The Agrinautica

   There is a town about 200 miles north of where I live, called Echuca, which lies on the Murray River and has been flooding for over 20 days now.

   And monday a message came through on the volunteer fire brigade (CFA) app, asking for volunteers for a strike team to go up there to help with the flooding for two nights. It's been too cold and rainy to do any beekeeping (despite that its the reverse-seasons equivalent of May now!) so I responded that I was available. I'd have liked to stick around work since my friend Doug from the states has just arrived on Saturday and has been hanging around (he's staying with my boss this time), but I felt since I could spare myself it was my civic duty to do this.



   Tuesday at noon I was picked up from the local fire station in an FCV ("Field (?) Command Vehicle," a dual cab pick up with enclosed back) headed to Geelong, carrying one other volunteer from nearby Colac town and two CFA staff who were just headed to Geelong. On the way I learned that the river is "up 96 meters" (315 feet, 29 stories!) which sounded on its face nonsensical. Further clarification indicated that they for some reason measure the flood water height over sea level (!?!? I've never heard of this being done before, is this done in America too or is this an insane Aussie thing?), and that the normal river height is 83 meters. So it's up 13 meters (43 feet, 4 stories), which is still pretty impressive but I suppose more plausible.
   Levees of clay and sandbags have been erected to protect the city, and, famously, the "Great Wall of Echuca" has been erected right through part of the town, leaving part of it to flood and protecting the rest. I'd already been hearing rumors about this, and how it, as one might imagine, is not very popular with people from the wrong side of the levee.

   Our strike team assembled at a fire station in Geelong town. It was 10c (50f) which already had me shivering, and reportedly 6c (43f) in Echuca (again this is the middle of the day in reverse-May! This place is so bloody cold!!), so we were anticipating being cold. Presently we were all assembled, about 12 men and 2 women, aged middle age to old.

   Departed by charter bus at 13:20. It took a few hours to get up there. I'd grabbed a book from my shelf to read during this time -- "Congo Journey" by Redmond O'Hanlon. I'd gotten it just before a project in the Congo which eventually fell through, and had been saving it to read whenever that project should resume, but being as I have no Congo project on the horizon I decided just to go ahead and start reading it now. How have I never heard of this author before?? It's very good! I've read a lot of travel writing and this is some of the best. What particularly stands it apart is he'll often have an entire paragraph describing something, which I'd come to think of as risking getting into "purple prose" territory, but he absolutely makes it work. Also he makes good use of dreams and things to give backstory / character depth, which is a thing I've been experimenting with, so it was great to see someone doing it successfully.

   It was only during this drive that I learned from overheard conversation that we'd be doing night shift ::cue the ominous bass sound from All Quiet on the Western Front::. I had assumed it had been described as "two nights" merely because that was the most relevant information for people to calculate how long they'd be away from home. 16:15 we passed through the first town that had visibly suffered from flooding, Rochester, Victoria, with sandbag barriers in front of and around many buildings. I was told 1,608 houses had been destroyed in Rochester.
   At 16:40 we arrived in Echuca at the emergency services headquarters. It was 11c (52f). Immediately we saw a man in shades-of-grey camo uniform walk by.
   "What uniform is that?" someone asked
   "The Navy" someone answered
   "What's the Navy doing here, we're nowhere near the sea"
   "Well, I think the sea came here."

   Then we experienced the classic "hurry up and wait" while we waited for our shift to begin at 20:00. Hamburgers were served. An army bushmaster (lightly armored personnel carrier) arrived and we were able to climb in and on it for entertainment and edification. I was excited because its a piece of equipment Australia has been sending to Ukraine ("But," the accompanying soldier explained to me when asked, "they're using it more on the front line than we do. We wouldn't actually drive it up to the front line because it doesn't have enough armor but they... well they gotta do what they gotta do").

   During the briefing we were warned that some locals have been very hostile and abusing the volunteers (I assume these are locals from the forsaken side of the levee). We additionally learned that we shouldn't need to do any sandbagging, mainle we'd just be monitoring static pumps that have been set up to pump water out from the storm drains within the protected area. It should be quiet and fine but if we were to get more than 7mm of rain it would overwhelm our pumping capacity and we might have huge problems.


This could have been a beautiful picture but I was already crimping too far to the right to try to avoid my colleague walking into the shot and then he got in there anyway

   At 20:00 in the last waning grey light of the dreary day we mounted up in our trucks! I was in tanker "Winchelsea 1" with the guy from Colac (Nick) and our crew leader was a 30ish fellow named Tommy. I was surprised to find life going on entirely as normal within the protected part of Echuca. People driving around, coming home from whereever they'd been, parking their nice cars in their driveways amidst their immaculate manicured lawns, putting their bins out since apparently the next morning was trash day. Meanwhile just on the other side of the Great Wall of Echuca similarly beautiful looking houses had water lapping at hte walls just below the windows. A homemade sign posted to a pole above where one of these houses front lawns would have been read "THE NEEDS OF THE MANY HAVE DROWNED THE NEEDS OF THE FEW! CLASS ACTION!"


