Heart of the Nation: Clifton Beach 7020

THERE was a weird feeling at Clifton Beach on the day the big Tasmanian bushfire took off, says Warren Frey.

Heart

THERE was a weird feeling at Clifton Beach on the day the big Tasmanian bushfire took off, says Warren Frey.

It was dead calm all morning. Families were swimming and socialising like it was just another day at the beach at this laid-back spot southeast of Hobart. There was some talk about the smoke haze hanging around from a bushfire in nearby Forcett the previous day, but that had settled down a little overnight, Frey says, and "no one was particularly alarmed - they were having a great time". It was, he adds, "the calm before the storm".

The 41-year-old, who's been a firefighter in Hobart for 17 years, had worked the previous night and was on his day off. He knew that strong northerly winds were predicted for the afternoon. That knowledge, combined with the hot conditions - it would later nudge 42C - troubled him even as he relaxed on the beach beside Pipe Clay Lagoon with his old friend Sam Hannon, who was visiting from Melbourne with his family. "I kept looking at the horizon," Frey says. "I knew what would happen when the wind picked up."

The northerly arrived just after midday, on cue, and the hills lit up. As the fire raced across the horizon - the beginning of its terrible march towards the Tasman Peninsula - its smoke plume punched up through the atmosphere with such force that it formed a pyrocumulus cloud, pictured. That fluffy white cumulus cap on top of the plume is the water vapour inside the smoke suddenly condensing in the colder air.

Frey and Hannon, who've been mates since they worked together in a surf shop 20 years ago, are diehard windsurfers, and Hannon couldn't resist grabbing his board to harness the breeze while Frey took photos. Clifton Beach wasn't threatened by the fire but it was horrible to think about those copping it just over the horizon, Frey says. "You know that somewhere over there people are scrambling for their lives and property is being burnt. It's a very sickly feeling."