MAY/JUNE 2002

In the care of the angels

Five months now since the ravaging bushfires-those days of relentless dry heat, weather forecasts holding out no hope of rain, urgent radio news broadcasts, terrifying images of inferno each evening on television, the mythic figures of our firefighters, and the sad faces and drooping bodies of shocked people standing in the ruins of their homes.

'Her beauty and her terror, the wide brown land for me', as poet Dorothea Mackellar described Australia in her classic poem. Just as certain native species need fire to initiate germination, the terror of natural disaster seems to release the grace of human generosity. Men and women got up from their Christmas Dinner tables to report to their local brigade or Emergency Services HQ. Some even caught planes and buses long distances to risk their lives saving the homes of people they had never met.

Such acts of sacrifice and compassion are repeated every season but they can never become commonplace, nor lose their capacity to startle and inspire-and, in true Australian style, no one's looking for glory. Perhaps the most endearing moments come when some smoke-faced fire captain is reluctantly interviewed on TV, in a rest break, propped up on one elbow with a mug of tea. Any suggestion of heroism is neatly deflected with a weary smile and a pragmatic comment about the hopes of a wind change.

On Boxing Day I drove through a shocking blackened landscape to a district where the homes of 17 families had been burnt out, and the threat of fire from flying embers was still present. Throughout the baking day and into evening, the sun remained an angry red. The birds were silent as people began to drive up and park under the trees for Mass in the old weatherboard church. For some reason I was surprised how clean everyone looked after their ordeals.

As they gathered, out came the stories; of narrow escapes, how the fire had come to within yards of the house. And it was the first chance to account for everyone, to know who the newly-homeless were staying with, how they were coping. Beside the church, the semi-retired priest's cottage had been burned out while he was fighting spot fires around and under his church. Eyewitnesses had to tell the story over and over as each new family arrived. Inside the old church, the air was still and people were restless, uneasy. At the end of Mass, Father John Evans spoke about what had happened to him.

When fire engulfed his home, he had wanted to save things that had belonged to his mother and father, their wedding gifts from 1910, but it was too late. He lost a chalice containing his mother's diamond ring, and the stand his father had made as an apprentice carpenter and joiner. Everything he owned that was valuable and familiar had gone.

'I've lost everything. I don't own a thing except the clothes I'm standing up in.'

Yet he went on to say that, while our material things are precious, life is more precious. He thanked those who had helped him. He praised the people for the wonderful way they had helped each other in the last two terrible days. He said he was ready to start again, from scratch, and you could have cried for him, and cheered for him too.

In the days to come, many Australians must have been encouraged to hear him put his loss wisely into perspective, as he was interviewed on television in the ruins of his home, an elderly man in poor health but calm and grateful still to have his life, and the care of friends in the district he had served for 32 years.

The clothes Father stood up in were a shirt and a pair of shorts and sandals. After Mass he stood outside with a white plastic bag containing his worldly goods in one hand, talking to us all, as we slapped the mosquitoes off our ankles and conjectured where the fire would strike next.

Some of the farmers were angry-about bureaucratic restrictions on regular back-burning and maintenance of firebreaks. In the red glow of twilight people carried big boxes of donated goods into the church, to be distributed.

The children were fossicking in the blackened remains of the old cottage. After a while they came running over proudly to offer Father what they had found-a few charred pages from a book, a little vase, broken, a spoon.

Driving back through the burned-out forest and grasslands, I saw a rough, handwritten sign on a farm gate, 'Fireys are angels. Thank you'.

Home again, I opened the front door on my familiar surroundings with fresh appreciation. Five months on, the suffering of those devastating Christmas fires is not over, with insurance claims delayed, and the grief and disorientation of loss continuing in many families. Keep them in your prayers. Our Lady Help of Christians, pray for us.

Caroline Jones is author of An Authentic Life (ABC Books, 1998).