Saturday 21 December 2019, my lifelong friend Claudia Kindler, founder of Wirraninna Ridge Apple Cider Vinegar in Bilpin, who lives on the edge of World Heritage Blue Mountains National Park, texted me, “We’ve been waiting for days for the fire to impact us. Today is probably the day. Hoses everywhere, generator ready, paddocks mowed etc.”
Nine days later, Monday 30 December, Claudia and her partner, Greg Bailey, local bore water legend and expert on the Australian bush, bravely took me on a short walk to show me what was left. Their cottage and compact farm (making them largely self-sufficient) had survived the “intense day” but in the Blue Mountains National Park around them the native vegetation and wildlife it provided habitat for were decimated.
ABOVE: Wildlife and habitat destruction on an incomprehensible scale leaving countless trees dead and survivors scarred and in deep shock.
WIRES (Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Service) Blue Mountains Branch team were still working around the clock to reach hurt, hungry and homeless wildlife. The world looked on in dismay, donating millions of dollars to help their beloved koalas, kangaroos, wombats, possums, echidnas, lyrebirds, platypus and other iconic Australian wildlife.
Bilpin Rural Fire Service (RFS) fought the fires handicapped by remote and centralised decision making at the command centre in Katoomba disconnected from local knowledge and people on the ground in the community who could see with their own eyes what was happening. A backburn lit by NSW RFS at Mount Wilson on Saturday 14 December 2020, against the advice of Mount Wilson RFS Captain Beth Haines, had gotten out of control, roaring through valleys and across ridges, along Bells Line of Road from Mount Wilson to Bilpin.
The loss of the local knowledge of NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) rangers formerly based in the area who used to manage fire hazards with patrols and controlled burns year round (before rangers were retrenched en masse across NSW by the Berejiklian government) was another predictable factor in the destruction of homes, farms, businesses, native forests and wildlife by the Mount Wilson backburn.
Cool burns of understorey debris, desiccated by drought, would have made a difference. Instead the fires erupted, vaporising or baking every living thing above and below the earth’s surface. Nothing on the ridge behind Claudia’s and Greg’s place seemed to have survived, except for two funnel web spiders with deep holes and a few termite hatchlings inside a mound crumbled by the bushfire’s radiant heat.
ABOVE: Contemplating the aftermath of an intense day, on the ridge in the national park where the bushfires roared through towards her property.
Claudia and Greg are off the grid with solar power backed by a Tesla battery keeping their lights, computer and freezer (stocked with produce from their smokehouse) powered up. Bore water makes them virtually independent. They were prepared for the fires with a generator and hoses. They know the bush. Claudia once taught at nearby Colo High School. Nick Moir, photojournalist, renowned for his storm chasing images, was one of her students at Colo High. His knowledge of Bilpin helped him position himself to take many graphic photos of the bushfires from inside its epicentres.
Greg left high school early on, a decision responsible for the vast knowledge of the natural environment he developed by exploring it closely. He has an almost indigenous sensibility in his deep connection with wildlife, trees, plants, geography, climate and weather. He is a wonderful bird caller, magpies, lyre birds and others reply to his mimicry, and honeyeaters eat from his hand.
Claudia and Greg are deeply committed to the environment and community. Their brave faces masked the trauma of the losses of wildlife and habitats they did everything they could to protect but were powerless to save. On our bushwalks before and after the fires we talked about many things, one of them was the disastrous consequences of corporatised and centralised decision making at the expense of community involvement, another topic was Climate Change.
LINKS
Wirraninna Ridge Apple Cider Vinegar
Nick Moir Environmental Event Photographer Instagram @nampix
‘The hidden bushfire: inside the Blue Mountains backburn’ by Harriet Alexander, Sydney Morning Herald 19 November 2020