Rosemary McDonald woke to a roar like a generator, her mesh tent lit by a vivid glow. Along a nearby ridge, red-tipped flames ballooned into the night sky. McDonald and her husband, Mike, hurriedly pulled on pants and boots, shouting, "Get up! Quickly!" to the other campers.
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| Wildfire: critics argue that too much is being burnt too often in the Northern Territory. |
"An enormous fire was heading straight for us," McDonald recalls. "We had about 15 minutes before it hit.”
It was June 2014, and the 10 bushwalkers were at a little creek in the remote and ruggedly beautiful Kimberley region of Western Australia. Surrounded by dense cane grass that acts like rocket fuel, and dangerously exposed, they abandoned their tents and grabbed the essentials: torches, water, food, cooking pots, sleeping bags.
"We ran for our lives," McDonald says. "One poor woman didn't have time to get dressed and had to leave in her underpants." Within minutes they saw another approaching fire front, "massive and really terrifying”.
The hikers were experienced and didn't panic. They had used GPS plotting to mark their outward journey waypoints on a map. And they were lucky: a full moon helped them retreat to the safety of a deep gorge.
Read Chris Ray’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “'There'll be no park to preserve': Australia's fuming wildfire-control debate.”
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