Great Australian Bushfire Stories eBook

''the biggest cleared area was my vegetable patch ... I ran and lay down and made a little tent over myself. I thought it would preserve the last of the oxygen. Under the blanket I could hear explosions - the gas bottles from the houses further up, and I could just imagine all my neighbours dead up the road. the wind was roaring, the trees cracking: an awful lot of noise ... I thought I wasn''t going to survive.'' Peter Luke, Gaffneys Creek, Victoria ''the sky got darker again ... I started to think about the next day''s newspaper headlines: "Stupid thirty-eight-weeks pregnant woman drives into fire with toddler."'' Sonia Stanton, Canberra ''I looked down into where the houses were totally surrounded by a sea of flame and thought, well, that''s it, she''s all over. Everybody will be killed down there.'' John Hyles, Namadgi Ranges GREAt AUStRALIAN BUSHFIRE StORIES is a collection of remarkable tales from all around Australia that tell of our country''s fiercest natural phenomenon: the bushfire. Farmers, landowners, firefighters and city dwellers share with ABC journalist Ian Mannix their experiences of fires: preparing for them, fighting them, and the heartbreak task of mopping up when even their best efforts failed. Some stories are funny, some tragic, many courageous, but all are a testimony to the ingenuity and grit of human beings as they fight to save their homes, their towns and, in some cases, their lives.