View from atop The Great Wall of Echuca

   Things were calm enough that most of our pumps were usually off and just needed to be turned on for about 15 minutes every hour or two. Like a bumblebee we rotated through inspecting about five pumps in our sector. Presently we found one of our pumps was not keeping up even when it was on. We hooked the hoses on our truck up to assist the pump (which is why we were using fire trucks), and even that didn't work, so we called for back up and eventually we have four trucks in addition to the big pump working on it.
   Eventually it was discovered that in a connected storm drain the gate that should have sealed it off from the river had become stuck in the open position so water was just flooding in. Some facilities guys from the city came out and worked on it with crowbars and two-by-fours (the crowbars didn't reach far enough in) and got it closed, which enabled us to get the connected pit under control finally. We'd later learn in addition to this, when they were able to more thoroughly examine things in the morning, it would be found that the pump had sucked in two sandbags, which had a very detrimental effect no its effectiveness.


The problem pump by morning's light / as a colleague ascends to sainthood. Note four additional hoses hooked up in addition to the big pump.

   I was very uncomfortably cold all night, even sitting in the truck cab I wasn't quite comfortably warm. And having been awake all the day before this night sihft brought me up to about 36 hours awake. I decided it was decidedly worse than a 15 hour flight in a middle row on a standard airline, though I'm not sure it was worse than the same on a budget airline. It was pretty shit. But still, I asked myself, and friends have asekd me when I complained about it, why I signed up then and I dunno I don't regret signing up despite how cold and miserable it was. I believe strongly in civic duty and it needed doing.



   Break from 0200-0300. Around 06:30 with morning's light dawning I was able to see things for the first time and took a few pictures which are presumably embedded around here. Then my phone died. Finaly we all returned to base at 0800. Bus at 0900 took us to a "family fun camp" that seemed like a pretty cheesy place (I'm pretty sure when I was a kid it would have insulted my intelligence and self respect to go to a summer camp with the kind of goofy cartoons of cowboys this place had everywhere), but at this point I just wanted to crash into a bed. Plugged my phone into the charger and crashed out on a top bunk. When someone woke me up I thought it was for lunch at 1300 but he informed me no it was 17:15 and we had to go back to work! Okay well at least I've gotten some sleep!!


A resident goes for a morning kayak where there formerly was a major street


Shift II
   Corned beef ("silverside?" is corned beef? Looked like corned beef to me anyway) for dinner, delicious, though they wouldn't let me have seconds and usually even among firefighters one serving of dinner still leaves me hungry. This night was a bit better since I was well rested going in to it and by wearing my other jacket (Dickies brand light "Eisenhower Jacket"), I was slightly less uncomfortably cold (still uncomfortably cold). Our pumps didn't give us any trouble and didn't even need to be turned on as much, so I was actually able to read my book a fair bit between rounds of checking the pumps. During our nightly break I was able to scrounge another plate of dinner from the fridge and microwave it and thus be satisfactorily fed.
   Around 01:45 warning lights on our dashboard came on and it was determined that there was water in the fuel. We'd fueled up at a local fuel station ("servo"), so it's plausible during the flooding water got into their fuel cistern. This was of great concern to all the trucks since many had fueled up there, but as far as I know ours was the only one that had a problem. To play it safe we brought our truck back to the depo and got in another truck that had only two crewmembers, so now we were five. Since only one person needs to get out to check the pumps really, this gave me even more time to read. I mostly read my book all night.


Someone got into the halloween spirit. We added the beer can

   Returned to base around 07:30, breakfast and back on the bus to head home around 0900. The end.



   As I said, it wasn't fun. But I am still more wondering how people can just not volunteer for things like this than any thoughts about not having gone myself.

   On Sunday several of us traveled in Birregurra Tanker 2 to participate in a planned burn in which they burned off a swath on either side of a highway for about 20 km to make a long barrier to any future unplanned fire this season. This was my first away mission in actually one of our own trucks with our own crew. Also, for once I wasn't the youngest crewmember! Usually it's me and a bunch of grey-hairs but this time it was me and two guys who seem about my own age, the wife of one, whom I think may be a few years younger, and this 18 or so year old with dark fabio hair. Two of the others were very new so somoene made a joke about "a truck full of newbies" and then Eddie, the other non-new guy, who was driving, said "Kris isn't new" and it was the first time it occurred to me that I might not be the newbie anymore!

   To do the burn they had the trucks lined up going along thoroughly wetting down the stone barrier wall and grassy fringe which ran 20-30 meters parallel to the highway, while behind the truck parade ATVs with drip torches set the grass on fire, followed by several follow up trucks to make sure the fire behaved itself, as well as sometimes a truck going around and standing by on the far side of the wall.



   After lunch I we rotated me into the radioman position in the truck's front passenger seat instead of out back with a hose. Because that only required me to actually do something once after twenty minutes or so I and it was mid afternoon after getting up really early I found myself desperately fighting not to fall asleep. I much preferred being on the back! The people who feel important being the radioman can keep it!



   Yesterday, Monday, it was once again cold and rainy. I really need to actually keep a tally of how many nice days we get in summmer here it sure feels like it's a number I can count on one hand. Especially if you don't count the days the slap a "total fire ban" on because on such days I can't work. Tomorrow it's supposed to be 84f and raining and they've slapped a TFB on it. Basically the only nice days I get to do work on are the few that fall in the narrow band of the 70s Fahrenheit.



