SA bushfires: Stories of survival, loss and escape from inside the Mid-North inferno
A MOTHER hid inside the evacuated primary school with her four children. One family left their home as flames reached the back gate. Here are the stories from inside the Mid-North blaze.
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THE Pinery fire hit with such ferocity that mother-of-four Jenny Polley was left with no choice but to bunker down at Wasleys Primary School.
Mrs Polley arrived at the school to collect daughter Robyn, 9, and son Stanley, 7, when the devastating blaze began to bear down on the Mid North town.
She’d reached the school with seconds to spare with five-month-old baby Kelvin and son Fred, 4, when she realised the terrible danger she and her children faced.
“We were sitting in the car and everything around us went black,” she said. “There was fire on both sides. Then we just went into the school and stayed there.”
Mrs Polley waited at the school with dedicated principal Deb Fairey and staff Rebecca Seward, who had two children, Kiara and Noah, at the school.
“When we heard about the warning at Mallala, we notified all parents to come and pick up their kids,” Ms Fairey said.
“We waited until the last parent (Jenny) came. She only just made it in time — the fire went past after that.”
Landlines at the school were down and the group stayed inside the building as the blaze destroyed the bowling club opposite.
Ms Seward said she breathed a sigh of relief when she received a text hours later that her house at Freeling was safe. The Wasleys Post Office was also destroyed while the rear of the town hall was significantly damaged.
More: ‘We just didn’t stand a chance’
Resident Peter Klement was evacuated from his workplace at the University of Adelaide’s Roseworthy campus and headed straight home to Wasleys to save his cat.
He stayed to help fight the bowling club fire with other neighbours. “(The bowling club) is such a loss to our small community. When I heard about the bowling club, I rushed down here but it was too late,” he said.
One house on Sellicks Rd near Wasleys was destroyed as flames licked at a nearby hay shed.
At nearby Mallala, resident Paul O’Brien was moving his engineering business to the other side of town when the fire tore through his property about 2.40pm. Mr O’Brien stopped to help two female neighbours release 50 of their stock when he received a troubled call from his wife.
“I saw the fire just on the scrub over there,” he said, pointing to scrub 400m away. “I had only left for 10 minutes so it came around quick. I came back and saw the shed on fire. It was full of hay. My wife was trampled by one of the horses when she tried to open the gates.”
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Mr O’Brien said his wife was taken to Lyell McEwin Hospital with minor injuries while he stayed to put out spot fires on his land.
His shed was destroyed as well as most of his 75ha of crop. It is believed several properties on Balaklava Rd were in the path of the fire, and one distressed woman was pacing at the Mallala Hotel desperate to find out what had happened to her home.
Many locals were prepared to leave but those on the Templers-Wasleys Rd were lucky as the fire front narrowly missed the town. Mallala Primary School was evacuated earlier in the afternoon.
Mallala Post Office owner Craig Argent said he was aware of two houses that had been damaged, or possibly destroyed, by the fires.
“One woman was here up the main street and they would not let her go back to her property,” he said. “She has horses as well so it is really sad and just a waiting game for her.”
He said the town had been in lockdown for several hours as fires reached the outskirts.
“One guy in a ute came with his two dogs and he could see the flames 600m away at first and then before he knew it they were at his front fence.”
In the Barossa Valley, where the fire was headed last night, Cynthia Kempster left her husband, Allan, when she fled their Daveyston home about 4pm yesterday.
Mrs Kempster grabbed the cat and dog, Sandy, and went sought refuge at a park in Nuriootpa. She said CFS volunteers were fighting flames at the back fence as she drove off.
Sue Robson grabbed her granddaughter and two dogs and left her Freeling home at 3pm after receiving advice from the CFS. They drove to several towns before stopping at Kapunda, where they sat in the car for three hours wondering if the house survived.
“I don’t want to think about it,” she said through tears.
Brian, of Kapunda, fled to Adelaide about 3.30pm after thick smoke filled their house. “There was black ash, it was everywhere,” he said.
Kapunda Tourist Park manager Brad Valentine said trapped residents of the Mid North town in the path of the bushfire were “distraught’’ at their predicament as they gathered at the football oval. He said he had never been in a bushfire before “and it’s not one you want to be in’’.
“There’s a load of embers and ash — it’s so black you can’t see 50m in front of you,’’ he said. “People are coping not too bad but some at the oval are distraught. Some have been trying to leave but the roads are in chaos.”
Mr Valentine, 35, estimated about 200 people had assembled at the prearranged gathering point on the oval to await instruction from authorities.
Greenock General Store owner Rod Newett was lucky enough to evacuate the town about 2pm with his son and other residents before roads were closed.
“North-west of us you could see the smoke coming up — it was eerie,’’ the 59-year-old former CFS volunteer said. “The air was full of what looked like burning stubble embers all around the store, then we lost power and someone — I think they were CFS — came past and told us to evacuate.’’
Mr Newett fled to his home at Bethany in the Barossa Valley. He said a wind change had turned the fire towards Kapunda and away from Greenock, which is 66km north of Adelaide on the Sturt Highway.
Alison Taylor and her family fled their Freeling home and were seeking refuge at Morgan last night.
“My sister was home alone at Freeling trying to stuff our memorable things into a bag with my niece,” she said.
“I have nothing. I have not one thing. I was at work and I couldn’t get to Freeling.”
The family, including mother Elaine, sister Eliza and 18-month-old niece Lilly, had left home for Kapunda about 4.30pm and were told to go to Eudunda — where the petrol station had reportedly run out of fuel.
However, sensing Eudunda might be evacuated, the family decided to continue to Morgan, where they were yet to organise accommodation for the night.
Ms Taylor, 31, said the sky at Sutherlands, east of Eudunda, had become a dirty brown colour.
“The smoke is as thick here as what it was in Greenock,” she said. “I can probably only see about a kilometre in front of me. There is so much ash around it’s actually lying in patches on the ground.”
But Ms Taylor said her real fears were for friends and family near the fire. “(I’m) less worried for myself and incredibly worried for many people that I know (near the fire),” she said.
— with Ken McGregor, David Nankervis and Elizabeth Henson