THIS part
of Victoria was badly beaten on February 7, 2009, when fierce bushfires burnt
across our state destroying hundreds of properties and claiming the lives of 173
people who strayed into its destructive path.
Healesville,
the peaceful settlement positioned at the heart of the Yarra Valley, was
literally surrounded by flames on Black Saturday and threatened for days as a
troop of fire fighters battled to bring the fickle blaze under control.
Just
across the Black Spur, the infamous line of mountains that challenge even the
most confident driver with a road that twists and turns beneath a canopy of
towering gums, Marysville was all-but destroyed when another fire blew out of the
bush beside town.
I left
Healesville after breakfast and headed across the Black Spur to visit this region belted on
Black Saturday, and to find a couple of stories that could run Escape to encourage visitors back to a
part of Victoria that depended so heavily on tourism before the 2009 fires.
I'm
staying at a B&B tonight, a rural estate called Saladin Lodge, a idyllic property that welcomes visitors with a blend of country hospitality and urbane style.
This
place sits at the very spot where the Murrindindi Fire burst out of the forest on
the afternoon of February 7 and split to follow the highway north and south to burn
across the top of Buxton in one direction and Narbethong in the other.
Kim
Rycroft owns Saladin Lodge, and she was one of the many Narbethong residents
that lost property that day.
She was
in Melbourne on Black Saturday, but the friends looking after her country block
fled when the fire crossed the road and then raced the flames to Yea in search
of safety.
Kim's cottage
was destroyed, as were the stables and historic outer buildings on her
Narbethong property, but the fire jumped across the half-built shell that now
houses Saladin Lodge.
It took
her a couple of years to get back on her feet, to clean up her block and finish
the B&B, but now Kim welcomes guests who stay in the comfortable suites
that look across the recovering bush.
The undulating hills that surround Saladin Lodge are scarred, with a jumble of black trunks and branches still showing just how ferocious the Black Saturday fires were, but a carpet of green is slowly settling on the burnt land as new leave take hold.
The burnt trees are dead, and will fall in their own good time to be replaced by the saplings now growing in their shadows, and when I was walking around the Saladin swimming hole one of the trunks fell on the neighbouring hill, falling with a loud crack.
Kim told me her story at dinner tonight, taking more than an hour to share the details of that dreadful, and it was fascinating to hear a version of the story from one of the people who survived the historic event.
We’ve all heard the stories from that day time and time again on the news,
but those versions were sanitised and lacking the emotion that comes with a
face-to-face telling.
Sitting on the spot where it all happened, looking across the recovering landscape, and hearing
from a person so acutely affected by Black Saturday was both fascinating and
horrifying.
