Fire, Flood, Pestilence

Fire in GoulBURN 🔥 

7 January 2020

Itinerary change 1

With our wonderful Christmas behind us and the three young people safely ensconced with family in Perth, we were ready to embark upon our new Australian adventure.

Several months before departure we signed up to an Australian pet and house sitting agency and arranged a stay in the town of Goulburn, not far from Camberra for a few weeks from 10 January 2020, where we would be living in a lovely modern farmhouse with full size swimming pool, hot tub with cold drink dispenser, sauna, large terrace with BBQ and the use of a car provided.

We would be looking after a dog, a cat, several alpacas, two horses and a very friendly llama.

It would be a completely different experience from that of the past two weeks and though we were a little apprehensive, we were really looking forward to it. 

We met the animals via Skype several times already and had even memorised all their names.

We even bought little treats for them all online the previous week on Amazon.

The job I was looking forward to the most was exercising the horses on a morning and evening ride on the family farm and surrounding countryside which the owner said would often be accompanied by kangaroos. 

Unfortunately, fate had different plans for us on this occasion.

The bush fires all over Australia intensified in early January and hit the Camberra area hard; soaring temperatures and strong winds meant that in some states fires were now completely out of control.

This led to a state of emergency being declared in the Australian Capital Territory and the surrounding areas, including Goulburn.

Once a state of emergency of this magnitude is declared, authorities are given greater powers to order evacuations, close roads and take control of private property.

Not long after we watched a news report on this on TV, we received a message from the people we were supposed to house sit for.

We weren't altogether surprised to hear that they would need to cancel their holiday and consequently our pet/house sit.

We assumed this was due to local government having banned any form of travel to the area but it was actually much worse than that.

They explained that fire had been closing in on the bush land around their farm gradually since early December but as they now feared for their safety and that of their animals, they opted for evacuation. 

We were fully aware of the bush fire problem in the Camberra area even before we set off from the UK, as our daughter and her partner went there on a mini working holiday for two weeks in early December; but they found the smoke pollution so awful that they left just two days after arriving there.

Receiving that message from Goulburn, brought the wildfire problems home to us in a way that nothing else ever could.

Of course, we felt desperately sad for this poor family who did not know what the future held for them and whether they would even have a home to go back to, but in situations such as these you cannot help but think 'what if........?'

Just one week later and it would have been us in that house, on that farm, dealing with this situation.

We heard before we left in March that this particular family was able to return to their home in late February, even though some of their out buildings had suffered serious fire damage, but so many others all over the country were not so lucky.

For everyone in Australia this was a desperate and very worrying time which would dominate all news reports from that moment onwards and affect every travel decision we would make until the latter half of the following month.

It was clearly reported in the UK as well at that point as we received so many messages and emails from concerned friends and relatives asking if we were well and safe.

Little did they know how close we came to experiencing real danger in the Goulburn bushland, had those fires intensified to that extent just a few days later.

As our plans to travel to Goulburn on 10 January had now been thwarted, we had to revisit plans B, C and even D; consequently, much of the previous day and that morning were spent online trying to decide what we could do instead.

At that point we had to consider where we would be allowed to travel to, if at all as the wildfires were spreading at an extraordinary rate.

We also had to consider what our budget would stretch to accommodation wise. 

Although we would not be paid for the house and pet sitting weeks in Goulburn, we would have had three weeks of rent free accommodation including the use of two cars and a large freezer full of free food.

News reports on this in early January 2020 were particularly distressing as the focus at that point was on the number of animals that had been killed or seriously injured by fire all over the country:

The CNBC's updated report on this on 7 January 2020, declared that fire had claimed the lives of half a billion animals so far. 

These statistics were so horrific that we checked several sources in the hope that they were printed in error.

CNBC reporter Emma Newburger, reported that: 

"Nearly half a billion animals in Australia's New South Wales state have been killed by raging wildfires in the last couple months, and the devastating death toll is expected to rise.
Roughly 480 million mammals, birds and reptiles have been affected since bushfires started in September, according to ecologists from the University of Sydney, who added that the actual number is likely to be much higher.
Wildfires have turned southeast Australia into a charred, apocalyptic nightmare as the country copes with a devastating fire season that is expected to grow worse as the summer months continue. Record high temperatures and drought exacerbated by climate change have ignited blazes that have destroyed more than 1,000 homes and nine million acres and killed 18 people so far.
The blazes, expected to be the worst yet this weekend, threaten to erase entire species in Australia, which already has the highest rate of extinction in the world."

