The Currie Way Of Life: Face to Face With My First Bushfire

Last night things in town got a little bit hairy.

I was faced with my very first bush fire.

Karijini National Park had been alight for a few days but with no problems.
Yesterday the weather changed and the fire came straight for the town.

We were put on Amber Alert. The town filled up with smoke and I got a bit nervous.

We live right on the edge of town so if the fire came over the hill and down the side of town it would be 2houses away from us. I'm at home alone with the three kids as hubby is in Perth for a training course.
I spoke to the lady across the road who was also home alone with two kids. The three houses closest to the edge of town were all empty. It was just her, me and our 5 kids down our end of the street.

The main road out of town was closest to the fire and they were contemplating closing it at different times.

While I was standing out the front talking to the lady across the road the fire came over the hill. We stood there in shock and watched the fire come closer to town.

And then all at once we took all the kids inside and started packing.

I admit I MAY have gone a little overboard with packing. I wanted to make sure I could keep all our memories. I packed clothes and shoes for everyone, 2 boxes of photos, Kaitlyn and Bradley's "my box of firsts" (1st clothes, first shoes, first artwork etc) wedding dress, kids wedding outfits, the paperwork drawer in our filing cabinet, the box of wedding stuff (shoes, photo album, bouquet etc), a suitcase with the cards and gifts the kids have made for us with all the cameras and chargers in there. I also grabbed a carton of water and towels.

Once I had everything packed I made sure sprinklers were hooked up and got the kids seated for dinner.
Unfortunately from our kitchen table you could see the fire coming down the hill and poor Kaitlyn started having a panic attack. She kept saying things like "that's so dangerous" "they need to make it stop" and was breathing quite heavily. So we did some breathing exercises and I hoped like hell that she would sleep.

Come 7pm I was exhausted, everything was packed and ready to go at a moments notice and the kids were put to bed. By some pure miracle they actually went to sleep straight away.

I kept all the blinds up so I could monitor the fire. And let me tell you standing in your baby's bedroom and seeing nothing but orange glow and flames coming closer and closer isn't the nicest feeling in the world.
Thankfully you couldn't see anything from Kaitlyn and Bradley's room so they slept peacefully.

After Isla's 9:30pm feed I decided I needed sleep so after spending an hour checking every Facebook post and DFES update I closed my eyes.

Midnight I was up again and checking out all the windows and reading through Facebook and DFES updates. The fire was REALLY close. The entire hill looked like it was covered in flames and I admit I panicked a bit. All the updates were saying things were still ok so back to bed I went.

2:30am Bradley came in dripping blood everywhere. He had a massive blood nose. So up I got again and sat with him for half an hour until the bleeding stopped and the mess was cleaned up.

6:30 I was up and ready to start the day. I looked out Isla's window and could only see smoke. The flames were gone and we were looking safe :-)

Today I was rostered on to be parent helper for Bradley so bleary eyed I wandered into school. After a quick feed for Isla I was then off to play group for my 5 minutes of peace. However I left early to do food shopping as we had run out of everything including bread, milk, vegemite, lunch meat and fruit. It was pretty tragic. Arrived home in time to feed Isla and then rush off to get the kids from school. Home to unpack the shopping, make the dogs food and then homework time with Kaitlyn.

Dinner tonight was a very tragic chicken and beet root sandwich. Thankfully my kids are awesome and didn't mind at all.

Last night scared me, more than I like to admit. I didn't like being here alone. I didn't like that the main road out of town was blocked and I didn't like the idea of possibly leaving our house and losing it all.

This evening the fire has done a loop around town and is now in North Tom Price. Although there is a fire burning over the hills at the end of our street. The fire fighters have been patrolling the area for two days to make sure it's all under control. The town is still on a watch and act alert and we aren't out of danger yet. But I'm feeling much safer. And now I have a messy house and a like of return to unpack before mum arrives for her two week visit tomorrow. . . Although that visit probably won't include a trip into Karijini national park now!!