   But so a funny think that happened yesterday. When I came back to home base to move some empty beehives from one place to another (because el bossman is going to put cows in that field), Cato came out to greet me, and he was looking very wet and bedraggled. So I invited him into the truck cab and closed the door and spent a few minutes patting him until he had quite the purr on. I've tried driving with him in the car before and he gets thoroughly freaked out. But having gotten him really calm I turned the truck on, then gave him a minute or two to get used to the vibrating truck, and then drove at cat-walking speed to where I was going to pick up the hives. He jumped up and spent the short drive with his hind feet on my lap, his front paws on the door or dashboard, looking around in fascination. When I arrived I opened the door and he jumped out and seemed astonished to have teleported. When I had driven him before it was a few hundred meters around a tree line, to a place he'd probably been before, but I think the locaiton change might have been too compelte for him to wrap his mind around, compared to this move of 40 meters where he could see where we started



   While I loaded the boxes on the back of the truck he looked around and settled on sitting under the back of the truck. This only took me a few minutes and when I was loaded up I got back int he cab and called to him. He came and hopped in! The one previous time I had driven him he had declined to get back in and had walked back to the workshop. I drove the 40 meters back, he still looking out the window in fascination. He hopped out when I opened the door and looked around again as I unloaded the boxes. Got back in the cab, called him, and he hopped back in! We did this for three loads. Adventurecat!

Friday, December 20th - Under clear blue summer skies in western Victoria, tractors pulling hay baling machines slowly move up and down the gentle slope of the rolling countryside, leaving behind an even line of giant cinnamon roll shaped hay bales. The farmer wipes his brow, it's 114 fahrenheit. He scans the skies. One seventh of the eastern end of the state is on fire and this is a day of officially "extreme" fire danger. At the edge of the field is a thick forest of tangly gum trees rising out of volcanic rocks. For 40,000 the aboriginal people used these volcanic rocks to construct little walls in the seasonal creek beds to catch eels when it rains. A koala slowly climbs a branch, thoughtfully munching leaves.
   The hours go by. The koala munches, the farmer makes rows of haybales. Some campers arrive at a campsite in the northeast corner of the forest and set up tent after a day traveling the Great Ocean Road. They go on some short hikes during the long summer evening to admire the lava flows. They see a koala. As evening sets in they regret that they can't have a campfire. Even though it's really hot, camping just isn't the same without a campfire. Finally relief from the heat comes as some clouds blow in from the west. There's a flash, followed by a crack of thunder reverberating among the tangled trees. The bats come out and flit across the sky. The mosquitos begin to bite, so they go to bed. In the morning there are several plumes of smoke rising over the tops of the trees. They decide it's time to move on.



Monday, December 23rd, Christmas Eve, 0900- 120 miles to the east, I am just arriving at work to meet with my boss. He meets me outside his office, which is beside the beekeeping workshop and overlooks the garden. Despite this proximity I sometimes don't see him for months and seeing him often fills me with terror. He could, after all, fire me on a whim. He's dressed in the kind of business casual that results from someone who only wears business wear genuinely tries to dress casual. He greets me cheerfully and invites me in.
   "How are the bees?" he asks after some preliminaries.
   "Oh they could be better ... they could be worse" I say. He smiles understandingly. "The weather was like winter until last week" I elaborate, "but I'm optimistic they'll do better with the warmer weather."
   "And what do you plan to do for the holidays?" he asks
   "I'm inclined to work" I say cautiously. We've been over this every year. He frowns.
   "You should take Christmas and boxing day off" he says.
   "Yes well... it's the busy season" but I shrug, I don't argue with him. How do I explain that it's more sad to spend Christmas alone than to work and pretend it isn't Christmas.

   I spend the day working beehives in the warm sun. A puff of smoke, lift the lid, inspect the frames. Is the queen laying? Are there any signs of disease? Golden fields surround me. Kookaburras chortle in the trees. This is nice. What I want to be doing tomorrow and the next day.
   A friend texts me asking if I want to come over for Christmas. But sometimes you're more alone with someone else's family than by yourself.
   My phone makes a harsh blaating noise, I jump a bit. The bees seem startled. I set the frame down as quickly as I can, leaning it against the hive, and fish my phone out of my pocket. The noise is the fire brigade app, but I'm relieved it's not a local fire. They're asking if anyone is available for a strike team for the next three days.
   I look thoughtfully off into the distance for a moment. Yes, this would be perfect. I text my fire captain to tell him I'm in. I text my boss saying I'll take those days after all. I text my friend saying I can't make it, I'll be on the firegrounds. I pick up the frame of bees, now where was I?

   The next morning I found myself sitting in the cab of a firetruck in my yellow firegear as the convoy of trucks headed westward to the fires that lightning on the evening of December 20th had started. We arrived to find ourselves posted between a gentle sloping field dotted with picturesque haybales, and an enchanted-looking forest of tangled Eucalypts. Dismounting the truck beside the forest I found it surprisingly bucolic; the grass by my feet was green and full of wildflowers and it smelled strongly of fresh mint. Of the forest beside us, though the canopy of leaves was still green, the rocky ground was the black and white of ash and soot and lazily billowing white smoke in many places.

