SMOKE ACROSS THE WATER UPDATEWith 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 28th 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 31st 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 27th 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.
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