Melbourne to Bairnsdale - Black Saturday

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Day 10 Saturday Feb 7 Melbourne to Bairnsdale

I’m writing this on the verandah of our cabin on the Mitchell Gardens Holiday Park, overlooking the Mitchell River in Bairnsdale. It’s 7 am on Sunday and it’s the first grey sky we’ve seen on our trip. It was even mainly blue when we flew over Kent. Talking about the weather can be tedious, unless it’s out of the ordinary. We’ve been very aware of the ‘Britain paralysed’ situation through the Australian media coverage. The Aussies are quite amused that we can’t cope with a bit of snow.

It’s the extremes or changes that make the weather remarkable. Having experienced minus 7 in Winchester before we left, it’s now even more memorable, as yesterday we had plus 48 (not a typo - forty-eight degrees) in Bairnsdale. Melbourne and South Victoria are used to rapid changes in the weather as the wind swings from the north (hot) or from the Antarctic (colder). Temperatures in the 30s are pretty common in the summer, along with a drop to 15 or so the next day. (‘If you don’t like the weather in Melbourne, just hang on for twenty minutes’) Recently Melbourne’s infrastructure buckled a bit - train services were severely disrupted as lines literally buckled , and the medical and emergency services were stretched, as cases of heatstroke queued or were turned away from hospitals. Sounds familiar? UK and even more so, France in 2003? Before we showed up in Melbourne they had just had almost a week of temperatures of around 43.

Our four days in Melbourne were wonderful, tourist-wise and weather-wise. As we tried to ignore the fact that we had to leave Melbourne on Saturday, we were reminded by the media (mainly The Age, and ABC news ) that the whole of Victoria (and parts of New South Wales) needed to be ready for Saturday’s potentially lethal combination of an expected one day freak high of around 45 degrees, vegetation tinder-dry and, alarmingly, very high winds from the north-west. The worst was feared and expected.

Thanks to the advice of Ivor and Helen, whose wonderful hospitality we enjoyed in Melbourne on Thursday night, on our journey out of Melbourne we tuned the car radio to a succession of local ABC AM stations, dedicated to gathering and providing ever changing advice to the people of Gippsland, the eastern part of Victoria we were driving through . We knew that fires were not too far away, but had no problem reaching Bairnsdale as planned.

Australians are good at finding snappy public service slogans, in the ‘clunk, click, every trip’ style. Which reminds me is that one of the joys of being here is that we’re a few thousand miles away from Jimmy Saville. The most memorable we remember from our previous visit here was the between the eyes ‘Drowsy Drivers Die’ on sign along the interminably straight highways. We haven’t yet spotted one of those - maybe it’s been replaced by the slightly less snappy ‘A 15 minute powernap can save your life’. A bit better is ‘Take a power nap’ and ‘Droopy Eyes? Powernap Now’. For the existentialist driver there’s ‘Stop, Revive, Survive’. No jokes possible about the fires except this, for which I’ll chance my arm. One of the presenters of the ABC fire emergency broadcast is Laurie Jeremiah. That belongs firmly in this para and not the next.

Yesterday the ABC bush-fire radio information service was at full stretch. A team of highly fluent, knowledgeable studio presenters dealt competently and with great humour and empathy with the phoned-in contributions from all over the state. We learnt the real meaning of phrases such as ‘extreme alert’ , ‘personal fire plan’, ‘evacuation’ and ‘ember attack’. I don’t know what happened to the people who were ringing in to describe the 50 foot flames at the end of their road, or that their neighbour’s house had ‘gone’. The fires we heard about were safely (?) away from the Prince’s Highway (the main, and our coastal route from Melbourne to Sydney). Safely away, but we watched the car thermometer reading rise steadily from 23 at our 7 am departure from Melbourne to 33 when we stopped for a coffee and to squirt ketchup all over my tee-shirt in Sale. Then, in the hour from 10 to 11 am it rose 10 degrees to hit 43. By the time we arrived in Bairnsdale it was 46 degrees, which is how it stayed all most of the afternoon, apart from a brief period when we hit Victoria’s personal best of 48. Then came ‘the change’, to which ABC had constantly referred. The wind was predicted to change direction, suddenly and significantly, making the control of the fires even more difficult and hazardous. Our ‘change’ happened between first course and pudding during Rosie’s birthday dinner in Metung. Outside the restaurant an Australian flag flapped one way as I ate my sweet chilli chicken, and the other way through the cheesecake. As I hopped out for a cig there was smell of wood smoke in the air from fires 50 k away to the north. Before I sat down to write this, (Sunday morning early) I grabbed some kitchen roll to wipe the film of black dust off the tasteful green plastic table on the cabin veranda. The whole holiday park, including our snappy red Toyota, is covered.

We’ve yet to explore outdoors Bairnsdale. Yesterday we hopped from one air conditioned place to the next: car, cabin, supermarket. Cool bliss by the frozen foods and in the restaurant. Similar strategy is used when, for instance, it’s bloody cold. A month ago, we dashed inside when the ears began to hurt with cold. Yesterday we were hit full on in the face. It felt like someone had opened the oven door as you bent down to check the Christmas turkey. And then someone hit you in the face with the turkey. But this was just heat. We had the fortune to get safe and cool(ish).

Just watching ABC breakfast TV. Horrific reports of fires, with 25+lives and 100+homes lost. ***Today the talk is of extreme alert in New South Wales. Will need to check situation before we leave here later this morning for Merimbula in southern NSW. Top story on ABC news (Sydney) this morning was from Victoria. Number two: NSW alert. Third: Floods in Queensland. All in the same country on the same day. Not so unlikely. It’s likely that Glasgow and Athens had different weather yesterday as well.

***Later note: The final death toll reached more than 200

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Comments

[Joe Bloggs]

I'm with you
I live in Bairnsdale. 200+ lives it ended up being. Just thought this should be noted...

[donnybreeze]

Bairnsdale - Joe Bloggs
Dear Joe Bloggs Thanks for the comment. At the time I wrote this entry, the death toll in Victoria was still officially at the level I referred to. Thanks to your reminder I shall add a later note to the blog. I hope this 'inaccuracy' didn't cause any further distress to anyone in Australia and in particular in Victoria. One day I hope we shall return to Bairnsdale in cooler times! I never did thank the proprietor of the Mitchell Gardens Park for making sure the air-con was on for our arrival that day. If you pass the door, please say a big thanks!