   For the next three days my crew of four and I were busy hosing down hotspots and hauling around hoses as the temperature pushed 100. As the hose kicked up white soot and billows of white steam I remembered briefly it was Christmas and thought to myself "♫ I'm dreaming of a white Christmasssss ♫ ♫ "

   To break the fourth wall for just a moment: I'm skimming past the details of this deployment since I already wrote about it in detail.



   Returning home smelling of bushfire, it was time for another week of the daily grind. Catching up on beekeeping and bottling and distributing honey, as the stores I supply along the Great Ocean Road have a voracious appetite this time of year due to tourists on holiday. News of the wildfires consuming the state are on everyone's mind, and come up in nearly every chance conversation. When I'd stop to stretch my back between hives I'd check the latest news. When I checked the "Vic Emergency" app (of which the above screenshots are from) to see the situation, I'd often find myself panning back west to the fires I'd fought on. They sat there, under control but still on the map. The easternmost fire I'd been on, the Condah Fire, we had been fighting hard to prevent it from spreading into the plantation to it's south or the larger forest to it's east.
   On Wednesday evening looking at the app I was shocked and alarmed to see a fire had started, apparently independantly, in the middle of the forest just east of Condah.
   On Thursday they asked if anyone was available for a Friday-Sunday strike team. But I had work on Friday and my days off are always stretched extremely thin. I sadly had to desist from putting my name in, and spent another day filtering and bottling honey.
   Then Friday a message came through asking if anyone was available for a one day deployment out there Saturday. Yes, yes I am.




Saturday, January 5th, yesterday, 0530- in the feeble pre-morning gloaming I met another volunteer at our fire station, this young lad Danny. We took the brigade's toyota hilux "FCV" (Fire Command Vehicle?) to the nearby town of Colac. At the station there a few more volunteers from nearby brigades gathered, and we boarded a charter bus for the long journey out west. Around 6:20 the sun rose back behind us, so dim and red that one could look directly at it.
   We picked up more volunteers outside a remote country pub surrounded by rugged volcanic terrain. At 6:50 we stopped briefly at the fire station of a town called Cobden to pick up the last of our volunteers. The Cobden station conjured brief memories for me of filling up the tanker there several of times throughout the night when I was on a strike team operating out of the station in March 2018. But soon my attention was distracted from this, as we'd taken on a fellow here who looked a bit like David Hasselhoff named Woody who would be our Strike Team leader. As we rumbled out of Cobden he gave us a bit of a briefing though he didn't know much yet about the exact situation. But we were assigned our tankers.

   At 8:15 we arrived at the sports ground ("footy oval") outside the town of MacArthur northeast of the fireground. There didn't seem as much activity here as I've seen at other staging areas, just about a dozen of the professional forestry department (DWELP) firefighters and us. We were fed bacon-and-egg sandwiches, there was instant coffee and hot water. It was about an hour before anyone knew anything. Apparently another major fire had broken out in the area, near the town of Nelson in the very southwest corner of the state, which was occupying the attention of the higher ups because there were a lot of pine plantations near it and it could cut off the major highway. Finally we were briefed that we'd be doing "asset protection" on the northern sector of this fire. We would be patrolling and holding the line on the northern edge of the forest between the fire and a house and telecom tower.

09:38 - We trundled out of the staging area in a convoy of firetrucks. I was in "Beeac 2" with a stout fella named Greg driving and cheerful balding man named Russell as the crew chief in front passenger side. In the back with me was an old fellow named Darrel. I was disappointed not to have a squirrel-door between the cab and back of the truck like last deployment, but Beeac-2 made up for it by having a 100 meter high pressure hose on a reel. Last week we had to keep connecting and disconnecting 25 meter lengths of hose over and over again, this hose reel was much more pleasant!
   Most of the fire trucks have a hose nozzle on the front that can be controlled entirely from in the cab, called the monitor. We don't tend to use it terribly much because it's kind of hard to aim. In one place where we wanted to put out some flaming branches that were dangerously close to the end of the blacked out area, a nearby tree was smoking from halfway up it's trunk, identifying it as a "killer tree" that could fall at any moment. So our crew chief told us not to get out of the truck and we attacked the fire with the monitor. Unfortunately after about 30 seconds the up-down servo on it ceased working. Henceforth if we wanted to use it someone had to adjust the verticle angle while we were in a safe position and then we'd drive up to the target area and hope we could make that angle work.
   The day was grey and overcast. Russell looked at a weather app and reported that it would actually be continuously getting colder throughout the day. By noon it felt like winter again and I was beginning to shiver despite the thick fire jacket. Someone said over at Nelson it was "blowing hard enough to blow the spots off a dog."
15:16 - "Look hey look!" Greg was pointing at sometihng beside the truck. I leaned to look forward out of my side window. It was a koala! Standing on the ashen ground.
   "Does it look injured?" asked Russell?
   "I don't think so," said Greg, looking at it from the driver's seat.
   "I'm going to have a look" declared Darrell, unbuckling his seatbelt and opening his door
   "Be careful!" warned Russell.
   I scrambled for my phone but the battery was only 2% and wouldn't take a picture. Darrell squatted near it and gave it a good look, and then it turned and scurried off to a nearby tree and proceeded to climb it. It didn't appear to be limping or injured in any way. Later I saw another volunteer with some bandages on his arm and overheard him saying "like a furry bolt cutter!" I think he was referring to a koala. They can do some damage. There's some heartwarming pictures out there though of other CFA volunteers holding rescued koalas.



