Stories - Stories - Stories

 

SMOKE ACROSS THE WATER UPDATE

With all our travels around in different states since the border restrictions for Covid have lifted this book is still hovering overhead waiting to be finally published.

Funding dried up and I then tried to source some grants through our wonderful Community Centre but with no luck.

Rev Ray wearing one of his many hats finally helped me to let go of this and give it to the Wonboyn Community as it is after all theirs.

It will be interesting to see how the project goes from here and when the book finally gets printed l know all those who love Wonboyn will support it as the funds go back into the community for projects which will lift them out of the horrors of the fire and its destruction.

Rev Ray is a Bushfire Recovery Counsellor through the church and still helps those who have lost everything and are still trying to rebuild their lives.  He recently travelled hundreds of miles to Jack Mountain where a man in his 70's is living in very basic accommodation while he tries to rebuild his home.  The shire doesn't recognise him as a resident and he has no rubbish collection and has to drive to the Eden tip once a month - such basic needs that we assume will be met but are not.

So just to keep this fresh in your minds here is a story about a lovely couple who had an annual site at the Wonboyn Caravan Park and were unable to return to their home further north as it was threatened by fire - they both had lung damage by the smoke of the fires and now Gerry Newman

has passed away while helping out by painting a home - he fell from a ladder and had very extreme brain injury which in the end took his life.  After reading this story you will see how much they did for others in that terrible time.

                                                  Evacuation Angels

 

11/2/2020 Deborah Jenkins and Gerry Newman were caught between a rock and a hard place.  Their home at Tallinga up near Tuross Head, and their caravan and annex at Wonboyn Lake, were both under threat, their northern home from the fires near Bateman’s Bay, and their home-away-from-home at Wonboyn from the Border Fire. 

They had no choice but to join the throngs of tourists and locals at the evacuation centres.  It was at these places that they showed their true colours, where they were given name tags that read ‘evacuation angel Deborah’ and ‘evacuation angel Gerry’, from the Red Cross.

 

Deborah - We’ve been coming to Wonboyn Lake for around ten years we started camping with our caravan then we acquired this onsite van and boat.  Four years we’ve had this site and we don’t use it regularly.   That’s the downside of having something like this.   We house-sit around Australia, and we have our own caravan so we travel a lot.  Our house which is at Turlinjah near Tuross, we have friends staying there at the moment and they are in the process of building a house, but in the next three weeks our daughter will be moving in who’s marriage didn’t work out and she has two little ones and was paying $360 a week rent for an absolute hovel, so that will help her get on her feet.  We’ll be off again soon but have a few things to sort out before we go.  We’ll be back to doing our old life again.

Gerry – I tag along with Deborah I’m retired Navy so I’ve travelled a lot – we both enjoy travelling.

Deborah – All our family that once lived down here have gone north, so they’ve all deserted the sinking ship and gone north, so Christmas time we’ve had to join the family there.  This year is the first year we’ve been here for Christmas for probably in 3 years. 

We left Tuross where we were house-sitting on the 28^th of November and we arrived down on the highway where Scrubby Creek was.  Gerry said ‘Wow look at that three great big plumes of smoke.’   There were absolutely gale force winds that day.  The wind was rocking the car it was so strong.   By the time we got to Wonboyn corner there was a low loader with a big bull dozer and about three fire trucks.  Someone had lit three fires on the corner.  If they hadn’t got onto that with the force of that wind Wonboyn would have gone that day the whole atmosphere coming down the coast, it looked like the whole south coast could blow up at any time – just the dryness the thickness of the scrub.   You couldn’t see what was on the ground it just looked like this is a disaster waiting to happen. 

Gerry – With the border fires, we have no TV or radio reception here and relied on the likes of Brian and Susie to tell us what was happening.  That’s when we first picked it up.  We didn’t watch TV until we were at Club Sapphire. 

Deborah – We really didn’t know what was going on except that morning the 31^st the atmosphere was different.  Before that it was families and Christmas as usual.  All the families were here doing the normal Christmas routine, sort of catching up, it’s like a family here at Christmas and Easter.  It was like coming home and we miss Robby and Bucky terribly, you know the old owners of the park, because we were part of their family and everyone had been coming here since they were babies.   Their grandparents came here so the stories here were amazing.  We were all just there talking that morning the next thing it came over dark and we saw a big plume of smoke go up in the air over the left there, and no one really knew what that was about.

  All our phones started dinging with the message ‘it’s time that you left Wonboyn’ so that was about 10am maybe earlier.  So that was it, everyone just went grabbed what they could, totally not prepared for this.  If we’d thought about it, or there’d been a meeting that this could happen, ‘we suggest you could get a case ready because tomorrow you may need to go’, none of that, and people were throwing things together randomly.  We left all our food, like I would have easily $500 of worth food, ‘cause that’s what you do when you come here you don’t go shopping out if possible. 

