Shine The sun shone brightly on Edgar’s Mission on Sunday February 9th, 2014 as our regular volunteer day swung into top gear. Our dedicated crew toiled away under hot and dusty conditions as paddocks were cleaned of manure, chicken houses were made spick and span and the incessant and oft times boring task of raking and removing every last skerrick of debris about the farm was undertaken. Little did we know my penchant for the latter was soon to be vindicated. As the afternoon continued on, our first whiff of trouble came when reports filtered through of a fast moving grassfire that had broken out less than forty kilometres to our south at Mickleham and was heading our way. We were to later learn the fire was the result of tree branches falling on power lines. With a well-earned rest beckoning volunteers to down tools and farewell their new found piggy friends, mixed reports were coming in that the Hume Freeway to Melbourne may be blocked. At this point in time we could barely see the distant smoke that was to soon threaten our lives. As the last volunteers began their trek home, we turned our attention to the afternoon ritual of feeding our animal friends and locking the chickens into their night time enclosures, all the while looking to the south for any signs of encroaching smoke and keeping an ear out for the newly installed CFA app on our phones to alert of impending danger. We were comforted by the fact that only weeks before, at our request, we had a visit from a local CFA volunteer who ran through our fire plan and offered some timely advice to ensure our ‘stay and defend’ plan was up to speed should the worst case scenario eventuate, praying all the while this would only be an exercise. And praised we were for keeping the farm so clean and fire fuel free. As the hours ticked on and the smoke began to kick in, it was time to roll out stage one of our fire plan, again we hoped this was but a drill as the fire was still some distance off. But before long, fanned by wild and ever- changing winds, reminiscent of Black Saturday, stage two of our fire plan saw amongst other things the larger animals moved to our secure and prepared fire paddocks and soon thereafter as a precautionary move, the first round of evacuations commenced, with some of the resident cats and dogs heading to Melbourne. It seemed totally incredulous that a fire from the almost Melbourne suburb of Mickleham had not yet been arrested, surely it would be so shortly we thought. Sadly we were wrong. Continue reading here - edgarsmission.org.au/28725/shine/
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 04:00:01 +0000
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