Peter Suelzle holds up the brass house numbers that were once attached to the gate post of his home on Coolstore Road in Harcourt.
The post has been incinerated by the fire that ripped through the Victorian town the night before, but miraculously the home he shares with his mother and his wife, Lynne, still stands. All around the house, right up to the brick perimeter, the bushes and trees he planted are still smoking. The sheds are buckled, their contents reduced to toxic rubble.
The family were lucky – their nextdoor neighbour’s house is burned to the ground. That’s the story all down this road that leads into the small town: miracles bookended by disaster.
Victoria’s emergency management commissioner, Tim Wiebusch, told the media on Saturday about 50 homes had been lost in the Ravenswood and Harcourt fire, which was believed to be a “conservative number”.
Access to Harcourt was blocked by police on Saturday, but that didn’t stop a steady stream of onlookers in cars – whole families, sometimes – who managed to evade the roadblocks before being turned away by frustrated members of the CFA.
“We evacuated just as the fire jumped the highway,” Suelzle says, surveying the blackened skeleton of his mother’s mobility scooter. “I left work at about 3.30 [on Friday afternoon], came home, then the wind changed. I saw all the ash coming and it went black. I loaded the dogs and the cat and took off. We went to our daughter’s place in Bendigo. We were lucky. The other end of town was hit even worse.”
The fire, which started near Fogarty’s Gap Road on Friday afternoon, jumped the Calder Freeway and burned through Harcourt and over Mount Alexander, taking out essential telecommunications, water, sewage and rail infrastructure, including the broadcasting capacity for ABC local radio – which broadcasts emergency alerts.
Homes in Harcourt, Castlemaine and surrounding areas lost power and internet, as well as water pressure. The Suelzles were able to access commercial radio for updates.
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A little way up the road, Chris and Augustine Sheppard sit outside their burned-out investment block. The house where they live, on a different block, is safe.
“I couldn’t find the cat yesterday so I got the dogs, let the chooks out and left for Castlemaine,” Augustine says. “We obviously didn’t sleep last night and as soon as we got up we came back to see if we could get in.”
They haven’t yet been able to get hold of their immediate neighbours whose houses have been destroyed.
Local man Brian “Buzz” Nunn stayed in town to protect the kindergarten.
Safely united with a schooner on Saturday, Nunn describes fighting the fires for five hours on Friday, even as his family relentlessly called his phone to check on his whereabouts.
Nunn says he saw the fire approach over a hill and tried to put it out with his bobcat tracks. Unable to contain it, he jumped into his ute, left the keys in the ignition and decided to join his neighbour Pam in protecting the houses with water from her tank.
“When [Harcourt] Pine Centre burned down it knocked over a fire hydrant so we had to use the watering cans and bins that Pam was handing over her fence.”
That worked for a while, but then the fire started licking up the stormwater downpipe of the kindergarten and also ignited the walkway.
“I raced out there, going back and forth to the neighbour’s, but I ran out of water and I was getting buggered. Next minute, Redesdale Fire Brigade turned up and got it under control.”
‘We’re not out of danger’
As the devastating bushfire ripped through Mount Alexander, Prue Walduck and Ada Milley took it in turns keeping watch overnight.
While others evacuated, they stayed on their Harcourt North property to defend their home – and their alpacas.
“I’ve got females due to birth. The first one’s due in three days,” Walduck says.
Walduck says being in the dark and unable to see the surrounding landscape made it harder to tell if the fire was heading for them.
“Sitting on the lawn at two o’clock in the morning, it was quite calm, the wind had dropped, but there was no frame of reference to know where it actually was,” she says.
“There was a predicted wind change that would have turned it around straight back on us.
“So we took it in two- and three-hour turns. If it had turned our way, we were the first ones in our little community so we were on guard for ourselves and for our neighbours – most of them have left, but five are still here.”
The couple have a straw bale house – which hardly sounds fireproof, but it is concrete rendered, making it relatively safe. They planned to herd the alpacas into a shearing shed with a concrete floor, and to move them out quickly if necessary.
Now Walduck is starting to worry about running out of fodder.
At Blackwood Orchard in Harcourt North, Colin Pickering describes the “scorched earth” in the wake of the fire, which has left him without power.
“There are still a lot of sources of reignition, so we’re watching that,” he says.
“But compared to a person who’s lost everything, I’ve got no hassles.”
Walduck and Milley were planning another night-time vigil.
“We’re not out of danger,” Walduck says. “Another wind change could bring it towards us.”
100km/h winds
At a community meeting in Castlemaine Town Hall on Saturday afternoon, authorities were unable to say how many houses had been lost in Harcourt, but the majority of public buildings had been saved, including the primary school. The town’s much-loved miniature railway was damaged but intact, while the Coolstore Cafe was destroyed.
The CFA incident controller for Ravenswood, Michael Masters, said the situation was still too dynamic to provide solid answers or to allow residents to return to their homes.
The Mount Alexander mayor, Toby Heydon, said the local leadership had been working to coordinate the fire response, even as some staff and councillors lost their homes and properties.
At a later meeting in Kyneton, Masters apologised to the Harcourt community.
“Despite the best efforts of all the emergency responders we weren’t able to do what our main task was, and keep people safe, and I apologise for that,” Masters said.
Masters said the fire “ran really quickly … under 100km/h plus winds” and firefighters were unable to get close enough to control the spread.
As the fire crested Mount Alexander it sent spot fires 7km east. “That’s very significant fire behaviour,” Masters said.
The Calder Freeway, which was closed on Friday afternoon, would be reopened Saturday evening, he said.
The fire took out the water processing facility and sewage facility in Harcourt as well as powerlines, leaving the town without water, sewage and electricity. Masters said the loss of ABC local radio was alarming.
“If it was just broadcasting the Test cricket it would not particularly bother me … but it’s our emergency broadcasting partner. So our ability to deliver advice and warnings to the community has been significantly impacted.”
He said local radio Phoenix FM 106.7 was rebroadcasting ABC local radio.
Also destroyed was a transmission line which provides back up power to the nearby larger town of Castlemaine, “so we have no redundancy”.
Heydon said “the whole of the shire was effectively a red zone yesterday”.
A recovery centre is due to open in Castlemaine from Monday morning.