The next thing it was on and it was just lovely the way everyone left.  We all met up in Eden at various cafés but the cafés were all closing down.   Nobody had masks, we had nothing.  And then we heard to go to the club, who said it l don’t know, so we headed up to the Fisherman’s Club.   There were a few sausage rolls on the table, which was very nice the kids who thought it was wonderful, tomato sauce and chips.  So that night 17 or 18 of us all went for a Chinese meal.  By the time we got to the club there was no room at the inn, it was completely packed that night.   You couldn’t put your back against the wall and lay on the floor or stay that night.   No room   Someone said go down to a centre at the high school – they had nothing.   Eden was quite disorganised for this, then someone said go over to the church so we went over to the church hall where the garden is.

Gerry - Where the Saturday market is held.

Deborah - They went to the church and got the mattresses the seats from the pews and brought them over. Georgia and Garry and Gerry and l all stayed there.   They couldn’t make us more welcome.   There were people coming in there all night with nowhere to go, they had nowhere to go.

 Georgia and l were looking after two old ladies that had been left there by family because they didn’t want them in the club.   One used to be a minister there, her husband – no her fellow, they were getting married two weeks later and they were in their 60’s these people they were absolutely gorgeous.

The next day we came back here to Wonboyn to get a bit more organised, and everyone was leaving from here and going back to Victoria.   They said (the Police) ‘wherever you’re from, leave we don’t want you here, best to leave now, and get home’ so they took that good advice, most of the people, and it was a Police order. 

It was 13 hours via Canberra l think, just only to get to the outskirts of Victoria the way they had to go. They were checking that they had full tanks of petrol or diesel before they allowed them on the Brown Mountain or Imlay or anywhere.   They didn’t want anyone breaking down because they wouldn’t have been able to handle it.  We were stuck trying to get fuel in Eden.

So the next day the club was deserted.  There was nobody, except for this family that we know from here, and they didn’t go to Victoria.   They had three young children and there was Gerry and l.   And then they said to go to Club Merimbula.  The club in Eden was closed. there was no one there anyway.   Most everybody had gone by that stage.  Then when we got to Merimbula it was a complete different kettle of fish.  They were so organised.  There was Anglicare, there was the Red Cross, the Disaster team, all these different agencies. You had to register, and then we went upstairs and got a mattress, and then that day and that night there were just people wandering in from everywhere. 

The food, everything was so organised.  I’ve been in catering all my life and l have never seen such a well-oiled machine in all my life.  And we were there for about seven days.   For three days you were ordering off the menu, all this beautiful food.   By the fourth day it was pie and chips, bringing them out boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, don’t like that get back up the end of the queue.   By the time you got there it might have been fish and chips again, we didn’t know.  It was fabulous absolutely fabulous.

They picked Gerry and l to be people that were a bit organised and they made us Voluntary Angels.  If anyone needed medication, or any little job we could do, they’d say ‘are you right to do this or that old man needs to do that’ l had a couple of old men l was looking after.  I fed them lollies mainly.  I used to go to Woolies and buy big bags of lollies, and cheese and biscuits.   Old people like to be eating all the time.  Gerry picked up medication and prescriptions.  It was a fantastic atmosphere, really fantastic.   People didn’t want to go home.   Everything was so well organised it was amazing to watch.  If they could have stayed there they would have.

Gerry – You wanted for nothing.  I noticed that if there was something for me to be doing that needed doing you’d do it, you didn’t make a song and dance about it.  You’d see others doing the same thing, co-operation.  Not putting my hand up to say look at me.

Deborah – Then we arrived back at the Club one day after we’d gone to Woolworths or somewhere, next thing the clubs closed down and everyone was going, leaving this that and the other.   And l said to this lady ‘we’re at Wonboyn’ and she said ‘Yes, yes, yes, just go.   Wonboyn’s open off you go.’   I had a feeling, no it’s not open.

Gerry – This was an emergency worker telling us that was open, every thing’s fine.   The road to Wonboyn was closed.   There was no power, no water, no sewerage no nothing. 

Deborah – I thought there’s no use talking to this lady she’s misinformation.  So l found someone else and just explained that we needed to get into Wonboyn down Wonboyn road.  ‘Only two days ago this absolute disaster happened in Wonboyn are you absolutely sure Wonboyn Road is open’ and she said ‘no it’s not it’s definitely not open’ so they gave us seven days accommodation in a motel.  In the meantime, I’d got very, very sick and I’ve got saturated lungs from the smoke, so I’ve been on antibiotics and steroids and seeing doctor after doctor.   It’s been going on now for about five weeks.  I’m seeing one again for a blood test and am very, very sick.

We came back to Wonboyn for four days and I’d got even sicker and l was coughing and coughing and called my insurance company and had no air (also Gerry is an asthmatic).  Our insurance company said ‘your van is toxic and you have to be out of there ’and they gave us two weeks accommodation at Sapphire Valley in a cabin at Merimbula.  Apia Insurance are absolutely amazing, they had cleaners out here and l think the cleaner said ‘look it’s going to cost an absolute fortune to take everything out of here and clean the van’ so they wrote off our van.  We’re in the process of pulling everything down, so we’ve taken everything out of here and we’re going to remove it off site.   We’ve given the park notice and will be leaving in another month or two.

