Bushfire Christmas

This wasn’t the first Bill story I wrote, and initially it wasn’t about Christmas. But it was always the story of a community coming together to fight a bushfire.
My very first memory is of a bushfire which happened when I was a baby and my family had moved from nice, safe, over-populated Port Melbourne out to the wilds of the bush on the outskirts of Melbourne – at least it was bush then, and old orchards. Now the suburbs spread miles beyond where I grew up.
I don’t know if I really remember it, or whether I’ve heard the stories so many times that I just imagine I remember. But there was a bushfire, and my Dad went off with his Hessian sack to fight the flames, and my Mum and I hid at home. Under the kitchen table. Or maybe I’ve made that part up, I don’t know.
My grandfather and other members of my family tried to get to us but they were not allowed through the road blocks, but eventually my grandfather talked his way through – he could have talked his way through the APEC roadblock.
From then on, every few years, there were bushfires around or near our house, and in the bush behind our school, and we’d have to evacuate the classrooms and stand around on the netball court in the hot sun as the flames came closer to the playground and we all got more and more hysterical.
The fire fighters always saved our school or our houses just in time. It’s not always like that of course, but not for want of trying.