A TIME TO HEAL
THE SKY WAS PITCH BLACK as the giant Currowan fire roared over Mt Scanzi and down the hill to Tallowa Dam, on the western fringes of Kangaroo Valley, about 180km south-west of Sydney.
It was Saturday 4 January. The fire had already jumped the Shoalhaven River and thundered along the Bugong Fire Trail, destroying properties in its path. It had generated an enormous pyrocumulonimbus cloud that loomed above, and as it tore across the landscape it sent bright red embers flying.
At about 6pm Alison Baker and Paul Williams, owners of Banksia Park Cottages, an accommodation property overlooking Lake Yarrunga, received text messages from the local Rural Fire Service (RFS) warning they had only 40 minutes to leave. Knowing they were in the fire’s path, Alison and Paul had already decided to bunker down at their neighbours’ fortress-like home. At about 7.20pm, generating an estimated temperature of 1400°C and winds of up to 300km/h, the fire crossed Radiata Road and reached their property.
Later that night, after an anxious wait, Alison and Paul returned to find their house in ruins. Four of their six guest cottages remained virtually untouched and they set about with buckets of water to try to extinguish the burning uprights on the cottage verandahs, in a bid to stop them from collapsing.
A southerly wind saved the village of Kangaroo Valley by changing the fire’s direction, pushing it to jump Lake Yarrunga and the lower Kangaroo River. It destroyed parts of The Scots College’s Glengarry Outdoor Education Campus, then raced uphill, hitting properties on Bendeela and Jacks Corner roads. The fire then