18:00ish - By the end of the day our sector seemed thoroughly under control, and I was thoroughly cold. Looking forward to going home and taking a hot shower. We withdrew from the fireline to a nearby brigade firestation for dinner. A "fleet maintenance" truck happened to be there with two of the sky-blue uniformed maintenance guys. They had a quick look at the monitor for us but they thought it was the control electronics and couldn't be fixed then and there. Another strike team joined us there as well as at least one strike team of the green-clad DWELP crews. I contemplated how we, the yellow-clad CFA guys and they, DWELP are almost invariably at staging areas together and the two groups _do not_ socialize together at all. As we waited for food CFA stood on one side of the driveway while DWELP stood on the other. Presnetly two guys with "Staging area Management" tabards (what they call these vests they wear with position designations) arrived with hot meals of chicken and a sort of coconut rice. I liked it but I think it was too exotic for some of the old codgers among us.
18:45 - Headed back to the footy oval. Reboarded the bus (poor bus driver was getting paid $57/hour to wait around for about 12 hours. He complained the television reception in the footy club lounge was very bad). Woody made some typical remarks thanking us in conclusion as we headed back through the feeble twilight, the sun disappearing redly into the haze behind us. Around 21:30 back in Colac Danny and I stopped in to a McDonalds to use the bathroom. As we pushed through the door from the dark and cold to the warmly lit interior I found everyone looking at us with abnormally friendly smiles, and I was suddenly self conscious that we were wearing fire gear and reeked of the heady scent of bushfire. A young woman passing me to exit murmured "thank you." I smiled bashfully, a bit embarrassed. It hadn't really occurred to me all day that people might react like this.


   This is only the beginning of the fire season, which is really ominous.

The most recent review for the campsite that's very near where I was posted yesterday gives it one star with the comment "on fire"

   The pager's distinctive tone and buzz jolted Murray as if he'd touched an electric fence. He plunged his hand into his shorts' pocket and fished it out.
   "Grass fire, spreading. Yurrangamete." He instinctively jerked his head up from the message to stare at the azul sky in the direction indicated. Beyond the golden grass and knotted eucalypts the sky was blue and clear. No smoke yet. Yurrangamete was twenty kilometers away, and he had a lot of work he meant to do today, but the hot wind was blowing straight in his face when he faced Yurrangamete. He wiped the sweat from under his battered felt brimmed hat. On a day like this any fire could be disastrous. He glanced at the sheep around him, their coats the same golden yellow of the surrounding grass. The gates were closed, nothing he needed to do before leaving. He jumped on the ATV, calling out "Come on Scomo!" to his dog, and gunned it for the house.

   "There's the smoke" said Graeme from the driver's seat as the firetruck hurtled down the country roads under its wailing siren. Sitting behind him, Murray leaned forward to see out the front window. In the distance beyond the dry trees a plume of white billowing smoke was rising like a mushroom cloud.
   "It's a goer!" commented Baz in the passenger seat.
   "Hell of a day for it" commented Muzz, behind Baz, as they all braced themselves for the momentary washboard jolting of the truck going partially off the road to pass a car which had pulled off on the other side of the narrow road.
   Most of the ride there wasn't much talking in the truck cab, the men alone with their thoughts, aware that the ride was the calm before the storm. The radio traffic constantly announced trucks arriving on scene and getting dispatched.

   "Yurrangamete control this is Warree Tanker Two we're one minute out where do you want us?" Baz queried the radio as the truck entered the shadow of the wall of smoke that loomed in front of them like a tidal wave.
   "Warree Tanker Two go to the west flank on Rickett's Outlet road," the radio instructed them.
   "Warree Two roger that" Baz said into the radio as he panned around the map on the GPS screen mounted on the dashboard. Muzz was simultaneously paging through the map book. Muzz and Baz then had some sharp disagreements about the correct route to take, but Graeme, with his young honest farmer's face under straw blonde hair, unflappably sparsed a route. Murray fitted his goggles on, pulled the bandanna up over his mouth and nose, and pulled the gloves on. Soon, around a corner, the leaping orange flames could be seen dancing behind half a dozen busy firetrucks in a field. Graeme brought the truck to a lurching stop just inside the gap that had been cut in the fence, calling out "alright boys mount up!!"
   Murray pulled the helmet onto his head as he swung open the door. The oven heat of the day took him by surprise after the air conditioning of the truck cab, and the acrid smell of brushfire filled his nostrils as he quickly descended backwards down the steps from the cab, followed closely by Reece, the young firefighter who had been in the middle of the back. Then both leapt up the steps to the platform on the back.
   "Go go go" Muzz said into the intercom handset mounted to the back of the cab, and all three on the back fell against the tank as the truck lurched back into motion. On the back they picked up the hoses from where they were stowed in readiness, pushed the valve levers into the "on" position, and as the pump rumbled into life they all gave test shots over the side to ensure everything was in order.
   On the back Murray couldn't hear the directions being given by the strike team leader for this flank, but he was glad to just concentrate on the job at hand. A large fire like this, one doesn't get in front of, so the trucks were working on the flanks, in this case the west side of a fire moving south with the wind, or "on the black" in the burned area behind the fire head. The truck came in behind another firetruck on the flank and the three on the back let loose with their hoses. As the pump throttle --controlled from inside-- ramped up, Murray was almost pushed over backwards by the force of the hose and had to brace himself and put all his weight against the push of the hose. As they got close to the raging flames the heat was so intense all three kneeled down as far behind the sidewall of the truck as they could while still keeping their hose on the fire.

