Kangaroo Island fires: How women are joining part of the firefighting vanguard
The days of male-only firefighters are well and truly over. Women have played a key role in battling the massive inferno which gutted nearly half of Kangaroo Island. We meet five of them.
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When the fire came through, there was no time for dividing jobs along traditional gender lines.
It was all hands on deck, especially on the farms at the front line of the firestorm that ripped through Kangaroo Island.
If you had a farm firefighting unit and could drive a car or hold a hose, then you were out in the thick of it, alongside your partner and neighbours, battling the flames, smoke, heat and unimaginable wind.
Alex Barwick is a relative newcomer to the island after moving over from Germany a couple of years ago.
Until just before Christmas, she had never even seen a bushfire, let alone fought one. Now she is a battle-hardened firefighting veteran.
She spent nearly every day, and night, for almost a month patrolling around Western River in a farm firefighting unit with her partner Gavin Solly.
“I would be almost offended if I got just evacuated and put into Kingscote,” Alex said when asked about how women had contributed to the firefight. “Really, you need two people there.”
Farm firefighting teams such as Alex and Gavin, who run charter company Kangaroo Island Fishing Adventures, played a critical role in battling the fires that threatened the island for nearly a month.
They have intimate local knowledge and the ability to move swiftly when the fire changes course.
The Country Fire Service estimates about 130 farm units helped battle the blaze on Kangaroo Island. Many were manned by women.
Alex’s neighbour Danielle Short and Danielle’s sister-in-law-in-waiting Lilly Buick epitomise the tenacity, resilience and selflessness of the farm unit operators.
They both lost their homes when the inferno turned deadly on January 3 but both continued to turn out and fight, Danielle with her husband Sam, Lilly with partner – and Danielle’s brother – Josh Graham.
“Hats off to all those farm units involved helping each other,” said Danielle, the mother of Jackson, 12, and Lochlan.
“We have all certainly been through an horrendous rollercoaster of events.
“It was hard juggling all the emotions – from thinking about the kids’ safety, the actual scary job of putting the bloody thing out, feeding and finding beers for everyone and then there’s the reality of everything sinking in.
“But you just put on your brave face and keep going at it.
“My heart broke every time you saw the generations of dead breeding carcasses, either on the side of the road or in the paddocks.”
To the northeast, up near Stokes Bay, third-generation Islander Ro Horbelt and her 1965 big red firetruck called Betty have been a hit with locals and CFS alike as the fire battle raged.
Ro has long had a “primal fear” of fires, so when she and partner Phil Smith drove past a truck for sale while travelling back from a wedding in Albury-Wodonga 18 months ago, they turned around and bought it.
The operator of the transport company that brought the truck to Kangaroo Island was friends with Ro’s aunty Betty, hence the truck’s new name.
Ro, Betty and Phil have blasted more than 100,000 litres of water on the fires that threatened their farm and wildlife sanctuary, Left Field Farm, and many neighbours.
They worked tirelessly for weeks, operating on minimal sleep.
“I don’t think there’s a difference if you’re a woman or a man at the moment – when you’re in a time of need and you see everything going up in front of you,” Ro says.
“Fire was my primal fear and now I’m like, ‘Where are the fires?’.
“I don’t want to sit in front of a computer. It’s just become something that you do.
“You see a spotlight (of a farm unit), and just go. It’s just been a rote (learning) kind of thing that has become almost normal. It doesn’t matter if you’re male or female. If you’ve got hands and you can hold the hose, that doesn’t make a difference at all.”
Georgina Hannaford, daughter of renowned artist Robert, lives in Adelaide but owns the property across the road from Left Field Farm.
She also has firefighting experience from her time working on Kangaroo Island’s national parks, so jumped on the ferry to help out when the island started burning. She will stay until the end of this month and is proud to be part of the cartel of women joining the blokes on the fire front.
“All the women on the farms, they just do whatever it takes – they do everything” she said.
“They’re also bringing out food as well as doing the fires and fences. Often in the media the focus is on the men looking so tired and everything.
“Whereas women do that (what the men do), and then they tend to go home and get food ready for everyone as well. They’re out there in the units with their husbands all the time. Just being support and being relied upon for everything really.
“It’s very tough for everyone – so upsetting, especially with the farm stock and having to kill the burnt stock. It would just be so devastating.”