This was one of the most distressing articles we had read on this thus far and it had an immediate effect on how we decided to spend our remaining time in Newtown and later on our travels. 

My immediate reaction to the horrific news reports and social media posts that dealt with the devastation being caused by fire all over Australia at that time, was to find out how we could help, even if just in a small way. 

I responded to appeals for assistance with fire injured animals, shelters for homeless evacuees and even ads in local charity shops (also known as op shops), where all profits were being donated to the Firefighters appeal fund or the Red Cross evacuation fund.

We did not know then that this is not as straightforward as it seems in Australia, especially if you are in the country on a holiday visa and you have no experience dealing with injured wild animals.

We completed several online applications for a variety of different roles.

I even had two telephone interviews for volunteering roles in an animal rescue centre and a homeless shelter in rural NSW.  

Whilst waiting to hear back from these and others, we walked to the Red Cross op shop (charity shop) on King Street, with several bags of clothes, shoes, and various miscellaneous items that our daughters had discarded.

Although I didn't really need anything from there myself, I ended up buying almost as much as what we had donated. It felt like the right thing to do somehow. 

Once we realised that we were unlikely to be immediately selected for the many volunteering positions we had applied for, we made online donations to both the Red Cross Australia and the RSPCA; we passed these links onto friends in the UK, Italy, Germany, Malaysia and the US who contacted us at that time with messages of concern.

We had been been advised by Australian friends to ensure that online donations were only made to legitimate, known charities; sadly crises such as these tend to attract the attention of online fraudsters who are happy to exploit the generosity of others for personal gain.

We also decided at this time that we would visit and support several wildlife sanctuaries that were taking injured animals from rural NSW and further afield.

We booked tickets to the Australian Wildlife Sanctuary in Darling Harbour for the following day and arranged with friends to visit the Ku-ring-gai wildlife enclosure the following Saturday 

10 January 2020

Our final day in Newtown had finally arrived.

As wildfires all over Australia continued to rage and travel restrictions to certain areas of the country had been introduced, we decided that it would be best to find a small base in the Sydney area for the immediate future and try and book a few overnight stays in a couple of different places if we could.

We quite liked the idea of a night or two in the Blue Mountains from Sunday to Tuesday then Tuesday to Thursday in Camberra, so with that in mind we opted for a very low cost Airbnb studio in the Bondi Beach area, mainly as a storage area for the bulk of our luggage whilst we were on our mini breaks. 

Unfortunately, once we relocated to that so-called studio, we realised that we had been completely spoilt in Newtown with our modern two bedroom town house, little back garden and fully equipped kitchen with state of the art washing machine.

The studio in Bondi couldn't have been more different.

To say it was basic has to be the understatement of the century.

It wasn't even that small; we're ok with small, but that place was tired, shabby and dirty and that is never good.

We arrived after dark as the friends we met up with in Manly in late December came to see us in Newtown that afternoon to finalise plans for our outing on Saturday.

They also collected two large suitcases belonging to our daughter and her partner which we would be taking back to the UK with us when we returned in March, as well as a little bag of ours with warmer clothes and jackets that we would need in New Zealand but certainly not in Australia.

It is SO useful having good friends to leave bags with if you are travelling anywhere for extended periods of time.

It had been another swelteringly hot day with the wind picking up as usual from late afternoon onwards. 

The 'studio' was at the rear section of the landlords' one storey home which was accessed via a key box just inside the garden gate.

On entry we found ourselves in a little breakfast room with fridge, kettle and toaster.

Milk, coffee and tea had been provided as well as a few cakes and a bottle of wine.

This room was fine and became our luggage room.

The bedroom next door was decidedly less fine unfortunately; it was furnished with old, dusty furniture and filthy rugs on a wooden floor that had an unidentifiable sticky gunge on it.

The bathroom was equally tired with furniture that must have been installed in the 60s or earlier and it had clearly not been properly cleaned for a very long time.

Later that evening several large cockroaches came out to greet us which didn't enhance our mood at all; luckily we had been given insect repellent which we sprayed abundantly in every nook and cranny, which kept them at bay for the rest of that evening but we realised that we had to do more to keep them away for the rest of that week.

Surprisingly the bed was very comfortable and the white cotton sheets were crisp and clean.

The mattress was also clean (I always check mattresses and I would recommend that all travellers should do that, we heard more than one bed-bug story on our travels and not all from people who stayed in cheap accommodation).

