Heart of the Nation: one family’s baptism of fire
At the first sight of bushfire, Martin Von Stoll wasn’t overly concerned. All that would change in a few short hours.
Saturday October 26 was shaping up as a social day for Martin Von Stoll and his family: after a café brekkie with friends, everyone went back to the Von Stolls’ place in Diamond Beach, on NSW’s mid-north coast. At 11am, their laughter was interrupted by the pinging of a bushfire alert on guests’ phones. Von Stoll went outside and gasped: 15km to the south, a huge plume of smoke was punching into the sky. The guests left in a hurry, but he wasn’t overly concerned at this point for the safety of his family, or their home. All that would change in a few short hours.
That afternoon the fire front edged ever closer, but by 5pm his two youngest boys, Zaiden and Riazz, were going stir crazy at home so he took them to a local beach. And it was there, as they played in the shallows, that the situation took an ominous turn. “The fire started picking up, gathering momentum,” says Von Stoll, 44. “It was menacing, angry-looking… the whole sky turned an eerie dark colour.” Minutes after he took this shot the RFS cleared the beach, and then two water-bombers flew over and unloaded on the blaze, knocking it back temporarily.
At 11pm, with the situation worsening, Von Stoll and his neighbours decided to evacuate – but by then the main road out of town was closed. Their only option? To flee via a narrow dirt road that winds through bushland to the north of town. Von Stoll led the convoy of seven cars, wracked with anxiety, for a single airborne ember might have brought them all undone.
He and his wife Chochie (they met at primary school, and got together after bumping into each other years later at a party) have moved 23 times in their 24-year marriage, mainly for work. They bought in Diamond Beach after relocating from Wollongong with their four kids a couple of years ago. It was a tree-change, of sorts. And all the recent drama – evacuating them to safety that night, and again a few days later – hasn’t blunted his enthusiasm for the place and its sweet community vibe. “We want to stay here,” he says. “Even after all that!”