   Later, in the surreal orange light of the smoke the crew rested their tired arms while the truck sucked water from a cattle-pond to refill its tank.
   "It doesn't feel like we're making any headway on the fire" said Reece, who looked a bit like a rockstar or pirate with his gold earrings.
   "It would be a lot worse if we weren't here I'll tell you that" put in Muzz, eating a fruit-bar.
   "It's okay as long as we keep it channeled south it'll hit the firebreak along the Canterbury highway" remarked Graeme.
   "Good thing too, you live right in the path otherwise doncha Murray" commented Baz, between drags on his cigarette.
   "Hope to god it holds!" remarked Murray looking south.
   "You were there when we burned it in, of course it will" chided Muzz. Murray recalled the day earlier in the season they had carefully burned a thirty meter swath along the north side of the highway. He couldn't help but feel a bit anxious though. At the time the grass had been barely flammable and it hadn't felt like a serious precaution, more a community service they went through the motions of because they had to. "Did we ever come back and burn off the grass in the gulley under the wombat creek bridge?"
   "Yeah of course we did" retorted Muzz, with a dont-be-an-idiot look on his grizzled face. YOUR house isn't just on the other side Murray thought to himself.

   Back on the fireground, the fire steadily moved south, what should have been a sunny afternoon was spent bathed in surreal hellish twilight. They fought the flank, and then they spent some time "blacking out" hotspots on the edge of the burned swath to prevent new fire outbreaks. This was a nice break from the intimidating fury of the main head of the fire, the hotspots giving a satisfying hiss when hit with the hose, and then they were were rushed to a "spot fire" where some embers had started a new fire in a neighboring field but were quickly able to get it out before returning to the main fire. Hours went by, almost too busy to think, but Murray couldn't get the thought of the gap in the firebreak out of his mind. It had been too difficult to get the trucks into the gully under the bridge, and he hadn't thought about it too hard at the time, but now it haunted him, he imagined it like a fuse through the firebreak. Somewhere outside the smoke, real twilight came and the fireground was quickly enveloped in true darkness canopied by the red glow overhead against the low smoke ceiling, and glowing brightly in the direction of the fire.

   Draughting water again through a thick hose from a cattle pond in "the black" behind the fire wall, Murray found it an unnerving moonscape, the ground all smoking ash, with the red glare of fire in almost every direction, as trees and sheds in the fire's path continued to burn after the main fire had passed by.
   "What do you reckon caused it?" asked Murray, leaning tiredly against the truck.
   "Probably a cigarette" remarked Reece, his face lit up by the greenish blue glow of his cell phone.
   "Cigarettes rarely start fires" commented Baz, the orange glow of his cigarette hovering in front of his face. "Probably arson"
   "Firebugs will tie a bunch of matches to a cigarette and toss it in the grass" explained Muzz, his face starkly lit from the side with the orange glow of fire, "then, when the cigarette burns down it ignites the matches and THEN it starts a fire and the bastard is long gone"
   "There's a special place in hell for people who start fires I reckon" commented Graeme in the darkness.
   "Still though," remarked Murray, "I smoke from time to time but I wouldn't light up on a total fire ban day like today was."
   "It's perfectly legal," responded Baz, "hardly any fires are started by cigarettes."
   Water began spilling from the underside of the truck. Murray threw the lever to shut down the pump, followed a second later by Baz decoupling the intake hose. Reece's phone glow blinked out and Baz's orange cigarette glow fell to the ground and disappeared underfoot.

   The clock said 2:07 by the time they pulled the truck into the Blerang firestation and descended the steps. They were all dog tired, Murray still felt like he was constantly being pushed backwards by the hose. The fire was an orange glowing line in the dark on the horizon. The truck seemed undomesticated and out of place here far from the fire, smelling strongly of fire and dripping water. The exhausted soot-covered crew shook hands with the oncoming crew who would takeover the truck. No rest of the truck. They all got into the Warree command vehicle to go back to their home station, and didn't talk much during the ride. Beside Murray, Reece fell asleep during the ten minute journey. Muzz drove to give Graeme a break. Murray couldn't sleep, he was worried about his home and family, they were right in the path of the fire.

   2:37am -- Murray stood in the high brush under the Wombat Creek bridge. Framed beyond it the wall of orange was alarmingly close. He could even faintly make out the alternating red and blue of emergency lights by the edges. He had laid down a alarmingly thin barrier with a foam fire extinguisher he'd grabbed from his shed. He wrapped the matches around a cigarette, twisting a rubber band around them. Graeme with his honest innocent face, saying "there's a special place in hell for people start fires" played back in Murray's mind over and over again. Would this work or would he lose control of it? Even if it worked would people understand? He reached into his pocket and fished out the cold plastic cigarette lighter...

