Quentin Addison · 51 min
When Black Saturday tore through St Andrews, Quentin Addison was on a fire truck with no idea if his wife was alive, and what he learned in the ashes drove twenty years of community fire safety work.
Hear this story
On 7 February 2009, Quentin Addison was on a fire truck somewhere north of St Andrews when Black Saturday tore through Victoria. He had no idea if his wife Ros was alive. She was at home with three German backpackers they'd invited to stay, a fire pump that had stopped working, and a house filling with smoke.
Ros, a theatre nurse trained to work calmly in emergencies, moved through the fire with deliberate steps. She kept the girls upstairs until the kitchen skylight melted, then walked them downstairs past a burning branch to the dam, where they sheltered behind the berm while the house burned to the ground. When Quentin finally reached the fire station that night, a police officer had to tell him his house was gone. He was standing in it.
What came next was slower and harder to see. Twelve months later, Quentin woke on a Monday morning unable to go to work. He called his GP and learned he had depression, possibly PTSD. Seeing a psychologist turned out to be one of the smartest things he ever did. That same year, he also learned to accept help when friends offered it, understanding that people genuinely do not know how else to care.
For the next twenty years, Quentin served the CFA as a community safety coordinator, returning to fire-affected regions during the 2019-20 fires to help people evacuate and check their fire plans. He carried his own experience into that work. His message was simple: listen when emergency services warn you, have a water supply and a plan, and do not count on the trucks arriving in time.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses grief & loss, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you're not alone. Help is available: • Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14 · lifeline.org.au • GriefLine: 1300 845 745 · griefline.org.au
“You cannot count on the Emergency Services being there at your house in the event of a fire.”
“Don't be afraid to admit that you're feeling crappy and that you actually can't solve it by yourself.”
“Your plan has got to include what happens after.”
The hero, today
If you don't already know, listen when emergency services tell you the day ahead will be dangerous, because they are usually right, and prepare accordingly rather than assuming the danger will pass you by. The safest thing to do when fire comes is stay in your house, keep aware of what's happening around you, move to the safest room when conditions change, and only leave when you can see it's safe to do so. You cannot count on emergency services being at your house in the event of a fire, so having your own water supply, a clear plan, and practising that plan with everyone in your household is essential. PTSD and depression can hit hard months after the event, and going to see your GP and then a psychologist was one of the smartest things I've ever done, so don't be afraid to admit you're feeling crappy and ask for help. When people offer to help after a disaster, accept what they give you, because they genuinely don't know how else to help and that's all they can do, then pass it on to someone else who needs it.
Yes. Quentin Addison is a real person who shared their own story in their own words. Kintsugi Heroes is a not-for-profit that shares first-person stories of overcoming adversity, told with the person's consent.
Kintsugi Heroes, a registered Australian not-for-profit. Every story is shared with the hero's own consent and reviewed under Kintsugi Heroes' trauma-informed content standard before it goes public.
If you don't already know, listen when emergency services tell you the day ahead will be dangerous, because they are usually right, and prepare accordingly rather than assuming the danger will pass you by.
The safest thing to do when fire comes is stay in your house, keep aware of what's happening around you, move to the safest room when conditions change, and only leave when you can see it's safe to do so.
You cannot count on emergency services being at your house in the event of a fire, so having your own water supply, a clear plan, and practising that plan with everyone in your household is essential.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 00:04
Welcome to the Kansuki Heroes Podcast special Alpine Bushfires series, where we share inspirational stories of everyday people from the Victorian Alpine region who went through the bushfires which occurred from late 2019 through to early 2020. These stories highlight the different challenges and events people went through and how they overcame them. Please be aware that the story you're about to hear may have moments of deeply felt emotions and personal experiences. If anything you hear has a triggering effect, please reach out to someone who can help you. If you love this conversation, please like and share it with your friends so we can continue to share more inspiration and hope to as many people as possible. Now listen up for our next hero's story.
