If you're an Australian

one of the things you grow up with is bushfires. They may not be close to home but you can smell them wafted in on summer winds even if you grew up in Footscray (a suburb of Melbourne, about 4 miles from the city centre).

Later on you learn from the news that Southern California and the South of France also suffer from bushfires and you don't think twice about exactly why you see, on the news, there are bushfires in those places.

Somewhat later you (meaning me ) visit Southern California, see the Eucalyptus trees that flourish there and you understand. But France?

And then, one day your boss tells you you're going to Nice. Great!!! And what is almost the first tree you notice there? A eucalyptus! I hugged that tree. It had never been to my home but it was as Australian as I am.

On February 16th 1983 bushfires rampaged through southern Australia. 62 people died that night. I remember that night well. Dr Zhivago was running on Channel 7 and during an ad break I went outside and smelled the smoke in the air. TV news broke into the movie describing how the bushfires were burning to the east, to the south and to the west of Melbourne.

The following morning my parents called. They had been living at Woodend, about 60 Kms north west of Melbourne. Their house was burned down. Feb 16th 1983 was a Wednesday - Ash Wednesday. On the friday I drove north and we went back to the house they had been living in. It wasn't there! There were exacly two things we could identify. The first was their TV set - a mass of melted glass globules. The second was the billiard balls from their pool table (and we only knew that by extrapolating where the table was before the fire).

My stepfather described the night as they'd experienced it. They got a call from the local police advising them to get out now. He went out the back door to see where the fire was; it was at the top of the hill leading down to their house. Seemed far away. So he cast about - what did he want to save? His TV of course! So he switched off Dr Zhivago (doubtless with a wrench) and took the legs off and put them in the boot (trunk) of the car. Then he took a second look out the back door. This time the fire was at the bottom of the hill and racing back up toward the house. So he abandoned the TV set and they took off. The only things he saved from that fire were the legs of a $500 colour TV set! Those photos of me as a cute 5 year old were gone forever and so was any claim I might have made to being cute!

They tried to get out on the Woodend - Gisborne road - but it was blocked by fire so they went back to the Woodend pub. There were close on a hundred people huddled in that pub that night; and the fire jumped the pub. It was almost the only place in that region that didn't burn.

As I said, I went there on the Friday. There was smoke wafting around; and at the piece of land on which my parents home had stood there were dead Kangaroos huddled up against the fence. That was the saddest thing.