Gabrielle Chan
The global politics of division rage on, but when a crisis hit, neighbours and strangers alike converged on our burning paddocks to work in unison
On New Year’s Eve, a couple of geniuses got together to do some circle work in their cars on our backcountry intersection.
They burned their tyres down to the rims, leaving behind tell-tale circular grooves in the bitumen just near the kids’ old bus stop. They may or may not have been the same people that lit a few fireworks at the same spot on the same night. Someone left the packets behind.
What happened the next day may be a coincidence.
A fire took off from the corner fence post of our farm into a couple of paddocks of wheat stubble. We can thank the harvest gods that a nearby neighbour spotted the blaze around midday.
I called triple 0. Local NSW Rural Fire Service brigades were mobilised as we flew up to that corner of the place in our own little fire truck. The flames swallowed our attempts to put it out. The fire gobbled up the wheat straw in its path like an amorphous red and yellow monster.
It was only minutes before we realised it was getting beyond us. Time is so elastic under pressure. It felt like pissing in the wind. So we turned to move sheep ahead of the flames. By then, the local rural fire service had arrived and more people were calling.
Do you need help? Which way is the quickest into the fire? Are the gates open? Where is the closest tank? What pumps have you got? My mind went blank. I write about agricultural policy, you crazy bastard! Don’t ask me for details! A sardonic smile spread across the captain’s face. He was calm under pressure. I felt useless as tits on a bull.
Our neighbours appeared, friends, people who had been at the pub until 2am or 3am on New Year’s Eve the night before. They were presumably tired, some of them hungover. So many people materialised as if by matter transporter.
They arrived – in their utes, on the back of trucks. Some seemed to appear out of the scrub, I really don’t know how.
They worked, spraying water on flames as wedge-tailed eagles rose above the paddocks to pick off wildlife fleeing from the melee. All the while, the messages pinged. Do you need livestock moved? Do you need food brought to the paddock?
I was overcome by a warm love for my community.
One man I had not seen since he was a baby. He was born when his dad worked with us nearly 30 years ago. He spent his first months in the cottage on our place. Now a tall lean streak of a man, bearded and tanned. I patted his back on the fire truck. “Lovely to see you, but not under these circumstances. You know what I’m saying?” He nodded and carried on.
You take this hose, I’ll take that hose, then I am directed into another truck, back to the tank, then to answer the phones and try to text information with shaky hands. Then to make sandwiches. Feeding people! That, I can do. I have cheese and tomato. Egg sandwiches. No ham left. Bread? I have frozen rolls and a leftover Christmas cake. Nectarines! I have the new nectarines that those bloody cockatoos have deigned to leave behind.
That is how it went, hour after hour. They came and went from the road, working with chainsaws, in bulldozers, on fire trucks, in their own utes. The volunteers and a green lucerne paddock contained the fire.
Fire investigators arrived and police had a sniff around. So many people I knew. So many I didn’t. Grown up kids who went to school with mine, capable and in charge. Neighbours gave their own water to put out the flames, to douse piles of burning timber. Even then, the wind whipped up more embers on a hot few days in January at the start of this mad new year.
It took four days before the last of the timber was out. Still they came, the local fire brigade checking all day and all night, at 12pm, 12am, 3am, 6am, emptying water on to smouldering ashes. The wind continued, lifting the dust and detritus to rain black snow on anyone who came near.
In the end, the whole week reminded me that though the world may be a challenging place in 2025, none of those people cared how we voted. No one was wondering what we thought about the most polarising issues of our time, which is why it has been so devastating to watch the knuckleheads fanning misinformation around LA’s unprecedented fires. Both here and in LA, volunteers just got on with the job of protecting their communities.
They just turned up, leaving their families behind on a public holiday to give hours and days of their lives to put out a fire at someone else’s place. There but for the grace of God, etcetera.
Because of them, no people, or animals or buildings were lost. Those volunteers gave me perspective. They gave me hope.
Now, the ground is bare. The “sleeping” tree, named because it grew horizontally along the ground, having survived hundreds of years, is gone. But many equally old trees were saved. The rain came a few days later and settled the dust. I still spring to my feet to check the horizon for smoke at odd times when I get a whiff of fire. It’s likely all in my head.
Yet calm has returned and you can see the landscape preparing to snap back as the birds return to the surviving trees. Have you ever seen a flock of swallows join together, rise and dip in unison? In 2025, I discovered humans can do that too. It is not as graceful, but just as inspiring.
