Stay safe where there’s smoke

“Stay safe,” is the refrain that ends every conversation or casual exchange, email or Facebook comment in the Huon Valley these days.

Cassandra Rolph, of Deep End Farm, on fire patrol in her garden near Geeveston. Picture: DAVID ROLPH

“STAY safe,” is the refrain that ends every conversation or casual exchange, email or Facebook comment in the Huon Valley these days.

Or I suppose it still is. These columns are written a week ahead, but last Wednesday, temperatures of 35C were anticipated for Sunday and there was talk of bringing in US firefighters if the fires went for another six weeks, so I am confident “stay safe” still has currency.

Last week’s column was headed “There’ll be peaches in the valley” and there are, but who can get to them?

Even as I prepared that column, fruit grower Edwin Morris cancelled a face-to-face interview at Franklin because he had to defend his farm at Glendevie from fire. That was three weeks ago now.

A plug for David and Diane Cane’s fruit at Franklin did them no good, because by Tuesday only residents were allowed to proceed south over the bridge at Huonville — and on Tuesday evening not even residents were allowed back to their homes.

The Canes had stopped picking fruit. They have a coolroom full of peaches and nectarines if anyone would like to call in.

I live outside Cygnet, with a good-sized hill between me and the river, and therefore the fires, but the smoke has been extremely thick.

And with it came an eerie silence. There is no birdsong, very little traffic on the road and no one in their gardens or paddocks as I sit in the ruddy, murky glow coming through the window.

I have a bolthole in clearer air, and there is nothing to keep me tethered to this spot where the charred debris falling is not of so much danger as the smaller bits I might breathe in from this particle-laden air.

But others are tied to their properties by livestock in their care and/or livelihoods, as well as houses and possessions, to protect.

David and Cassandra Rolph are at Deep End Farm, high on hill just outside Geeveston. They have pigs and cattle and market gardens to provide for the steamed buns they sell.

The two of them and Cassandra’s niece have been taking it in turns to keep watch at night.

A feature of the emergency is being able to keep in touch and share information. “It would have been very lonely in ’67 if you stayed to protect your place,” David said.

“We know where the fire is, we know where the areas of big danger are going to be, we know what kind of weather we’ve got coming, I would hate to lose the internet and being able to talk to our neighbours and support each other.

“I always knew I loved the Huon Valley community, but I love it doubly so now.”

If they were to evacuate they could not take all the buns they have ready for the Wooden Boat Festival and Lunar New Year.

Going to Franko’s on Friday night would be a respite, but would they be allowed back home?

Trev Wittmer and Linda Cockburn of Seed Freaks are staying at Surges Bay to protect the house he built and their gardens. Their seed bank though, has been evacuated to the safer shore.

Everyone in their neighbourhood knows exactly where everyone else is, but Trev says the relentlessness of the situation is hard to take.

“Normally what happens in these things, the fire usually just sparks up, goes through like a dose of salts, burns everyone out in a day or two and is gone,” he said.

“We have been on high alert for a week now, and likely to be so for more weeks. Sometimes I’m half hoping it will bloody come over the hill and get it over with.”

Jim Chatto has a vineyard at Glaziers Bay. He has evacuated all 9000 litres of his 2018 wine, so that “if the house and vineyard go, at least we have not lost a year’s income”.

His neighbours Terry and Nicky Noonan and their son Patrick of Tas-Saff are also taking it in shifts to sleep and to keep watch for spot fires starting up from the embers blowing over the river.

And, at the time of writing, other neighbours Matthew Evans and Sadie Chrestman at Fat Pig Farm were coming to a decision on whether their Friday Feast would go ahead in the smoke.

Meanwhile, in Idaho, my sister is facing a different weather danger. Temperatures of minus 48C were forecast. Stay safe.

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