Yesterday, 1800 hours - It was a beautiful evening as we drove along the highway towards Colac in silence. The sky was grey but the fields and hills seemed to glow with the gold color of dried grass, the black cattle standing out upon it. The sun shone through the clouds in several shimmering rays ahead of us to the west. I was riding in our station's mobile command vehicle, a hilux wagon, with Dave, a member of our brigade I didn't know very well. He was a bit stout and badger-like. Grey haired, he later mentioned being 58.

   Several side-by-side brushfires out west had already burned 6,000 hectares since Saturday, destoryed 18 homes, 42 sheds, and an unknown number of livestock. Arriving at the station in Colac town, we joined a handful of other volunteer firefighters from the surrounding area and boarded a small bus that had been chartered to take us to the staging area. That took about another hour, traveling west into the twilight. I noted that this area has beautiful walls of uncut volcanic rock that run for miles and miles surrounding paddocks. The houses we passed were often cute little victorian cottages, squat, weatherboard, with several brick chimneys rising out of their peaked roofs; or else sad dilapidated former victorian cottages; or else ugly brick modern houses of a low lying 70s lookng style. These three types of houses dotted the countryside at large intervals, and finally we pulled into Camperdown town, which was a concentration of all three around a very broad main street with a tree lined central median.

   The staging area was the town fairgrounds. As we pulled in, several staff of State Emergency Services (SES) in flourescent uniforms the color of orange sherbet checked us in at the gate. A line of DELWP's light firefighting vehicles were parked to our right, the red CFA firetrucks were lined up ahead in the oval, and buses and other vehicles were to the left. We parked and followed the crowds to the central building. Before I knew it a plate had been thrust in my hand and I was standing in a hot food line. And here I had stuffed my face with ramen before leaving home thinking i wouldn't get dinner! In line and at the cafeteria were about 20 of "the boys in green" from DELWP (pronounced "dwelp" in my head) and about an equal number of us from CFA in our mustard yellow. The Dwelp uniforms look almost identical to ours except for being asparagus green. They looked mostly in their twenties though, while the average CFA age is probably 58. Dwelp is about 90% male, I think I saw two female firefighters, while among the CFA I haven't seen a female in other than a staff role. Dwelp stands for "Department of Environment Land, Water, and Planning," though I recently heard they've entirely been moved over to a distinct department of Forest Fire Management? They had Parks Victoria on their uniforms anyway. DELWP is typical of what I've seen of Australian government though for favoring incomprehensible five letter acronyms and then changing them yearly.

   Food was very good, roast beef and gravy and some mashed squash and broccoli. Our "Strike Team" met up after eating. We would be a small strike team of just two tankers and a command vehicle. Dave and I were teamed up with two guys from the Wye River brigade and assigned to the tanker from Barongarook. The Wye River guys consisted of a short fellow named (Bartley?) whose name I very clearly had in my head until the exact moment I learned the other guy and I was never able to catch it again, but the other guy was tall and lean, bald, with a hulk-hogan mustache, named Wellesley. The short guy had kind of shaggy hair and a big loop earring in his left ear, making him look a bit like an aging rockstar. Bartley and Wellesley obviously knew eachother well already and from the get-go and throughout the night they were joshing eachother good naturedly. Dave had a lieutenant stripe on his helmet but that was from before he transferred to Birregurra and apparently not his current rank, so Bartley was in charge and Dave seemed perfectly content with that. All in all I found my team to be great, keeping up a positive attitude and good rapport all night -- I've seen many old CFAs guys quick to squabble and get grumpy with eachother.

   As we approached our assigned truck Dave pointed at hte bubbling in the reflective checkers around it, saying "guess she got a bit hot!" and just then I opened the door and the warm acrid smell of wildfire wafted out. As we prepared to drive out I noticed the guys working on the truck in front of us also had the same uniforms as us, which also said CFA, but their uniforms were sky blue. After noting how busy they were on the truck with various auto mechanic tools I think they must be CFA mechanics?

2020 hours -As our strike team left the fairgrounds oval, not to be overly dramatic, but it rather reminded me of the scene in Black Hawk Down where the UN armored units leave their stadium staging area, as our big trucks rumbled out of the entrance to the oval and out of the staging area into the darking twilight. We proceeded south to the small town of Cobden and arrived at the fire station there, which appeared to be the command center for this specifc sector of the firegrounds. We found ourselves sitting around a briefing room here. Someone made a joke about all this "hurry up and wait." Finally our strike team commander, grey haired and looking unshaved, face covered in black smears of ash, came and briefed us. The fire is actually fully contained now but we would be putting down any flare ups. Our first mission was a distressed residency with fire near it. Soon we were back in the truck headed for our location. I sat behind the driver, Wellesley drove all night, Bartley sat in the passenger side navigating and handling radio communications.

