It’s the warm westerlies on a hot day that still set Mum’s teeth on edge. Throw in a whiff of backburn and she’s thinking of her blood pressure and how much leaf litter is in the roof gutters. Being in the same house that bushfires nearly took will do that to you – even 53 years later.  

Our family had been in our house for 18 months when a fire that began in Mt Kembla in October 1968 quickly worked its way north. Thirroul’s Arunta Drive was still pretty new, with few houses and bush right up to our back fence. Around 4pm, as the sky grew a terrifying and beautiful orange, Dad called from work and said “Get out”. To a four-year-old, it was all quite exciting, and I have to say the adults kept the worst of it from the kids. 

We got word of a safe place in Coledale – a corner shop owned by a neighbour’s sister – and piled into someone’s station-wagon, and we were off, clutching a few earthly goods and a box containing a cat and her kittens, wondering if we’d see our home again. 

Dad was reporting on the fires in his role as an ABC journalist. He filed early and drove home, dodging smoke and kangaroos along the bottom of Bulli Pass, not knowing if he’d get through or what he’d find. 

He found bedlam. As the flames soared through the crown of treetops behind the house, he grabbed whatever he could and began thrashing out the embers swirling in the room-height space under the house. Random strangers suddenly appeared to help. In countless recollections to visitors over the years, it was that part of the story where the emotion would catch in Dad’s voice.  

At a critical point, the wind suddenly changed, and the blaze retreated, having scorched the earth to the gutter of the street either side of our home. In gratitude, after the danger had passed, all Dad had to offer the helpers was slabs of lamb carved off a leg Mum had rescued from the oven before evacuation.  

Dad came to Coledale and drove us home. The adrenalin was still pumping, and Mum was up in the wee hours pouring buckets of water over smouldering logs. Faced with rivers of soggy black ash along the side of the house, she finally cried.  

All the drama had got to me; I’d conked out in Coledale and woke up the next morning in my sister’s room; she told me to look out her window, where I saw a whole mass of black trunks. I’m told my jaw dropped.  

Even now, details I never knew emerge. I found out last month that a girl who became my sister’s school friend arrived from England that day. Having left lush Lancashire, what must they have thought, descending a scorched Bulli Pass. And I discovered yesterday that my sister’s bride doll, left on the evacuation shop verandah, had her dress singed by falling ash.  

Something that isn’t new, and indeed feels written into my DNA, is that we have been grateful for every day we’ve had on that hillside.