The wind outside was fierce and the rickety old wooden shutter rattled against the window violently making a very disconcerting noise.

Just as we got into bed, looking forward to a better tomorrow, our daughter from Perth called.

She was sad and weepy as her little sister had set off back to the UK very early that morning and she felt bad as she slept through her 4:30 am alarm and missed her taxi departure so she didn't get a chance to say a proper goodbye to her.

She also knew that it would be a while before they would see each other again, though nobody knew then that their next meeting would be close to 9 months away.

We too had felt a little apprehensive about our younger daughter embarking upon such a long journey back to the UK on her own, but we heard later that her return journey with Singapore Airlines had been excellent; she had been wined and dined constantly throughout, notwithstanding the fact that her ticket was super economy.

She managed to call us from Singapore and it was clear that she too was terribly sad to be leaving Australia and to be leaving her parents and elder sister behind.

We consoled ourselves with the thought that we would be seeing her in Bristol a few days after returning back to the UK in March; little did we know then, what exactly we would be returning to.

We didn't have air conditioning in that studio so we decided to open the window but as the wind storm became increasingly violent throughout the night, the mosquito screen inside the window and the wooden shutter outside rattled so violently against that we thought the glass would break so we were forced to shut it tight and tolerate the heat and a very noisy, inefficient fan instead.

They say first impressions count and based on that experience I totally agree.

Our first impression of that studio was decidedly unfavourable and although we cleaned it thoroughly the following day and sort of grew accustomed to it as time went on, it is that awful first impression on that terrible windy night that will stay with us forever 

Accommodation Advice 

Based on that, our first Airbnb experience in Australia, my advice would be to take your time to research what is available in the area you wish to stay in and don't opt for completely rock bottom prices.

We were hoping to find somewhere else in Newtown to move to after our Goulburn sit was cancelled; there was a town house available nearby, similar to the one we had been staying in, but it was priced at AU$180 a night, so on that occasion we thought we would try our luck with something a little cheaper.

Obviously if you book in advance, you will find better accommodation at much lower rates but as this was a last minute schedule change, there was less available to choose from.

This studio in Bondi only cost us AU$250 for the entire week (approx £140 so just £10 a night each); we would have paid more in a hostel.

The upside of that is that we could spend more on activities, eating out and on this occasion wildfire donations.

This was, of course, our first of many rescheduling experiences whilst in Australia and New Zealand, fortunately we did get much better at it as time went on.

Our motivation behind booking something this cheap on this occasion, was to compensate for our magical yet extremely extravagant Christmas and New Year Celebrations with our lovely daughters and all their wonderful friends.

We would never regret one moment of that, of course, but we were there for three months not just a few weeks and although wildfires were raging everywhere, we were still hoping that some of our travel plans would work out.

We did consider contacting Airbnb and explaining our predicament to them or finding alternative accommodation elsewhere ourselves but that would have meant dedicating more of our holiday time to admin (it takes hours to research accommodation options), then we would need to wait until 2:00 pm to check in somewhere new, so an entire day would be lost.

Besides, Bondi itself is a lovely area of Sydney to live in and it became one of our favourites in time.

We also had so much planned that we expected to be spending very little time there at all.

We had booked bus tours to the Blue Mountains from Sunday to Tuesday then Camberra from Tuesday to Thursday and we intended to give the entire studio a good clean the following morning but as we had to meet our friends very early at the metro station in St Leornard's, we had to put that off until the following day. 

The moral of this story is that if any accommodation option costs less than a hostel then it is likely to be grotty so stay in the hostel instead.

Fortunately for us, the lovely friends we met in Manly on 30 December, had arranged to take us on a road trip to various beauty spots in and around north Sydney which was wonderful and which would have been difficult for us to see all in one day without a car. 

It was just what we needed after the unpleasantness of the previous evening in our new Bondi accommodation.

The only down side is that we had a very early start.

We were due to meet them at St Leonard's station at 8:00 am which was somewhat of a challenge after our poor night's sleep in our noisy and stressful experience in our 'studio' flat.

We set our alarm for 6:00 am and were on the bus to Bondi Junction by 7:00 am.

From there we took a metro to Town Hall where we changed for one to North Sydney.

Public transport in Sydney is so easy to negotiate; even at 7:00 am on a Saturday morning after a poor night's sleep we arrived at our destination with 20 minutes to spare so we rewarded ourselves with a strong coffee and a delicious freshly baked apple muffin. 

