What a day!
I hadn't originally planned to do anything on Australia Day, I wasn't even sure I would get the day off. Which didn't really bother me. But I got the day off, and Ek & Grant invited us to join them and go for a drive and visit the Bridestowe Lavendar Farm.
We visited a few places on the way home, we went via George Town for a look (I haven’t been there in years) we also stopped in at Moore’s Hill Vineyard, a small but fancy vineyard.
That was our last stop before heading home, all was chill and we were enjoying ourselves. It was late afternoon so we thought we'd call into woolies in Port Sorell and grab some stuff to cook tea at Ek & Grants, but all plans went flying out the window when we got close to home and saw the smoke rising from somewhere very close to Ek & Grants house (it was hard to tell from a distance, but it appeared to be very close to their house) and there were two helicopters circling above, suffice to say we cancelled all plans and rushed straight to their house, for obvious reasons.
What we found was my block on fire, their house was fine and not in any danger, there were several fire trucks present, along with 2 police vehicles, and 2 fire fighting helicopters, it was pretty full on.
The fire was started on the neighbours place, no one is quite sure what he was doing, but it ended in a bush fire that took off across his block and onto mine. Here are a few shots of what we saw arriving home.
It was pretty much under control by the time we got here, still, pretty crazy stuff! I didn't mind tho, everything that burnt was now something I didn't have to deal with! The heap on fire in the above photos was around 5 times that size prior to this incident. I wasn't sure how I was going to get rid of it, now I don't need to!
I knew one of the volunteer fire fighters who was there and he yelled out across the paddock 'Oi Jase you should have had a digger here and we could have stacked it up and kept it going'. He was joking of course. I yelled back, 'Yea, I know where I can get one at mates rates'. Very shortly after that the firefighter in charge rushes over and says 'Do you have an excavator?'. One thing led to another and well...
I brought our 3 tonner around in a screaming hurry and we pulled the burning heap apart so they could make sure the fire was completely out. During this operation (which took a couple of hours) the lead firefighter came over and asked me to see to another fire around the corner, apparently it was a busy day for our fire service...
Apparently the second fire was lit to 'get rid of some bees'. The foam they use is interesting stuff too.
All in all a pretty crazy afternoon! We didn't finish up till 9pm, Grant came with me during all of this so we headed back to his place for a Whiskey.
The aftermath
A lot of this will be much easier for me to clean up now, but it could have been so much worse, especially if we had our house built..
Live Long and Prosper