art in Australia, and some of our best pieces we found in Victoria,'' he said.

One such find was a Tibetan tanka, bought at a Lilydale auction of the house of a former government official in China. The rare and valuable scroll painting, framed in silk and brocade, was used for meditation and prayer. The pair had planned to donate this painting and the rest of their Indian art collection to the National Gallery of Victoria.

``I think with these things, the feeling that we have about them, is the feeling of guilt. We couldn't even look after these little things,'' Dunham said. ``The reason I brought them back was to protect them, they might not last in India. These arches (he gestures to the carved 18th-century haveli arches in Madame Fang), that was the reason we got these, the CBDs of Indian cities are being bulldozed for high-rise apartments and no one wants these.''

Even the Country Fire Authority cannot estimate how long it would have taken for the men's home and all its precious contents to burn. Within half an hour of sparks catching the edge of a veranda or an exposed beam, the whole house may well have been burning. Once the fire started to consume the oxygen, it may well have flashed along the ceiling in a second, reaching into a new room. At its peak, the temperatures inside the house would have been immense. Solid brass urns melted into puddles and brass does not melt at temperatures less than 700 degrees.

That Wednesday morning after the fire, Beh and Dunham could only imagine how the wind had pushed the fire through the undergrowth to their home and how it had fanned the flames through the house. All that they could see was a Hills Hoist on its side, sheets of charred corrugated iron, a Yukon pot-belly stove, the fireplace standing on its own, the frame of the balcony, the burnt-out gargage.

Fragments of other things remained too: a lens from a pair of glasses, part of the brilliant red cover of the Maharaja book; half a pair of striped wool trousers; a travel brochure; the metal casing of a briefcase; a mangled 35mm camera; coffee mugs made by Dunham's sister, who is a potter.

Beh saw this devastation but he had a strong feeling that not everything could be totally destroyed. He started to search.

He found a Tibetan tara, a buddha associated with good health, long life and good conditions. The buddha was made from gilded gold and copper and its face was coated in melted glass from a window. When Beh touched the buddha, the glass fell, it peeled off like it was skin, and everything underneath was intact. A miracle!

Two other buddhas were also intact, including one made from iron in the 16th century.

But it was the final discovery that comforted Beh most. In the place where the bedroom used to be, he found his mother's Buddhist pendant, made of copper and gold with a very fragile silver chain. He touched his neck with light fingers to demonstrate how fine the chain was. ``It is my only memento of my mother,'' he said, and, for the first time in our interview, began to cry. Beh is from Penang and his parents died more than 20 years ago, when he was a student in Melbourne.

``There are the few things (that remain). I am so happy. In one life a miracle, it is like a second Tattslotto, something like this,'' he said of the discovery of his mother's pendant.

``It makes you realise that whatever money you have, the things you never realised before, how important some things are, beyond money. I have always said some things are beyond money but now I actually feel it.''

Both men said what had happened to them was nothing compared with the loss of lives in the fires. They said they were glad to have experienced the humanity and kindness of neighbors, friends, firefighters, and the Shire of Yarra Ranges staff.

They said, in the most genuine manner, that what had happened to them, the loss of the memories and the history, was a misfortune, not a tragedy. In our interviews, they never once said: Why us? Why our place? What did we do to deserve this?

Even with this acceptance, the misfortune of a hot wind that pushed the fire up the hill to their home that Tuesday has changed their lives. And it will keep changing them.

Now that they have nearly nothing, Beh says he feels, in some perverse way, a sense of freedom. He can start all over again. He can simplify things. He can be very careful about what he acquires.

They will build again, but this time the house will be very plain, just a few rooms, built partly under the ground, a bit like a bunker. Dennis Carter, whose apprenticeship was served under Alistair Knox, the architect who made their old house, will design the place.

And when the house is built, they can wait for the green shoots to start sprouting from the black trees. They can watch the trees grow strong again and embrace their home and the other homes on Scenic Crescent. Both of them love this regeneration, to see how resilient the bush is, and how resilient we are, after a disaster.


