Resilience After Bushfire

Yesterday we visited some people in Kinglake who had been through the Black Saturday bushfires. Jane and Sean lost their house, cars, possessions and garden, have been living in a well-fitted-out barn for about three years and are now just beginning to build a new house. Across the road and slightly lower on the hill, Julie and John's house survived unscathed, but embers did blow under the door and have to be extinguished. The fire by and large leapt over their garden, though spot fires had to be quenched. The intense heat caused most of their plants to drop their leaves, but they did not actually burn and most soon recovered.

Jane and Sean and their teenage granddaughter took refuge with Julie and John after narrowly escaping the fireball that engulfed their house. Both couples camped out on the unburnt lawn in front of John and Julie's house for the next few nights, feeling unsafe to be indoors. They watched the surrounding bushland burning and listened to trees falling and gas bottles exploding.

The aim of our visit was to research a book about garden recovery. Though Jane and Sean lost most of their garden (a few large trees were damaged, but did eventually recover), some plants did come back. Tree-sized camellias were lost, but a few have recovered. One is just now, after over three years, regrowing from the roots. Some plants that recovered are doing better than they did previously, and some (such as lavenders) that would not grow before are now thriving. Maybe this is as a result of the increased light, or maybe because of the ash from the fire decreasing the acidity of the soil.

Huge mountain ash trees died in the blaze, but numerous young trees, far too many and too close together, have regrown from seeds.

Jane told me that after a natural disaster 30 to 40 percent of the people affected leave the area. After seeing the remains and hearing the stories, I'm impressed once again with the resilience of the human spirit that enables so many to make the decision to stay and with the resilience of the natural systems that are driven to recover, albeit with different species mixes from those in place before the fire. I'm very grateful to Jane, Sean, Julia and John for sharing their stories.