Quentin Addison (Guest) · 00:57
This week, Avalon talks to Quinton Addison, who has been working in IT for over 3 decades, but was an 8-year-long CFA volunteer and worked in the 2009 bushfires. While the story isn't necessarily about an experience from the Alpine bushfires, the experience is similar, and there's definitely a lot that we can take from the experiences that he engaged in. And that other people shared with him as part of fighting the fires. His home was destroyed. He had to man a fire truck while he was unsure if his wife was even surviving. He also talks about experiencing PTSD and depression as a result of the fire over one year on from the initial experience. So while you listen, you may be triggered or impacted by the experiences that he shares, and if that's the case, you can turn off this podcast and come back. Enjoy this episode with Quinton Addison.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 02:04
Hello, here we are. It is another Alpine Series edition of Kintsugi Heroes, and I'm joined today by Quinton Addison. Quinton, welcome. Thank you for coming and spending this time with me.
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PTSD and depression can hit hard months after the event, and going to see your GP and then a psychologist was one of the smartest things I've ever done, so don't be afraid to admit you're feeling crappy and ask for help.
This conversation includes a firefighter's background, the warning on the radio, teaching the girls how to start the pump, the pager goes off, the fire pump runs out of water and inside the burning house.
Quentin Addison (Guest) · 02:18
Thank you, Evelyn. I'm really quite excited about doing this recording. Um, I've had a good chat with Ian about the fact that whilst I, um, came through this process via the Black Saturday event of Feb 7th, 2009, there's a lot of similarities. I also had the opportunity— was my last, uh, the 2019-25, so my last formal deployment on a fire truck.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 02:48
I'm really excited. So, to get started, I'd like to know, could you tell me whereabouts do you live? Like, where are you located at the moment?
Quentin Addison (Guest) · 02:56
We're at St Andrews, which for Victorians is not to be confused with St Andrews Beach, which is about 3 hours away from here. 35K out of Melbourne, roughly an hour to an hour and a half depending on the traffic.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 03:13
Thank you for sharing. And have you been there long? So your story will focus on the fires and you were living in the same area, is that right?
Quentin Addison (Guest) · 03:22
Yep, yep.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 03:23
Okay. First of all, I just want to honour you for coming on and sharing your story.
Quentin Addison (Guest) · 03:29
Well, thank you. And I'll take this opportunity to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people who are the original owners of the land on which I'm sitting. Their Elders past and present and future and acknowledge that they've never ceded ownership of this land.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 03:47
Thank you for that. I now get to hand the mic over to you and ask you to just take us back. You know, where does your story begin and take us through your experience?
Quentin Addison (Guest) · 03:59
Okay, going way back to 1970, 70-something, I can't actually remember. Um, we lived in a little tiny village called Thirlmere in New South Wales. It's all about 5 K's from Picton, for those of you from New South Wales. And I've lived all over Australia, so I can kind of move around a bit with this story. Tiny little farming slash mining village. It's right on the edge of the Burragarang Valley, which is where there are a lot of coal mines. Some of my best mates were coal miners, crazy people. Then I joined the local RFS, the Rural Fire Service for those that live in New South Wales. And our training then was, "Hey mate, back up to the truck. Put your arms out like this, right? Put this tank on your back. Do this," which I'm moving my hands backwards and forwards. So we're spraying water on the ground. He said, "Right, you're in." you're going to have to buy your own boots. I can see you're wearing a pair of boots, that'll be good. You'll have to go and see the local clothing shop, buy your overalls, that'll cost you about $80. We supply the gloves and a helmet. The rest is up to you. That was my training back in '70, I don't know, '76 or thereabouts. Anyway, lived in Perth, lived in Perth for 10 years. And came to Victoria