2112 hours - only ten minutes or so out of the station, driving through complete darkness now, we started to see spot fires to our left and right. We drove past the house in question, out in a rural area, and into the field behind it. Climbing out of the truck, into the moon-dust like ash of the burned-over field, fires were visible glowing in the dark in all directions, which was a bit disconcerting. It seems the fire had swept completely around this house but it had been saved. We set to hosing down some nearby flaming stumps. The darkness of night made it easy to spot any flames or glowing embers. When you get the hose right on a really hot spot it makes a very satisfying hissing or even roaring noise. While one person hosed two people would set about with rake-hoes exposing and breaking up the hot area. We spent quite some time hunting and destroying hot spots. When we finished that field we drove down neighboring roads, which were lined with cypress trees, which had mostly survived but many hidden smouldering places underneath them threatened to reignite if unchecked. I found myself walking along beside the dark bulk of the firetruck, slowly rumbling foreword, the line of trees ahead surreally lit with alternating red and blue from the lights. I was holding a smaller hose with the "high pressure nozzel" on it, which was kind of gun shaped, with a sort of pistol-grip and forward grip. Every twenty to fifty meters Bartley, who was walking ahead would call back saying "here's one!" and indicate into the trees. When I got there the first sign of fire was often the smell. Then I'd see a glowing ember, point the gun, brace my legs, and pull the trigger, sending in a high pressure jet of water, playing around the area of the ember until I got a satisfying "SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!" hiss back. After a thorough dousing I'd let go of the trigger and Dave would attack it with the rake hoe, while I stood ready to hit it again or looked for nearby smouldering areas which may have been missed. About once an hour or so we had to return to return to the station in Cobden to refill our water. After protecting the house the next mission we were assigned was the put out fires on a large shed which had already been destroyed but was still smouldering.

0315 - The moment of equinox came as I stood in the dark night shooting water into a burning stump, which was roaring at me. And thus the Australian summer officially ended and Autumn began. The fire continued roaring at me, though when I finally got home I did find a very autumnal covering of leaves on my lawn.

0330 - Fell asleep for the first time, and only half an hour after I'd had a red bull! While sitting in the back of a fire truck! Proof that I can sleep anywhere! It was just a quick nod-off while we drove between hotspots.

0520 - "Hey, you're ALL asleep!" objected the driver, Wellesley, in mock outrage, as we were driving. "Bartley here was snoring in fact!" By now we were spending more time driving without seeing anything to get out and hose down.

0600 - Returned to Cobden station. What seemed an entire platoon of Dwelpers also came in. We'd been seing them out there too but I didn't realize we had so many in our sector. I think our strike team was the only CFA force here. There appears to be no rivalry between CFA and Dwelp, nor did there appear to be, well, any interaction other than official coordination, at all.

0630 - returned to the central staging area in Camperdown. Was soon in line for breakfast (sausages, hash browns, beans, bacon (well, Australian bacon, which is like thinly sliced ham) .. weird scrambled eggs that I took a nibble of and left alone). Sat down to eat by and greeted a Birregurra brigade member I knew who was there to begin the day shift. As the sky began to turn from black to a dark blue we boarded our bus back to Colac. The morning gradually became greyly lit. In Colac transferred to the command vehicle, which I was surprised to find parked in a different place, but I guess the members of the shift we had relieved had driven it back to Birre, and the shift relieving us had driven it back to Colac.

   Got home exhausted just after 8am, 14 hours after I left. I had planned to go to work today but it just wasn't in the cards. Despite that I suspected I was totally grimy with ash, I went straight to sleep.

   "The following video contains graphic footage of trees being damaged and destroyed, if this makes you uncomfortable please advise your trainer immediately"

   The five grizzly old men in big yellow fire fighting pants held up with thick red suspenders hoot their sarcastic terror, while behind the front desk, our local fire captain attempts to distance himself from the video, saying in his thick scottish accent, "I havena seen this yet..."

   There follows a twenty minute informational video about "killer trees," that was, in my opinion, a bit amateurishly edited together, and seemingly unironically continued to talk about the extreme danger of "killer trees," calling them repeatedly a "clear and present danger" (which need I remind you is the title of a movie referencing nuclear annihilation!). I was really expecting the warning to be because there would be footage of some unfortunate soul who had a tree fall on them but no, the dire warning at the beginning was literally because seeing burning trees might upset someone. I'm not quite sure someone who is freaked out by seeing burning trees in a video should be on a fire brigade.

   Of course falling fire damaged trees an tree limbs really are a danger, and several of the guys had stories about near misses, but it really seemed to me a bit overly dramatic to call them "killer trees" rather than "dangerous trees" or if you love acronyms maybe FDTs for Fire Damageed Trees instead of the "CPD Trees" (the Clear and Present Danger).

   Especially references to establishing zone to exclude the killer trees (a radius twice the height of the tree), and that it's everyone's responsibility to constantly be on the look out for killer trees really made it sound to me like these were some kind of wandering tree monsters we have to look out for.

   After the video as is typical with government mandated training things, we had to do an insultingly simple multiple choice test.



   The occasion was annual "pre-season training" for the local volunteer fire brigade, which I have joined. I'm not yet trained up enough for call-outs but by next month I should be. Other training we did last night included setting the truck up to suck water from a pond, using the hoses whilst the truck is intaking water, and crew protection procedures in case of burn-over -- if the truck is overtaken by the fire, in the cab you pull down these heat shields around the windows and the truck puts a spray all around it. Random fact I learned: you hold a firehose nozzle (a "branch") overhand, that way if it slips from your wet gloved hand it doesn't slam you in the face! (did NOT learn this the hard way fortunately)





   Above killer tree warning signs I had photographed earlier in the Kingslake State Forest north of Melbourne.