Four Fires (24 page)

Using the ute termorra, mate?'

'Nah, I'll come with yiz, Tommy,'John says, 'take a sickie, be good to have a day doing a bit o'

choppin' and cuttin', bloody sight better than stripping down a Dodge engine at the workshops!'

John Crowe works for the shire council as a mechanic.

'Yeah, I'll be in that,' Ian now volunteers, 'could do with a day off meself, not much going on at the abattoir.'

I'm sitting there feeling dead proud of Tommy and his two mates. They can see the old lady has a 'touch of the tar', but they've done the right thing by her anyway. She's a human being in distress and they've come good.

Lots of people I know would have thought she was just some old roadside Abo gin who could make a humpy herself and wasn't worth bothering about. Tommy doesn't know the story about Sarah's medicine, because he'd gone bush at the time. But in a funny way it's us should be grateful to her. It's not her fault the stuff she gave Sarah didn't work, because she said right off she didn't think it would. Although Sarah's copping a fair amount of shit from the town gossips, the best thing is that, because the medicine made Sarah sick, now Sophie and Morrie are going to have a new family and everything's turned out happily ever after. Well sort of, Sarah's still got to have the baby, which isn't an 'it' any more. The only person who's unhappy is Father Crosby and maybe God, but we don't know about Him yet.

The fire passes over and the three men climb out of the creek and, using the shovel and rake-hoe, they clear a bit of ground so the old lady

can put her stuff out somewhere. We all help to get it out of the water and onto this clear patch so the carpet and the silk cushions and sheets and the tablecloth can dry. The old lady says, 'I am never-minding that the silk cushions are ruined, it's a pittance to pay.'

'Your jars are okay, that's one thing,' I say, trying to comfort her because the silk cushions were very beautiful and now they're stained. The Vacola jars are all watertight, so her herbs and medicines are okay inside, though I've had to recover a good few that floated down the creek a bit and some of the labels are missing, but I guess Mrs Rika Ray will know what's inside just by looking.

By the time we get back to the firefighters, they've already decided we were dead so there's lots of congratulations. The old lady has come with us to get something to eat, which is what Tommy insists she must do. That's something else I learned, it's just about breakfast time and there's this trestle table with five women there, two from Bell Street but the others I don't recognise.

They've got sandwiches and some sausages going and hot tea from an urn and water to drink.

Mrs Karpurika Raychaudhuri tells everyone the story of the rescue and I've got to hand it to her, she's a bloody good storyteller because we come out like we are these heroes in a book. Tommy, Ian, John and me are shuffling our feet and kicking at the dust, saying it was nothing, pointing out how she's used her commonsense and protected herself real good with the carpet and the air hole. But I learn something that I'd not known about adults, that grown-ups, same as kids, like to believe in bravery and heroism, and the more the four of us protest the more the others believe her. If they gave out VCs for bushfires and they based it on the old lady's version of what happened, we'd all be awarded them for sure.

It's nearly lunchtime by the time we've got the whole fire under control and there's more women who have brought cold lamb and homemade chutney, bread and butter and more tea from the urn and all the cordial you can drink. It's like a party in the blackened bush and I find I'm a part of it. Old Mole Maloney is a fair-dinkum bushfire fighter, although all I've done is sit in a pool of water in the creek and beat at a few flames licking up beside the road. It's also the first time I've
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seen the people of Yankalillee come together and there's kindness in them I'd never known about.

And something else has happened also. I've seen a fire raging, been in among the flames and I know there's something in me that understands it, wants to learn more. Not just about fire, I want to know more about the bush, about how a fire behaves and the animals we've seen fleeing, little creatures you'd never normally see, going hell for leather and some not making it, burning up in a frizzle. I also have a new respect for my dad, Tommy Maloney, the little bloke with the slight limp and the crook arm and one eye.

On the way home in the back of the utility I say to Tommy, 'Dad, I'll come out with you into the bush any time you want.'

He looks at me surprised. 'What's changed yer mind then?' 'Well, it's only under one condition.'

'What's that"?' he shouts above the wind. If I lay off the grog?' 'No,' I say, 'Mum says it's only you who can decide to go on the

wagon.'

'What then?' he asks.