for nearly the first time I was here doing national service in Park back in '68, '69, '71. '69 to '71. And if you hadn't worked out already, I like chatting, so hang in, boys, hang in. We came from Perth in 1989 and moved up to St Andrews later that year. So we moved up here in '94. Property had been here, in fact it was originally an orchard, and they must have at some point been running sheep because at the bottom of the property was an old sheep shed made out of ironbark. I was going to say stainless steel roof, corrugated iron roof. And we've had a lovely time up here. Until I have to say 6th of February 2009. At that point, I'd been in the CFA for 9 years. I'd become a crew leader. I'd learned to drive the truck because I always figured if something went wrong, we had to be able to get the hell out of wherever we were. And my driver might have had a problem. So the Premier of Victoria gets up on the radio and says, Tomorrow has the potential to be the worst fire day in Victoria's history. Just reminding you that this is Black Saturday coming up, 2009. But a lot of the experiences that I've been through, I'm absolutely certain that you went through as well. So there is some serious commonality here, and I'm happy to share what I've learned. What I learned was to listen to the Premier when he said, 'Tomorrow has the potential to be the worst fire day in Victoria's history.' And like I just did, he said it twice. So be prepared. And the Chief Fire Officer, a bloke called Rees, Alan, I've actually forgotten his first name. I think it was Alan, Alan Rees, said pretty much the same thing. And he was followed by what was in the Department of Land, Water and Planning saying pretty much exactly the same thing. Listen up, people, tomorrow's going to be problematic. We'd been in drought, I think, for about 8 years. The previous week had been stinking hot. The wind was blowing. We had staying with us at the time 3 German backpackers, 3 young women from Germany who we'd met the previous year. They'd been touring around this neck of the woods, and they were talking about going up heading north. And I said, 'Ah, look, I seriously think it would be better if you stayed here.' I've made some poor decisions in my life, and that was probably one of them. But I said, 'We've just heard tomorrow has the potential. We don't know what can happen. It's safe here. I'd prefer that you stayed here.' So they listened to me. They now have some memories that they're never going to forget. Saturday morning. You can see there's this fire over in the north, northwest from here. And for those of you that don't know, by and large, most fires in Victoria travel on a north to northwesterly to a southwesterly, southeasterly direction for most of the day when they start. And later in the day towards 4, let's say 6 o'clock, maybe max, the wind changes, comes in from the south-southwest. I looked at that column of smoke and I pulled out the map and I said to the girls, all right, that fire is 80 kilometers away. I'm pretty confident that it won't get here today. I'm pretty sure they'll have knocked it out by then because I'd been fighting fires at that stage for Well, 9 years. Quite a number in Gippsland. I've been to New South Wales a couple of times and a little bit further west than this neck of the woods. So I was very confident and subsequently had a chat with our former captain and he said he felt exactly the same. We should be fine, they'd have knocked it out. I said, however, in case it all goes pear-shaped, please, Q— oh, by the way, everybody calls me Q, not Quentin. That's because I got sick and tired of being called Clinton. So this young German woman said, hey, Q, what is pear-shaped? So I explained pear-shaped, and I said, in case it all goes pear-shaped, Roz has a love-hate relationship with our fire pump. She'd love for it to work for her, and it hates her trying to start it. So we're going to go down, and I'm going to show you guys how to do this, because if it all, all is here and I'm not here for some strange reason— strange how your mind works— um, then you need to know what to do. So we went down to the fire pump, and I showed each of them how to get the fire pump started. It's a relatively simple thing. Turn on the fuel, press the little lever a few times to ensure that you've got some petrol in your carburetor. Notice I said petrol, we'll come back to that later. And give it a couple of yanks.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 11:00
Q, what does the fire pump do? Does it then, so it's like a motorized water generator, is that what it is?