Stop 1 : Balmoral Beach (adapted from sydney.com)

Why does woodland burn so easily in Australia? (wildfiretoday.com)

This is a question I asked myself regularly when reading article after article on the death and destruction that wildfire left in its wake during our summer in Australia in 2019/2020, later known as Black Summer.

From what I have read and from what various people have told me, this phenomenon is down to two things: firstly climate - Australia's deadly fires are always fuelled by a combination of extreme heat, prolonged drought and strong winds.

Many believe that global warming and climate change are exacerbating this problem and resulting in prolonged and more violent fire seasons than in the past.

Secondly, the highly inflammable leaves of Eucalyptus trees, produce a volatile, highly combustible oil; the ground beneath these trees tends to be covered with large amounts of forest floor debris also known as 'litter' which is high in phenolics, thus preventing its breakdown by fungi.

Wildfires, therefore, burn rapidly under them and then through to the tree crowns.

Jamie Kirkpatrick, professor of geography and environmental studies at McGill university Montreal, stated: "These trees are fantastically fast growers and great colonisers, but not great competitors.

Eucalypts typically let through a lot of light, allowing other vegetation types such as scrub and grass to grow beneath them.

They can live for maybe 700 years, but they cannot regenerate, if what is growing beneath them over the years becomes too dense.

Most eucalypt species, therefore (and there are more than 600 in Australia) have evolved traits that allow them to survive and prosper in fires that will clear that undergrowth."

He added that: "some gum trees, like the mighty, 100-metre-tall Eucalyptus regnans (also known as the mountain ash, stringy gum or Tasmanian oak), hold their seeds inside small, hard capsules; fire will instantly trigger a massive drop of seeds to the newly fertilised ground.

The myriad bright green buds that sprout spectacularly from the trunks of other eucalypts in the aftermath of a big fire are another kind of regeneration mechanism, bursting through the scorched and blackened bark within weeks of a blaze"

As of 9 March 2020, Australian wildfires had burnt an estimated 18.6 million hectares (46 million acres; 186,000 square kilometres; 72,000 square miles) of Australian woodland.

For those of us unaccustomed to life in Australia where the size of each state is at least double the size of individual European countries, these statistics were completely unimaginable.

72,000 square miles is almost the size of the whole of the UK.

Had this phenomenon occurred in Britain, all but 20,000 square miles of it would have been devastated by fire.

It is an extraordinary statistic and one that I found myself dwelling on rather a lot during those hot, windy and often smoky days in January 2020

Numerous marine species, including fish and prawn, use mangroves as nurseries during early life stages.

An accumulation of bacteria and mangrove tree detritus provide plenty of food for growing youngsters and, hidden in the thickets of the mangrove roots, juveniles are more likely to avoid predation from larger animals.

When the mangrove refuge is no longer required, these animals venture out into the adjoining reefs or the open sea.

In this manner, mangroves act as a critical source to replenish some of the sea's fish stock.

We ran into many parents with young children on the boardwalk nursery that afternoon.

I do not think I have ever seen children so totally absorbed by science and geography as those children were that day.

What a spectacular and totally mesmerising way to learn

Stop 5: Burns Bay Reserve (adapted from: weekendnotes.com)

Burns Bay Reserve is located on the shores of the Lane Cove River quietly tucked away at the end of Kooyong Road.

This delightful spot is where our friends' beautiful woodland home is located.

The Architects that designed their estate, created spectacular structures of glass, wood and steel that allow residents to fully benefit from the stunning woodland setting they are built into.

These creative modern structures are immersed fully into the woodland's natural surroundings and make you feel as if you are fully surrounded by the great outdoors; as, of course, you are. 

Just  a short walk away from this wonderful woodland estate is a spacious, flat and grassy park, looking out over a peaceful stretch of water.

Our friends and many of their neighbours, leave their kayaks there so they are easily accessible when they want to enjoy kayaking on the Lane Cove River.

There are several tables with seating in various spots on the reserve and electric barbecues are available free of charge for all to use, as they are everywhere in that wonderful country. 

We enjoyed a lovely evening walk there where we were treated to an abundance of wildlife all around us: cockatoos, parrots, lorikeets, magpies and even a possum.

It was the perfect end to the most wonderful day and we will always be grateful to our very kind, generous friends for treating us to this very full and beautifully varied North Sydney Road Trip