Kangaroo Island bushfire victim John Symons tells his remarkable survival story
A Kangaroo Island farmer has told of his miraculous survival from a firestorm, and of his wife’s despair when she thought her husband had perished in his burnt-out car.
SA News
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Kangaroo Island farmer John Symons bunkered down in the cabin of his ute and hoped for the best.
A raging inferno was approaching from the west and he knew he was trapped.
The wiry 75-year-old farmer had lost contact with his wife Jo, who had been following in a separate vehicle as the couple headed for a nearby airstrip, where they had planned to take refuge.
In the chaos of the flames, smoke and raging 100km/h winds, the two vehicles were separated, and John and his dogs Wal and Homer found themselves alone on Turkey Lane Rd, Little River, northwest of Parndana.
“I had been out trying to get sheep up the road and I got back to the house as The Scrub was catching alight,” John said.
“My wife was there and she was just leaving. The aim was to get to the airstrip. That was going to be our refuge. I missed it. I couldn’t find it. So my ute is down there on the corner. Incinerated.
“I stayed with the ute until it was too hot to be there anymore and managed to get out to the paddock.”
John was able to defy the gale-force wind and walk back through an already-burnt paddock to his daughter’s home about 200m away.
“I didn’t get burnt but my eyes were cut to ribbons (by the smoke and heat) and I was a bit shell-shocked,” he said.
“Fortunately, my wife got into the airstrip and she survived fine, but, yeah, I lost the ute.”
A burnt-out shell of the trusty Holden was all that remained on the side of the dirt road, on the corner of Johncock Rd.
John’s dogs Wal and Homer perished.
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The couple also lost the family home they had built more than 50 years ago and lived in since their wedding in 1969.
The home of their daughter Hannah Robins, son-in-law Brian and granddaughter Celene, survived the January 3 firestorm.
The houses are about 250m apart on the family farm, called Turkey Lane Merinos. The families also lost about 45km of fencing, a storage shed and numerous pieces of farming equipment.
Only about 10 per cent of the 540ha property was untouched by the inferno, and John believes nearly half of their 5500 sheep will perish.
For a terrifying period during the blaze, both John and Jo were unaware if the other had survived.
At one stage, Jo drove down the road and saw John’s burnt-out ute. She returned to the airstrip, still unsure of her husband’s fate.
“I waited until it had blown over enough that I could drive back down here,” Jo said.
“And when I went past the ute, I just looked in there and I thought if John was in there, that’s the end of him.
“I drove up the daughter’s drive and that was blocked off with dead trees. I dropped over at our drive, and that was blocked off and it was still blowing and burning.
“And I just went back to the airport because that was the safest place. I just waited there for about half an hour.
“I kept the car running and I just would move it up a little bit backwards and forwards so that the tyres didn’t burn.
“I had a dog in with me. And I had wet blankets all over me so I just sat it out up there and then in the rear-vision mirror, I could see these lights and a four-wheeler coming.”
Jo struggles to put into words how she felt during the period after discovering the burnt-out ute and then seeing John arrive at the airstrip on a quad bike.
“I just sat there and thought, you know, if he’s dead, he’s dead,” she said.
“What can you do about it? You know, you are always just hoping. I don’t know, I didn’t really think too much about it.
“And then once I saw the four-wheeler … there was still so much chaos going on that we didn’t really have time for emotion.”
John’s voice wavers with emotion when he recalls Jo’s encounter with the car and being unaware of his fate. It had been their 51st wedding anniversary.
John said he was angry the fire was allowed to get out of Flinders Chase National Park, where it had been burning for days beforehand.
“I believe it should have been stopped at the Chase, that’s what should have happened,” he said.
“If they were allowed in there with ‘dozers’ … someone’s got a lot to answer for.”
John estimates it will take about seven years to rebuild the business, which the family has gradually grown over the past two decades.
“It’s going to be a long, hard slog,” he said.
“We’re just going to have to rebuild. There’s no other option. Fortunately, I’m still reasonably fit.”
In the pragmatic manner typical of many of the farmers hit by the fires, John shrugs his shoulders when offered condolences.
“Oh well, it’s happened now,” he said. “We’re alive. You just get on with life.”