'If you promise to show me the Alpine Ash.'

'We'll have to see about that,' he says, I can't promise, yiz'll have to earn the right, son.'

Bloody belli I think to myself, I thought I had him by the short and curlies, volunteering to go bush with him and all. Goes to show you can never guess how a parent is going to react. 'How are your shoes?' he asks.

I've forgotten about them but I look down and I see they're completely wrecked. The front of one has the sole coming off and a bit of the toecap is burned on the other, which must have happened before they got wet. They've dried out and all the polish has sort of come off and the leather uppers are crinkled real bad, no way the

bootmaker can fix them.

'Shit, Mum will kill me!' I shout out.

'No, she won't, remember you're a bloody hero.'

'Oh yeah! If you think that will make any bloody difference, you're crazy.'

'I'll buy you a new pair next pension day,' he says, 'boots also, for the fires.'

What he's really saying is that he won't spend the money on grog and that's a pretty big promise so I decide not to hope for too much. If I have to go to school barefoot, it's not the worst can happen to a bloke and it's summer anyway. Funny, how suddenly when your attention is drawn to something, they start to hurt. I realise that my feet are swollen and I can't wait to get them into a bucket of water when we get home.

Well, weekends, mostly Saturday, I'm out with Tommy in the bush learning things, but because it's the bushfire season he concentrates on fire. I'd always thought that the danger in fire was the flames, but this turns out not to be the case. Of course, flames are pretty dangerous and you can't go taking them lightly.

'Radiant heat's the bastard, Mole,' Tommy tells me. Then he goes on. 'Three year ago, up near the Snowy, this old bloke is lookin' after his son's five kids on the farm. There's a bushfire heading their way and so he thinks, fair enough, take the kids to the dam, same as we did in the pool for that old Indian lady. Sit them in the dam, wait for the fire to pass over, everything will be ridgy-didge. Well, he sets off, plenty o' time, fire's still a mile and a half away. What he hasn't reckoned on is there's a wind blowing around twenty knots an hour and it's carrying these embers, which is what we call 'radiant heat'. It sucks all the oxygen out of the air, like the air burns up. They don't even make it halfway to the dam, which is only two hundred yards from the
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house.

They've died of radiant heat.'

Then he tells me about embers. 'Watch out for embers, Mole. People think the fire has passed, just a few hot spots here and there, little flames you can stamp out with your boots. Don't, mate.

Don't stamp at glowing embers. City bloke up from Melbourne come out with us. We tell him we don't think it's a good idea, but he's a big nob, a barrister and a friend of the Yerberrys, so there's not a lot we can do. He wants to skite, see, tell his mates back in the city that he's fought a bushfire. He's wearing all the right clobber, gumboots and long trousers and a wool jumper. It turns out later that his trousers are made of this new stuff called rayon. He doesn't know about not stamping embers and walks away from the group of us. He's having a fine old time stamping away when an ember flies up and drops down one of his

gumboots. By the time we found him he was history. Died in the hospital three days later. Stupid bugger's gorn and took off his jumper because he's hot. The trousers are a firetrap and his legs are like burned mallee roots. He'd have been saved if he'd had his jumper on but with it off, the top half of him also goes up in flames and poor bastard had ninety per cent third-degree burns and wouldn't have been able to walk ten steps before he was a goner. Once a fire's down to embers, leave it be, unless you've got plenty of water to douse it and even that can spread sparks. It'll die out by itself once it's got no more fuel to feed it.'

There's lots of things I learn from Tommy and every once in a while I'll tell you something you probably didn't know. You never know when it might come in useful. For instance, did you know that a fire travels uphill faster than downhill? Well, it does. Fire travelling uphill doubles its speed for every ten per cent increase in the slope, up to thirty degrees. Up a twenty-degree slope, which isn't all that steep, a fire travels four times faster than on flat ground.

So, if you're fleeing a fire and there's a small hill or flat ground to choose from, don't go for the hill because you think it will give you protection. There's also something else to remember.

Flames moving down a slope grow four times higher the moment they reach flat ground, but then if they start to travel uphill again the flames grow four times higher still.

Remember, if there's a slope with the fire behind you, run down the slope, it's better even than flat ground. But if there's a fire behind you and a hill ahead, don't run up the hill, run around it.