Quentin Addison (Guest) · 11:08
The fire pump actually sits next to our dam Yep. Which was full because the year before I'd had it dug out. So I was pretty happy with that. There was plenty of water in it. Um, fire pump has a, has a hose, a hard, hard hose so that it won't collapse. That goes into the, into the dam and it sucks the water in. So the first thing we did was get that fire pump running, turn it off a couple of times, work out. And then two of them did that and the third one walked up with me. To where the fire hose was and learned how to use that. Then we swapped around and did all that. And I said, right, I think that's pretty much it in terms of fire. Again, if I'm not here, we have a fire plan. It's not written down, but Ros knows what we're going to do. So all you have to do is, after you've got this fired up, is come up, talk to Ros, and do whatever she tells you. Fine, they said. Sat down to lunch, my pager went off, so I leapt in the car with Roz. I said, "Wait here, guys, I'll just go and see what's going on," because at that stage there was still a column of smoke bloody miles away. So I went roaring down to the CFA, which took us about 4 minutes, and I got down to the fire station. There was a whole bunch of guys and girls actually sitting around the table waiting for things to happen. Which is pretty normal on a total fire ban day, which I forgot to mention it was a total fire ban day, strangely enough. And, um, I said, uh, don't need me here, I'll go home for a while. In fact, I'll go home. Um, we get sat down and had some more lunch, and bloody pager went off, must have been half an hour later. And Ross said, I'm not driving with you. You'd go into the station by yourself. So I jumped in her car, one of the good things I did on the day, and, um, shot off to the fire station, um, where I subsequently got on board a fire truck and we took off to what we thought was actually just some local idiot up in Arthur's Creek had set a fire because it happens all the bloody time. 'we have to go and put it out.' We had no idea that it was in fact embers from the major fire at Kilmore. So we went off up there, and as I'm heading up the hill, we could see smoke, we could see it spotting over the top. And spotting is where embers come from the main fire, leap over, fly over unburnt ground, land in front of the fire, and start another fire. And I'm sure that anybody that's seen an ember attack or experienced an ember attack knows exactly what I'm talking about. But this was at that time relatively small little fires happening here and there. So I grabbed a mate's phone and called Ros and left a message and said, look, it's spotting in your general direction, put the fire plan into action, get the pump started, the girls know how to do that, and good luck. And by the way, don't forget to call our neighbour. And that was the last conversation I had with Ros till about 10 o'clock, 10:30 that night. So we went off and did our firefighting thing. So this story, at this point, is really Ros's story. Now I should mention that Ros is a trained theatre nurse. She did, by the time we'd finished all of this stuff, 40 years in theatres. Operating theatres dealing with emergencies, not so emergencies. So she's used to working in stressful situations. And of course what happened was the fire had gone over the top here, so we hadn't seen any fire, no fire here. It got down to Mittens Bridge Road, which is about, I don't know, 2 and a half minutes away from here, and that was when the wind changed. So the wind changed from being northwesterly and started blowing from the southwest, and it came straight up, straight up our creek line, which is not exactly right next to us, but we live in a bit of a valley, so it just came roaring up the valley and headed up to Kinglake, burning everything in its path. The girls very correctly went down, fired up the fire pump, and started spraying water all over the place, you know, sprayed the house down, sprayed the garden, da-da-da-da-da-da. Did exactly what they should do. That was before the fire appeared. And pretty much as the fire appeared, the water stopped. Yeah, there's a pause there because it's something I felt guilty about from the moment it— well, the moment I heard about it. Because one of the things that, if you don't already know, petrol is very volatile. And when the temperature outside gets really hot, it vaporizes inside the carburetor, so it doesn't get pumped out. Spark plug has nothing to fire, pump stops. The way you solve that problem is you put a little sprinkler on the top, and it's something I'd always planned to do but never actually got around to doing. They talk about cobblers, cobblers' shoes, or firefighters' fire pumps, right? That's a guilt that I'll keep forever. But there it is, it happened. So there they were, stuck, no bloody water. So Roz said, right, inside. And they already had all their bags packed, all the really important stuff, passports, bank books, bank cards, that sort of stuff, phones. So the fire came roaring up and Roz said, the instant I heard the fire coming, It was like you'd turned on a switch. It was step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4. And