I wonder if other Australian expatriates in cold London felt it last week. Distraction from almost everything but those bushfires. Repeated checks of the emergency services website maps to see whether the growing boundaries of fire-affected areas of south-east Australia – home – have edged closer to the last-known locations or properties of family and friends. Anxious phone calls and messaging at night, UK time. Efforts to imagine what colleagues on conference calls from Sydney mean when they say they are so, so sick of the smoke.
Walking to and from work on rainy pavements, in coat and scarf against the chill, attempting to itemise memories of bushfires past, in obedience to a solidarity impulse heightened by distance. Recalling the young reporter in the light plane with a door off to permit the photographer better images of the fire below, its hot breath shooting the plane up fast and flat, as if on strings, whenever the pilot went too low and close. Interviewing people in the ash and ruin of homes lost a fierce few hours just prior – they would talk as though they were rebuilding through the very act of speaking.
Stories told by friends: the artist who threw as many canvases as would fit into the back of his vehicle, and made it on to the beach to stand in the shallows and watch everything else he had burn – except the memories, which later became a fine series of paintings. Recalling the sombre news from one set of prospective grandparents about the young couple robbed suddenly of the other set, who were two among dozens of victims of a firestorm.
Recalling the worry about a missing junior staff member, her phone answered repeatedly by her recorded invitation to leave a message. She was reported (mistakenly) to have been staying in a small town that was almost entirely destroyed. Blithe youth arrived at work on Monday and said, no worries.
Recalling preparations for a beloved holiday home, in the valley where my wife spent her childhood, to take its chances by itself. Laying sheets of roofing iron on the timber verandah, to reduce the risk that the place would be set aflame by the burning debris that is blown far ahead of a fire front as it approaches. Driving away from the mountains with the kids ahead of that night’s arrival of a line of orange flickering on the surrounding hill brow. The flames stopped short that time.
A few summers later, we were away in the city when we heard that the place had been saved again, this time by a fire crew and a helicopter with a belly full of water sucked from a nearby dam. Sunday’s map shows the place surrounded on three sides by fires set to move unpredictably when temperatures rise again and winds change, turning the flanks of blazes into wide new fronts heading in new directions.
While it’s safe, my wife has asked a local friend to retrieve from the house some photo albums.
Now we wait, in London still.
• Paul Chadwick is the Guardian’s readers’ editor
• This piece was amended on Tuesday 7 January to update the state on Sunday of the fire map mentioned in the penultimate paragraph
