I did a bit of digging - here is the Wikipedia link for Darcy Dugan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darcy_Dugan
The reference about him leaving a note saying "Gone to Gowings" - that was a well-known ad for the Gowings department store (think - Bloomingdales). It was also known for selling men's clothing, among other things.
Thanks for the kind words, RM. I've shed a lot of tears over the last week, I think it's been very therapeutic. husband is feeling the strain also, I think a lot of people who have been through bad fires, are finding similar feelings coming to the surface.
We're now getting mor stories about successful wildlife rescue. A surprising number of koalas too. I'm surprised because they are so very vulnerable, they usually just don't survive. We have none left in our area, apart from one tagged male that was released a few years ago.
Nearly a million acres have been burned. The most intense part of the bushfires were severe fire storm, which nothing can survive above ground level. A bushfire can be survived if you can get even into a depression in the ground and lie in it, especially if you can throw some damp earth on yourself. Even a bad firestorm will bake the ground for only a few cm down. This is despite the intense ferocity. The biggest hazard from a bushfire is from smoke inhalation and radiant heat. The firestorm - the radiant heat is worst, plus the lack of oxygen. As I said before, often you don't smell smoke because it's all going up high. But as the smoke goes up high, so the extreme fire storm ***** up oxygen and you simply suffocate. Your body will pass out unknowing from lack of oxygen, even before you are aware you're short of it. You're still able to breathe, but it's lacking much of the 20% oxygen. You only get the suffocation feeling when your blood levels of CO2 go up. If your oxygen drops well before that happens, you won't be conscious of being short of air. I guess that's a blessing.
Of course, animals in the worst of the fires copped this as well. But we found in '94, that where the creatures were able to find a crevice or a hole anywhere, that many of them survived. We lost the larger mammals of course, but marsupials breeding pattern means they can repopulate fast (which is why kangaroos are often in plague proportions). In our area, deer were reduced to about a dozen, with no food. They were going to use the opportunity to eradicate the last of them, but few people could stomach that although it would have been the best for the environment to do it. Now we have thousands of the pests and tey are doing immense damage. But roos - a few found caves, a few found refuge in the 5% that wasn't burned. The rest - not a pretty sight. Then came the scavengers - the goannas, the crows, probably a few quolls survived and even possums would have turned carnivore for a dead roo. People in our neighbourhood were out cleaning up the bushland, clearing out rubbish only two weeks after the fires (there were still 'chimneys' burning in places, still dangerous) and found echidnas, goannas and tracks of possums. It really cheered people up.
Not all of Victorian fires will have been firestorm, but a lot of it will have been. Patches won't have been deeply baked. It's a week now, some green will be beginning to show. The first ones to show green are the grass trees (xanthorrea) and Cabbage Tree Palms. Not sure if they have Cabbage Tree Palms in Victoria, but there are other temeprate palms, I'm sure I saw some in the footage.
The grass trees (used to be called 'black boys', not very easy child but the trunks are short and black, crowned by a fountain of grass-like fronds) **** the sap back into the protective trunk and roots as the fire approaches. The fronds stay moist but begin to burn from the tips. Even if the fronds burn completely, they only burn back to the trunk and will re-grow fast. But faster than regrowth, is the sap returning to unburnt frond. In a week you can see six inches of green at the crown, it's like magic.
The Cabbage Tree Palms begin to regrow, new fronds beginning to form. They have a lot to answer for - there is a lot of resin on those fronds, I use a fraction of a leave or a short piece of stem to start the pizza oven. The fronds gleam glossy brown with resin, in the fire I can watch it melt and flow. I tihnk they're more flammable than eucalypt.
Three days after a bad fire, Banksia cones and other seed pods open their "mouths" and you see a tan-orange against the black of the soot. Seeds like slivers of burnt paper drop from the cones and fly to be lost in the ash on the ground. These will almost all germinate to form new seedlings. Most will be food for hungry survivors. If the parent plant dies and even the roots have died, then one or more of the seedlings will survive to take over. These trees look ancient even when only a few years old.
About a week to ten days after the fires, the eucalypts start to re-shoot. The first shoots are red and grow from the trunks. Entire trees will be covered in tiny red shoots, the trees can look like velvet form a distance. But within a few more days the foliage begins to turn lime-green, still with red tips on the newest growth. The trees now look like they're wearing exotic pyjamas. We have one landmark tree along our road which has old branch scars which make it look like a very buxom woman. This tree after '94 looked like 'she' was wearing a green feather boa!
By the time the eucalypts are green pyjama'd, the apparently dead ash plain will be full of roots coppicing, as trees which were burnt to ground level begin to regrow, from the roots which were safe underground. In '94 we worried that the waratahs would never come back because the fire storm through that area had been so bad, we felt sure the ground had been baked too deep. But no - they're there. And even the smaller flowers, the precious Flannel Flowers and Christmas Bells, they will be there in their season when the time comes. If anything, the greater amount of light reaching the ground will mean a few seasons of strong flowering of the undergrowth of wildflowers. Then the canopy will be beginning to thicken, so the flowers have only a few short years to become strong enough and tall enough to survive when the forest gets darker again. But there can be several flowering periods a year until that time; we found our Christmas Bush (actually a small tree) had double-flowerings for a number of years.
A lot of forest will now be permanently grassland, or low scrub. Sometimes a forest has to re-grow from the edges, to reclaim its area.
And the wildlife - there will be a lot more rescues of starving creatures over the next few weeks and months, but wildlife rescued now will be pretty much all there is. What hasn't been already rescued either doesn't need it, or is already dead. The roos will be raiding the hay drops to cattle and horses, so they'll be a nuisance for a while. Koalas will starve but wildlife rescue can help there with supplementary feeding in areas they know to be inhabited. They may have to fence of areas of forest to keep out dogs and cats, though. Normally people wouldn't do this, but when people have been so badly traumatised, every animal saved heals a little piece of the hurt.
As the bush begins to recover, people begin to heal. While the bush will never be quite the same, it will continue to develop along its own lines and will one day, not too far away, again be a forest.
I hate having to go through a bushfire. But I love to see recovery.
Now we need to pray for gentle, light rain. About a week of it. Not too heavy or there will be catastrophic erosion. But some moisture now will speed the recovery, on so many fronts.
I wish you could be here to see it. Hopefully, now the world media eye is on the fires, they will stay for the rest of the show.
Marg