basically the process was they would use the house as a defense from the fire, protection from the radiant heat, because that's the stuff that'll kill you. Although our house was largely brick and wood, the downstairs— it was a 2-story place down on the side of a hill. The downstairs was all timber, Western red cedar, and so extremely flammable. But the fire came roaring up between us and our neighbour's place, jumped our fence, got into a tukurim, which is a kind of plant hedge that I'd built. Set fire to that, hit a hole in the carport, got into the roofline. Now that was a problem. First of all, I hadn't repaired the bloody hole in the carport. Secondly, I'd planted the hedge. So, you know, talk about bad luck. Well, bad planning anyway. These are the things that come back to bite you. The fire got into the house and Ros and the girls were inside upstairs and they stayed inside and upstairs listening to the bloody fire alarms, smoke alarm going off berserk. And she's saying, shut up, shut up, I can hear you, you stupid thing, I know it's burning. The safest thing to do is stay in your house, keep aware of what's going on around you because the fire went past. Quite quickly. They stayed in— they stayed upstairs in the kitchen lounge room until the, um, the skylight in the, in the kitchen, um, melted and fell on the floor. And they thought, right, it's time to get out of here. So they went downstairs, which as I said was red cedar, and, um, looked around because it was glass all around except on the western, western face. And Again, the fire had pretty much gone past and the girls looked out and said, "Oh, oh, oh, there is fire out there." I said, "It's okay, it's only a branch, step over it." It was a little 4-inch branch that had fallen off. So they did, picked up the water and the two dogs and walked down to the dam. And the grass was already very low, so there was practically no flames for them to walk through, only over the trees, only over the few branches. They walked down to the dam and I'd said to them, don't get in the dam water. All right, there's absolutely no need. There's a berm, which is the edge of the dam. So between the top of the dam and where the water level is, was about 3 meters, 2 to 3 meters. Just lie down behind that. That will protect you from the radiate peak. You may get some embers landing on you at most, you know, shrug off, shrug them off. You might get a few little burns. But mostly the issue will be smoke and little flakes of what they call ash. Provided you've got water, you should be fine. You don't need to get in the dam. It's cold, it's wet, there's little crawly things in there that'll nip your toes, and it's muddy as hell. You don't want to be there. So they went down and they sat there and watched the bloody— at that stage, the barn burned down and house burn down. And I said, just sit there. Now, I didn't actually take that plan beyond saving them or saving us. Didn't think about what to do after the bloody fire. And that's something I've learned along the way. So your plan's got to include what happens after. A few fire trucks went past and a neighbor came, came across from up the hill and he was determined not to stay. He He'd come pretty close to having a very bad and fatal experience. He lived at the top of the hill and the fire had gone roaring up his hill. And I think, to be fair, he'd probably had a little bit of a panic because unless you've faced that sort of stuff before, it's pretty bloody terrifying. I've fought quite a few fires. So I mean, fire's just a bloody fire. You have to be careful and you have to be cautious, but you know what you're doing. If you've never done it before, you don't really want to have to face it. And the poor bugger had come very close to being trapped in some wooden old railway carriages which they were using for accommodation, like what do you call them, what would now be a B&B. He went in one end and the fire came out in the other, so he fell out, got out the other, and managed to survive. Drove his car down, sat by the dam with, with, with Roz and the girls and the dogs, and in the end said, no, I'm driving, driving through. Went and headed off to, um, Eltham— not Eltham, St Andrews. I think I mentioned it's 6K south from here, pretty much. And a bit I forgot, and this is important. Roz had called our neighbor who had a baby and her mother was out visiting friends. We didn't know that at the time, but, you know, the relationship with, with our neighbor hadn't been brilliant. Once her husband had died, this, this older lady had got to be quite sort of antagonistic towards the world. We just happened to be the closest people in which she could vent her grief, frustration. Unfortunately, she wasn't there, so Roz rang the neighbor young lady with her baby and said, hey, have you enacted your fire plan? She said, hmm, I haven't really got a fire plan, Ross, because they were inside, air conditioning on, curtains closed, no idea about the fire, no consciousness of it at all. Ross said, pick up the baby, get in the car, drive out. 