The fire storm hit at 1.00 pm today, taking almost everything in its path. Everything caught on fire at once. It was horrific. Nightmares are made of this. There was no warning! Just total explosion of everything in the garden all at once. I have now witnessed total catastrophic ember attack.

It burnt down our pottery building, our kiln factory, and our woodshed. the house survived. It came so fast that in a few minutes that it took me to start the pumps and turn on all the sprinklers . The road was on fire and the driveway was alight. I had already grabbed my bag and started the truck, but realised that I needed another plan.

Luckily, yesterday, in a calm moment, It crossed my mind that I needed a plan B. So I built a makeshift Raku kiln from ceramic fibre parts that I had around. Big enough to lay down in, and behind a stone wall for radiation protection.

I grabbed my bag from the Ute and ran down to my ‘hide’. I crawled inside with my bag full of hard drives and laptop + back up disks. I had prepared it with a bucket of water, drinking water, a fire blanket and an extinguisher. I was able to watch the firestorm pass over me. All the tree canopies were in flame as the fire ‘crowned’ over me.

A terrifying golden radiation glow illuminated everything. I must admit to being too scarred to look back to see if the house was on fire. Quite literally, everything else was. The pottery burnt down as I watched, then that set fire to the kiln shed.

During the 20 minutes that I was hidden in the makeshift ‘kiln’, I drank my water bottle dry. More from shock and distress than thirst, as it was getting pretty hot. I have no idea of the air temperature, but it must have been very high, as thick slabs of old hard wood timber 300mm. x 300mm. were just suddenly bursting into flames. That’s hot! I was protected in my kiln, as heat can’t get out of pottery kilns, so heat can’t get in either. I was safe. But the air was so hot that at one point, I thought that i was going to pass out, I was getting a bit light headed and woozy.

When the pottery was well alight. I decided that discretion was the better part of valor for me, as the pottery was straight in line with my kiln-like ‘hide’. I crawled out of my ‘kiln’, and made a run for the house, which was luckily still safe. I realised that the railway station was on fire in the roof. I used one of the spare hoses to put it out.

I had set up 4 different Petrol powered high pressure fire fighting pumps. Two failed, because the inlet suction hose was made of poly pipe, and it melted. A hard lesson there. the best laid plans!

Still. I survived , due to my fore-thought with the small coffin kiln. I’m here to tell the tale.! I have no internet, no power, all the power poles burnt. I have my house.

Pity about the Power House job, that will be history now,

I count my blessing’s and my improvised kiln building skills.

I regret that i don’t know what has happened n the rest of the village. Time will tell. It cant be a pretty sight, I’m sure!

sent from my ipad