Scars of South Australia’s Pinery bushfire remain as loved ones remember Allan Tilley 10 years on | Jess Adamson
Two people died on the day one of the most ferocious fires in South Australia’s history swept through. Their loved ones still wish they could turn back time, writes Jess Adamson.
Kelvin Tiller’s voice trembles as he recalls that day – November 25, 2015.
The day the Pinery bushfire, one of the fastest and most ferocious fires our state has ever seen, tore through 85,000ha of farmland in less than six hours.
The fire was heading straight for his family’s Grace Plains home.
“Our third child was born on the 20th so my wife Ali was at home with three children when the fire came through,” Kelvin says.
“Oscar was five, Scarlett was two and Nellie was just five days old.
“There was a certain amount of panic, but I just called her and said, ‘put the kids in the car and leave, don’t worry about anything else’.
“That was pretty horrific for them.”
Nursing tiny Nellie on her lap, Ali drove through paddocks to a neighbour’s home, but as the wind changed and conditions worsened, they had to leave there too.
That home was reduced to ashes. The Tiller’s home survived but the fire came within a metre, destroying everything around it.
In the chaos that day, Kelvin couldn’t find his father Allan who was fighting the blaze with a young farmhand, 21-year-old Brad Dennis.
“Mum was trying to get hold of Dad a fair bit. I couldn’t get hold of him and probably the penny should have dropped earlier,” he says.
“We’d heard Brad had been severely burned and had gone to hospital.
“I suppose it really sunk in when a local farmer rang me and said, “What’s the rego of your dad’s ute?
“Then a police officer stopped me and asked me how to get to Allan Tiller’s house.”
Kelvin’s mum Jenny knew something was wrong.
Her husband of 40 years had woken early to cart grain to the local silos. She spoke to him around noon, asking if he could buy some milk.
He got the milk, but the 69-year-old rang his wife minutes later, telling her there was a fire on the other side of Pinery.
“He said ‘I’ll be coming home, grabbing the truck and going’,” Jenny says.
“That’s what happened. He came home, jumped out of the truck, I grabbed the milk and he was gone – I saw him for about a minute.
“It was just so horrible with the day – the wind, the grit and the dust – he was just there and gone.”
Aerial bombers swooped in along with CFS ground crews backed by hundreds of local farmers with smaller firefighting units.
Amid failing phones, power outages and dwindling water pressure, they bravely battled the towering wall of flames as police closed roads and evacuated schools and nursing homes in the fire’s path.
And in those dark hours, Jenny Tiller knew her life would never be the same.
“If Allan knew that that fire was going to Kelvin’s place, he would have rung me, and he didn’t,” she says.
“I couldn’t get hold of him. I had the radio on listening to the reports. We had our ears to the UHF – it was just so dreadful.”
Allan Tiller, a humble man who loved his community, his family and his farm, was one of two people who perished. The other was 56-year-old Janet Hughes from Hamley Bridge.
Allan’s body was found in a paddock not far from his stalled ute, his mobile phone open on the ground beside him. It’s likely he was caught by a wind change.
Jenny and their four children – Leon, Fiona, Teresa and Kelvin – still think about those final moments.
“Brad ran through the flames to get out to the road, but where Allan was, I think he was trying to get to some house ruins in that paddock,” Jenny says.
“I just wonder what he was thinking at the time.
“I wonder if he was ringing me or whether the phone just opened when he fell. I always just wonder if he was trying to ring me.
“If only we could turn back time.”
This month marks the 10th anniversary of the Pinery bushfire.
The tight-knit community, still bearing deep scars, will come together at the Freeling FARM Centre on November 23 to reflect and to recognise progress made.
Mallala local Peter March, 84, says it’s an important day.
“We believe it’s the only one we’ll ever have,” Peter says.
“There are lessons we’ve learned since then and there are things that have come out of the Pinery fire that we’ve put into action.”
Those actions include a fire relief centre in Mallala, boosted aerial support, personal protection equipment for farmers, new firewater tanks, signposted refuge areas and a database of 200 volunteer fire units improving communication between farmers and the CFS with a co-ordinated SMS system.
Peter March says the speed of the fire took everyone by surprise.
“It was probably one of the most frightening times I’ve ever been through. It was basically hell on earth for a short period of time,” Peter says.
“At 12 o’clock that day we had 10 neighbours and neighbouring houses, and at four o’clock we had three of those left.
“Everything was just falling like a deck of cards.”
Like so many others, he was trapped by the unpredictable fire, only escaping through a neighbour’s property.
“It’s a bit scary to look behind you and see the road you just came down is closed off with fire,” he says.
“We’d never seen a fire we couldn’t fight in some shape or form – this was not fightable.”
The blaze claimed two lives, injured dozens more, destroyed 91 homes, hundreds of sheds and tens of thousands of livestock across Mallala, Roseworthy, Wasleys, Hamley Bridge, Stockport, Owen, Tarlee, Greenock, Kapunda and Freeling.
In a perfect storm of hot, dry and windy conditions, it wiped out millions of dollars in cereal crops, ripe for harvest.
“As far as we know it’s the fastest fire that’s ever consumed that amount of country in that time,” Peter says.
“The area burnt in five or six hours was the size of greater Adelaide.”
Longtime CFS volunteer Vaughan Chenoweth says while two lives were lost, it could have been even more disastrous.
“How more people weren’t injured, I’ll never know,” he says.
“When the Mallala school was evacuated, going on the wind speed, they thought they had two-and-a-half hours to evacuate the Wasleys school – it was there in 45 minutes.
“It was just the speed of the beast, quicker than anything we’ve ever seen.”
The Tiller family will be among those at the Pinery 10 Years On event later this month.
For Jenny, who would have celebrated her 50th wedding anniversary this year, it’ll be another reminder of losing the love of her life.
“I wouldn’t miss it but I’m already feeling anxious about it and that’s how that day has left me,” she says.
“It was just a traumatic day in every way and it’s just so hard to think that he’s not here.”
Kelvin says it’s a time to recognise bravery and courage as well as those who walked beside community members as they picked up the pieces.
“It is a milestone, and I think we need to acknowledge that,” Kelvin says
“We lost dad and Janet Hughes on the day. To be honest I’m actually really surprised there were only two lives lost in that fire.
“From all the stories that you hear, people just got out in the nick of time. There’s some crazy stories. There were others who spent months in the burns unit.
“It’s acknowledging those, it’s acknowledging the CFS, the Red Cross, Blaze Aid, the recovery units, all those that put a lot of time and effort in to making sure the community was safe and looked after.”
Honouring the past and looking to the future – a community united by courage and a determination to never let it happen again.
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