Sunday 23 March 1997

After the fire the hurt still smoulders

By LARRY SCHWARTZ of the Sunday Age

AT the height of the bushfires that engulfed Seabreeze Avenue, Ferny Creek, earlier this year, a firefighter became aware that someone was looming at his shoulder in the smoke.

``Better get out of here, mate,'' he warned. No response. When the smoke cleared he found he'd been talking to a marble statue of a Roman hunter in a fig leaf, with a dog at one side and, at the other, the head of a boar on a stone.

Dating from 1885, the statue remained intact until council workers recently arrived on the scene.

Across the way, a retired telegrapher, Frank Deely, was chopping wood last week from 10 trees felled on his block.

He sees some irony in the fact that it was only in the aftermath of the 21 January fires in the Dandenong Ranges - in which 41 houses were destroyed and three people died - that the statue was damaged.

``They were clearing the rubbish and they broke the head off the dog, the ears off the (hunter's) head,'' says Mr Deely, whose house survived relatively unscathed.

Two months after the fires, Seabreeze Avenue's residents are still reeling at the consequences.

``I think the secondary destruction coming through is almost worse,'' says the writer Judy Mraz, who moved here from Belgrave four years ago.

Among her regrets: the death of neighbors, extensive tree felling, loss of privacy and unwanted sightseers.

Judy and Grant Mraz, a medical scientist, have two daughters: Natasha, 1, and three-year-old Alexandra, who misses her best friend, Bonnie, whose family's house was burnt down.

Fresh flowers were entwined last week in the wire fencing that now seals off the entrance to the home at number 29, where 26-year-old Graham Lindroth and his wife, Jennifer, 24, died with their 50-year-old neighbor, Genevieve Erin.

Some residents say the deaths have made Seabreeze Avenue a focal point of subsequent attention.

They say the tragedy has brought out the best in some people. There have been neighborhood barbecues and support and an increased sense of community. Judy Mraz has come to know neighbors she might have just waved to before.

Then there were the many volunteers co-ordinated by a local community recovery committee and the Yarra Ranges shire council. ``We had a team of 12 people on Sunday we don't know, who turned up on our doorstep to help us clear the wood, cut and stack,'' she says. ``People who rang up and said: `Do you need a massage?' `Do you want the children looked after?'''

Outside, chainsaws buzz, heavy vehicles clatter about. There is no sign yet of construction on the sites of six houses in this street destroyed by fire. A timber cottage next to the Mraz house at number 33 was home to neighbors Cheryl Martin, her husband, Doug McKay, and their five-year-old daughter, Bonnie.

The family has since lived with relatives and friends in Kilsyth and Belgrave. They are now back in Ferny Creek, determined to remain in the area. However, they will not rebuild on their block because of fond memories of neighbor Genevieve Erin, who lived at number 31.

In a way, Ms Martin pities those who have remained. ``We frequently go back to the block,'' she says ``For us it's like a healing process. We see the new shoots growing. You talk to the neighbors.

``But we can still pull away from it ... Others still living there are having to cope with it every day. So there's a different hardship for the people that are still there.''

The tragedy has made Seabreeze Avenue a reluctant tourist destination of sorts. ``You can see they're going out to tea at a local restaurant, but before they go out to eat they come and look at us,'' says Jill Dusting, a resident of 22 years. ``I can't see why they have to have a meal out of us.''

There was little damage to the home she shares with her husband, Gary, and their 16-year-old son, Glenn.

She was heartened to discover that a tree peony grown from a seedling from a plant that had once belonged to her grandmother had survived. ``Then the tree men landed a tree on it,'' she says.

Jill Dusting wishes the events of one day in January could somehow be erased. ``I'd wind back the clock to the 20th,'' she says. ``Everything's changed now and it'll never, never be the same.'