Survivors recall heartbreak and horror of Kangaroo Island fire disaster
Exhausted survivors of the Kangaroo Island bushfires are returning home to survey the damage after a hellish week of heartbreak and horror.
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Vivonne Bay resident Rick Slager made a heartbreaking return home today after fire threatened his Kangaroo Island town.
Together with fellow local Graham Watters, he stood surrounded by blackened earth overlooking the stunning blue waters of Vivonne Bay.
Mr Slager had evacuated the area on Wednesday night, when worsening weather conditions forced him to flee.
But he returned the next day to help fight the fire as it raged near his home in crippling heat.
“I don’t think anyone on the island has seen a fire like this,” he said.
“There was no stopping it, we just kept falling back and falling back.”
Mr Slager said he watched water bombers “bomb the sh..” out of Vivonne Bay.
“That’s really what saved it,” he said.
Mr Watters had been caught in a burnover in his ute in raging fires the week before last Friday.
“That (burnover) was with a novice firefighter as a passenger,” he said. “I was holding his life in the palm of my hand.
“If I make a mistake, I’m killing two people.”
The trauma of that experience made Mr Watters seek refuge at the Western District Football Club shelter in Gosse this week.
He did spend some time fighting the fire but focused more on the welfare of others, providing food and shelter, instead of charging into the flames.
Much of Vivonne Bay was saved from the fire but the area was not without losses.
Parts of the Vivonne Bay Lodge were reduced to burnt, twisted metal. The manager of the lodge, owned by SeaLink, was distraught yesterday morning and declined to speak to media.
In a statement, the company said: “Everyone at SeaLink is saddened by this loss of property.
“We are committed to supporting recovery efforts to rebuild island infrastructure and tourism, including re-establishing operations from Vivonne Bay Lodge as soon as practical.
“We are thankful that many homes in Vivonne Bay have been saved due to the tireless and outstanding efforts of emergency service personnel.”
‘We stayed until it was just too dangerous’
By Paula Thompson
With six fire fronts raging towards them, Jared McArdle and his dad, David, finally gave up their brave battle to save the family’s award-winning Parndana sheep stud.
At about 7pm on Thursday, they fled to safety in American River as fire engulfed the Taljar Polwarth sheep stud.
Two homes on the property were lost and about 15 per cent of the stud’s flock perished.
“We stayed right up until we just couldn’t any more; it was too dangerous to stay,” Jared said yesterday.
“I was monitoring the Parndana fire but when the fire from Vivonne Bay started coming towards us, you could see a huge amount of smoke.
“At one point, there were six different fire fronts coming towards us.”
The family has been breeding Polwarth sheep for almost 60 years and the Taljar stud has won national awards for its stock, including back-to-back grand champion ribbons at the last two Australian Sheep and Wool shows.
While all the stock losses were not yet accounted for, David was hopeful the family would have 600 ewes and lambs left.
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‘I couldn’t sit there and watch those guys burn’
“I’m just so grateful we have those sheep left,” he said.
“I’m in my 70s and I’ve never seen a fire of this scale before on Kangaroo Island. In 1958, there was a big fire on the western end of the island which burned for weeks, but it was still nothing like this.”
David said one of the toughest parts of the fire was losing sheep that were a result of decades of breeding. “We’re producing really commercially viable Polwarths,” he said. “At least we’ll still have a good nucleus flock left.”
Jared said houses could be rebuilt but years of sheep breeding were irreplaceable.
By a stroke of luck, most of the family’s cropping machinery was being used at the American River property owned by Jared’s sister, Talisa.