We're coming home one night from where Tommy and me have been to this bloke's farm to help him burn off and I'm pretty hot and tired from having the heat in my face all afternoon. We come to a bright-green patch where someone's grown some lucerne. Everywhere else you look the grass is brown and the late-summer landscape is dried out against a pale-blue sky without a single cloud.

'Wouldn't it be good if all of Australia looked like that?' I say to Tommy, pointing to the paddock that's got lucerne growing.

'Wouldn't be Australia then, would it?'

'What do you mean by that?' I ask.

'Australia is the driest land on earth, it's the continent that burns more than any other. We are a land that has adapted to fire, we've got to have it because many of our essential plants are pyrogenic.'

'What's that mean?' I ask. It's not like Tommy to use big words except when he's naming a eucalyptus tree with Latin names.

'It means certain plants can't propagate, renew themselves without fire. Most Australian native plants and even our animals and insects are fire-adaptive, they can survive a bushfire without too much trouble. Mate, we've gotta have fire, it's a good thing for us, fire isn't bad for the land, it's good. It's only bad when it threatens to burn our houses and towns, but that's mostly our own fault for not planning our townships properly. Remind me one day to tell you about Black Friday in 1939.'

And here I am thinking that fire's the worst thing can happen. The worst thing out. It just goes to
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show that when you start to learn things about stuff you can often be amazed at what's the real truth.

One Friday night in February, me and Tommy go to a lecture on firefighting at the CFA bushfire headquarters, which is in the Mechanics Institute next to the Masonic Lodge building and is shared with the Amateur Dramatic Society and the Ladies Auxiliary. It has a built-in stage and we have our meetings there. We also store all the fire-fighting gear and the Furphy tank in a tin shed behind the Institute.

We usually have firefighting lectures of a Sunday morning for an hour after all the churches have come out. But I don't suppose this bloke from the Melbourne Fire Brigade could make it then, since he is giving this lecture on a Friday so he can get back home for the weekend. He's rabbiting on and on in a monotonous voice. I've been up since sparrow's fart doing the garbage and I can't keep me eyes open. If I wasn't so tired maybe I'd have learned a bit more, but he's talking all this technical stuff about combustion in the pine woods in Canada and I don't think even Tommy's taking it all in. I must have fallen asleep because suddenly I hear my name called out and Tommy is digging me in the ribs. 'Wake up, mate!' he whispers, 'It's flamin'Templeton, the shire president wants you.'

Bloody hell, it's Mr Templeton who's calling out my name. The last time I seen him was when he was sprawling out cold on his own carpet from a Nancy haymaker.

'This young lad,' Philip Templeton is saying, 'showed intelligence, resourcefulness and great personal initiative as well as bravery when he took three firefighters to go to the rescue of Mrs . .

.' He looks down at the paper he's holding, 'Mrs Kar . . . Ray ... er ... cha . . .'he looks up and then down at the paper again '. . . hadhuri.' Making a proper mess of the old lady's name. Good thing she's not here, I think.

'It is Mrs Karpu-rika Ray-chaud-huri!'A voice rings out at the back of the hall. The old lady must have come in after Tommy and me because I don't know she was there. 'You are calling me Mrs Rika Ray please, that will do nicely, sir! Rika Ray!' She pronounces it carefully again, then she says, 'Master Mole is learning it straight off, the whole naming catastrophe, Karpurika Raychaudhuri, he is a very, very intelligent boy!'

There's a laugh from the audience and everyone turns around to look at the old lady, who is wearing this beautiful yellow-silk dress down to the floor which is called a sari, though I didn't know the name of it until Mike told me later. Also the diamond in her nose is catching the light and she's pulled back her hair in a bun and has some bushflowers in it. She's painted this red spot in the middle of her forehead.

'Thank you, Mrs Rika Ray/ Philip Templeton laughs, trying to cover his embarrassment.

'Anyway, as I was saying, Peter Maloney, at great risk to himself, led three rescuers to the home of Mrs Rika Ray and effected her rescue. It is now my proud duty to present young Peter with a certificate of appreciation from the president and the members of the Owens and Murray Shire Council.'