Busselton 22nd Feb: With appreciation to the Red Cross

The previous two days, the weekend, had been very low key and chilled out - mostly involving spending the day on the beach playing uke, reading, listening to music and generally just absorbing the heat. Not overly exciting to write (or read) about but still nice and relaxing in an 'oh this isn't work' fashion. This day started out in an identical fashion and yet by its end would find itself worthy of an entire blog entry for itself as well (and clearly this is secondary to giving me something dramatic to relate) as keeping the emergency services busy for an evening. So enough buildup and foreshadowing, read on...

Walking back, none too fast, from the beach I couldn't help but notice a giant black/grey cloud dominating the sky. At first it appeared small and I didn't pay it much thought but as I progressed it got bigger and bigger. Partly it probably was getting bigger but a large contributing factor had to be that I was getting closer to it...in fact I seemed to be heading directly for it. What had started out as hilarious ponderings along the lines of 'I wonder if thats the backpackers burning down' became (somehow) less amusing I closed into the street, the cloud/smoke giving the impression it was much later than it actually was. I didn't exactly run as such but I'd be lying if I said I maintained the no-worries amble I'd departed the beach with.

Thankfully (ain't that an understatment) the hostel was not a burning wreak...I don't know about you but losing all my possesions in this half of the world would have put a serious damper on my day. True, I had my wallet , passport and phone on me so (considering insurance) it wouldn't have been the total end of the world...but kinda annoying none the less. Insider people seem oddly unconcerned about the raging inferno directly behind us. Most are inside cooking but a couple are outside in full view. Hmmm, maybe I'm just overreacting...maybe this is just a typical Australian occurance and in a few months I'll consider what right now seems the perfect preceder to the exclamation 'Run!' to be rather run of the mill, if not outright boring. Such suspicions prove ever so slightly off the mark as another backpacker comes pelting through the door on a bike shouting 'FIRE!' and pointing...well, pointing everywhere really. Turns out, somehow, that nobody had notice yet.

And then the power went out.

The lack of noise meant that the sirens screeching around the neighbourhood were brought to their proper place in the foreground. The fire had everybodies attention now, still there wasn't at any point a feeling of panic or even concern although there was some annoyance, mostly from those cooking whose food was now runined. We watched the fire for a little while, some headed off on bikes to try and get a better understanding of what was happening. In retrospect when we had to move inside because the smoke was getting so thick that to remain outside was to be constantly vigorously rubbing your eyes we really should have realised things would get worse before they got better. Instead I simply sat on the sofa, poured myself a glass of wine and watched Busselton burn.

The wind is in our direction...perhaps we should have our passports at the ready...

Hmmm, the roof of the building 2 doors down is alight...yeah perhaps a swift exit is called for...

In complete and total disregard to two decades of fire safety messages we decided that our possesions were actually worth risking our lives for and so took a couple of minutes to pack before we left. One clear advanatge of being a backpacker is that all your stuff is already in a bag and as such it takes less than a minute to pack everything away and be on the move. Still, I must admit some envy for those who were planning to leave in the morning and as such were already nice and packed! The smoke was so bad by this point that I decided that having my eyes open would be pointless, and painful besides. So I took a good aim for the exit, closed my eyes and went...that it turns out I know my way around the hostel with my eyes closed could perhaps be seen as the final proog that I've been here too long!

Evidentally we wouldn't have been able to enjoy the smokey charm of the hostel any longer even if we wanted to because, as we crammed all our bags into a car across the road, the police stopped allowing people back in. We've been officially evacuated. Wonderful. Such restrictions put to bed out plans to go back and collect the bags of those currently working, meaning many would have the memorable experience of driving back from work to hit a police roadblock and then spending hours wondering if they had more in the world than the cloths on their back. On guy who had been slow to collect his stuff, so slow infact that he had no more than the aformentioned cloths on back, attempted a ninja-style mission to bypass the police and retrieve...well, anything would have been a plus I reckon. It was a little harsh but I must hold my hands up to laughing when he was almost instantly thrown out.

We stayed in the carpark a little while before opting to head down to the seafront. Two reasons, firstly in the event of total firey death we reasoned the sea would be a good place to be at (jellyfish or not) and secondly...well, secondly there was a pub there. The bottleshop across the road from the hostel was closed...OK now we know this is serious. Thankfully a bottleshop in the centre of town was open and so some vague order was restored to our lives. Within I even found some cider, something that had proved to be a bit of a mission in this country, and it only took an evacuation for it to happen. The original plan of 'pub' ended up being scraped in favour of sitting around on the beach drinking, this is prohibited so normally wouldn't have been an option but we judge that the police are kinda busy at the moment so we shouldn't have a problem. It was actually rather cool having us all chilling out on the beach as the sun set, we even hooked up some tiny speakers for music. Just a shame about the circumstances that led us to that moment really!

As time wore on, and it became apparent we weren't getting back into the hostel anytime soon (though at least it was still there,) we hit the problem of, you know, whether we were going to end up actually sleeping on the beach. It was a decent night so I might have been up for this but those whose alarms would be summoning them to work at half four deemed it less than satisfactory. Somehow we found, or were sent to, the Red Cross who it turned out would be providing us with temporary accomodation for the night. We drove (including a fair slice of time spent lost) twenty minutes to the Red Cross, who then chucked us on a bus that took us to our destination. Of course it had to be a minutes walk from where we'd been sat on the beach, in fact it was the hotel above the pub we'd originally been heading towards.

So we had a free night in a hotel. I'm not going to lie, as much as I like the hostel and all, this was just a tad better. The beds didn't loudly groan everytime you moved a finger for one thing. On checking in the Red Cross took all our details, apparently so that if anyone saw news coverage/hears about the fire and contacts them they could let them know that we were OK. Fires in WA worthy of serious newspaper space back in the UK? Tsk and I bet not a single one of you contacted the Red Cross to see if I was alvie, shows how much you care that does! We stayed up a small while enjoying the facilities but the lure of a comfortable bed proved too strong and I quikckly retired to one of the best nights sleep I've had since arriving here.

The next day they let us back into the hostel, which was completely undamaged...although everything did reek of smoke. The queue for the washing machine was solid for a day and even after that it would be a week before the smell would totally fade away.