Tell us more about the evacuation centres –

Deborah – Every solitary thing was provided for evacuees.  There were towels and other goods in the evacuation centre.  We all felt like we weren’t victims.  They said ‘you are, yes you are, yes you are take anything you want’.  We went over to Vinnies on the Monday they asked if we needed money or clothes.  We said we didn’t need anything– the amount of stuff that was outside Vinnies.  You couldn’t get in the doorway where people were donating goods.  We could see that as an ongoing thing, when we were staying at the cabin, those businesses were all suffering and still today everyone is suffering– it’s not just in Eden it’s so widespread no one is going back into the areas. 

We had a few reports that the caravan park, everything, all of Wonboyn had gone.  They were even showing footage from the resort looking this way with Baycliff on fire just on Facebook.  Wonboyn and our areas didn’t get much of a mention on that 24hr news you were very lucky to hear anything. 

Gerry – We got word through from people up where we lived, all the areas in the Eurobodalla.   There were about five fires the RFS said and they wouldn’t protect any of those villages.  They were just going to let them burn. 

Deborah – They had to designate so many places that they wouldn’t actually save, but they would stop it going any further.  But they turned around at the end and said ‘oops we can’t do that.’   But everyplace that they said has actually burned down, and at our place in Turlinjah the fires were 5kms away, and we live right on the lake.  And there were three planes coming, one after the other, scooping water out of the lake, taking it five kilometres and going around the whole village.   And that went on all day.

Gerry – It came within to 1 k and was on three fronts and they’d done that three times.

Deborah – And all of our neighbours and our family that were left in the area they were evacuated four weeks running.  We lived at Nerrigundah for a while and Cadgee and out of 35 houses 25 of them were burnt to the ground, so we knew those people

Gerry – We knew which way the fire was going to go.

Deborah – Before the fires our visitors came from Nerrigundah, and it was about four days before this all had actually happened, and one of our visitors had put their van up there. They were late ‘You’re a bit late what had happened?’  They’d had a big fire meeting at the fire shed and he turned around and it was four days before on the 27^th of November no December no it wasn’t before Christmas it was after and he said ‘we’ve just been told it’s not if it happens it’s when, it was going to happen every man for himself’ and all the families had to leave.  Their husbands stayed to fight the fires.   I’ve got footage of them in the fire shed holding the doors closed, all of them, to stop what they called the dragon from coming in and taking them.  It was our friends, and they’d lost all their animals their dogs and their cats they’d lost everything.

We’re going home on Thursday to visit all of our family and friends.  But this is the first time.   We have had no phones, no nothing, and no one was able to contact us.  What do you expect with no communications.    It gives you a big learning curve on what could happen.  I was getting more calls from overseas and on messenger, also Susie said about messages coming from Holland.   The people that were contacting, it’s really weird, all your family overseas, and there’s millions of them, all know what was happening and were thinking of us.   It’s yeah, it’s amazing really.

Gerry – With the breakdown in communication, because it was such a massive catastrophe l suppose, a massive area of disaster is developing and there’s bound to be conflicting information coming in.   And what information was released to the media had to come through central in Sydney or Canberra or wherever they were conducting it from.   Then information was getting out there via Facebook to family and friend, and as you pass it on the truth sometimes gets twisted a bit

Deborah – There was a lot of truth that we were seeing and the stuff l’ve got on my tablet that we did get was the truth.  Just from Messenger, just all our friends from Nerrigundah.  Their journey in the car at three o’clock in the morning, leaving with little kids in the car and driving into this big ball of fire.  But they had to go.   Some of the footage we saw and the stories.   And l thought ‘oh no!’   It was just like being told that Wonboyn had burnt out.   To us it was gospel that Wonboyn had gone and we thought that was what had actually happened. And we were thinking of all the families.

I was worried about all those little animals.  We’ve all got pet kangaroos and wallabies.  Do you know those animals, I reckon a month before the fires the mothers were throwing their babies out of the pouch.  The mums left some, went away and died, it what was weird what was happening.  We had two little kangaroos, l called them the twins, their mum left them for three days.   She’d come back and they’d have a little feed, then she was gone another four days, she’d come back again and then she was gone.  Susie’s old kangaroo died right on her doorstep.   She chose to die.   And our duck – mother duck, it was sad saying goodbye to the animals.  They chose to die before the fires. 

I didn’t think l had anything to say. It’s nice to look back with fondness than look back with horror.

Gerry – But with that communication thing, people in the cities have no idea about what it was like here and –  

Deborah – They don’t want to know.  They really don’t want to know what is happening down here on the coast.

Gerry - My son in Brisbane sent through information.  People coming into the evacuation centre looked shell shocked.  There was a lot of waste and yelling out – we saw the best and the worst of society.  I can still see the older people reading to the kids.

 

Deborah and Gerry were unable to leave when the Corona 19 virus prevented travel.  Again they were in isolation unable to be with family and waiting for repairs to their caravan being completed.  Now they have removed their onsite van and annex passing it on to friends who are still waiting for their burnt-out home to be cleaned up – giving those homeless people a temporary home.  We wish our evacuation angels all the best when they are able to travel again.