‘We were extremely lucky’: This family narrowly escaped death on Black Saturday, but Kinglake is still home

Michelle Nash tearfully recalls the moment she felt that she and her children were about to die in the Black Saturday bushfires.

Michelle, her daughter Teagan, then 7, and son Lachlan, 5, were sheltering inside Kinglake’s Country Fire Authority shed when the terrifying fire hit.

Teagan (left), Steve and Michelle Nash at home in Kinglake. They rebuilt their house after Black Saturday.Credit: Eddie Jim

“I knelt in front of the kids and told them that I loved them,” she says. “Because I thought that was it.”

It sounded like a jet, Michelle says. “It drowned out everything.”

It was late on February 7, 2009. The sky in Kinglake turned black, then was full of flames. There were explosions as gas cylinders and the petrol station caught fire.

On that day, across the state, 173 people died, 120 of those in the Kinglake area.

Michelle’s husband Steve Nash also survived, but for hours didn’t know his family were alive as he fought blazes as a CFA volunteer, 12 kilometres away near St Andrews.

Today, Michelle says “we were extremely lucky”, although their home in Keith Street, Kinglake was among 2000 Victorian houses that burnt down.

Ten days after Black Saturday, The Age photographed the family, with Teagan clutching a new doll to replace one lost in the fire, sifting through the ruins.

Only their clothes line – with clothes on it – and a cubby house still stood.

“When the house was still burning, I came and took some clothes off the line,” Steve told The Age in 2009.

“They were untouched ... If I’d known it was going to come through, I would have done a bigger load of washing!”

Teagan studied what was left of her bike: a twisted pile of metal and its one remaining pink handle.

Recalling that night 15 years later, Steve says his and his CFA colleagues’ lives were saved by turning on a new sprinkler system that shielded them when they were engulfed by fire on Mittons Bridge Road, St Andrews.

Later, further along that road, he remembers, out of nowhere, “the whole area lit up with flames”. As the crew fled in the truck, “you could hear the roar coming towards us”.

Steve remembers his crew tried to save homes. On one occasion, “by the time we pulled up, the whole house was engulfed”, he said. “It just combusted.”

That night, as the crew drove slowly up Heidelberg-Kinglake Road to get home to Kinglake, Steve and colleagues walked ahead of their truck, carrying a chainsaw and axes, clearing debris, some of it still smouldering, that blocked the road.

They saw the body of a motorcyclist.

Arriving in Kinglake that night, he saw the pizza shop and petrol station had been destroyed, and at the CFA station, he reunited with his family.

Steve Nash and son Lachlan inspect the ruins of their home in this Age report from 2009.Credit: The Age

The Nash family, who were insured, built a new house on their property and still live in Kinglake.

Steve figured that a disaster can happen anywhere. He and Michelle felt that Kinglake was their home and community, so they stayed.

Steve now works as a truck driver, while Michelle teaches at Kinglake West Primary School. Teagan, 22, who is studying to be an occupational therapist, lives at home, while Lachlan, 21, works at a ski resort in Whistler, Canada.

Asked if she is a different person after the fires, Michelle says: “I think it’s made me stronger and more resilient. Now, when problems come up, I say, ‘If we can get through that, we can get through anything’.”

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