'Pick up the baby, get in the car, drive now.' This is before the fire came. I'll cut a long story short, eventually, I think the third time Roz said it, she did it. And one of our other neighbors with whom we're very good friends— in fact, we only met them this morning— Graham was at home as My neighbour drove up past his place, so he kind of drove up behind towards Kinglake. At that stage, there was no fire. They got up there and were more or less chased up the hill by the fire. She'd started to go right and realised that there was fire down towards St Andrews, so she did a quick yewie and came back up the hill. And another neighbour from a little bit further up the hill had come down, up the road towards Kinglake, our first neighbour. And he and his son came and sat down, and Ros waved them down and said, look, well, they were driving past, get off the road, you guys. Um, so they came in and sat in the driveway. And, um, where you going? She said, oh, we're going to Nelson, into St. Andrews to get some water. She said, we've got water here because I left the wine in the fridge. Make a mental note, if you've got wine in the fridge, bring some with you. It helps the time go a little better, I'm told. But they came in and stopped, stayed there. And eventually a fire truck came past and stopped. This wasn't before, I'll mention again, somebody came up in a vehicle and stopped, parked next to bloody burning trees and Ros went across to the road and said, hey guys, I wouldn't park there. And they said, what? She said, well, trees are burning. Oh, okay. So they took off up the hill. Christ knows what happened, they have no idea. And a little while later, a fire truck came and Ros flagged them down and said, is the road open to St Andrews? And they said, if you've got a four-wheel drive, It is. So they all piled into the next-door neighbor's four-wheel drive and drove into St. Andrews. And I have to say that as they went past, lying on the road, lying on the side of the road at our turning corner, which you call Wombat Crossing, was a motorcycle. And unknown to them at the time, it was one of our neighbors had decided to ride his motorbike out His wife had driven the car, he'd taken the motorbike, flames got him. So that was our first, first intimation that we'd lost anybody. So that was pretty much— and I went, they went to the fire station and stayed there. And as I say, we caught up at about 9:30 that night. I mean, we, we were in various places putting out fires and protecting buildings and doing what firefighters do. And around about, oh, would have been up past 9, quarter to 10, I think we finally went back to the station, having been on the move since about, I don't know, probably 3:30, 4 o'clock, in pretty good shape. I mean, at one point we were putting out a fire at a bloke's house, and we could look up the hill towards my place and across to my neighbor's place. And she said, oh, do you think, do you think we're— our houses are all right? I said, yeah, I reckon you're right, no problem, should be okay. Lying through my bloody teeth, right? Because, um, I could see that the fire had been all the way through. So we didn't know whether her husband was at that point— well, not at that point, we didn't know. We didn't know till we got to the station. And, um, It was quite, quite ironic. We get to the station and, um, some bloke comes running up and said, is, is that, is, um, your neighbor here? And she said, yeah. Well, can I talk to her? No. I need to talk to her. No. Why can't I talk to her? I said, because she's in the bushes having a pee. All right, just bugger off and give us some space. So anyway, he said, our husband's alive. I said, oh good, thinking, well— they're across the road with a bit of like rosazalai, not knowing. So eventually we got off the truck and, um, I keep wanting to say names but I've decided not to use names. My neighbor, um, across the road caught up with, with her husband and I caught up with Roz. And, uh, to shorten that part of the, the story, um, We eventually left. My son-in-law came over from Warrandyte, which is where my daughter— well, strangely enough, my daughter was living with him and their two kids. He'd come up to pick us up, and as we're driving out, about to turn left into the road down to Warrandyte, there's a copper in the middle of the road, puts his hand up, stops us, um, gets in Nick's side of the car, as my son-in-law is called Nick, says, where are you going? And he said, I'm taking my dad and mother-in-law home to my place. Oh, he looks at— he said, their house burned down. All right. Um, the copper says, ah, he looks in my side and says, ah, you're a firefighter. I said, yeah. He said, This bloke says, 'Your house burnt down, where was it?' I said, 'You're standing in it.' Poor bugger was— it was some poor bugger. They got in from the city, right? Because it took quite a while for the word to get out to what was actually happening. So all hands to the pump, literally, and coppers from all over the place were being deployed to areas that they knew nothing about. So I mean, we had a bit of a laugh at this poor bugger, but wasn't his fault. So we went home to Kate and Nick's place in Warrandyte, North Warrandyte, which I have to say I reckon was far more fire-prone. Unfortunately, the fire stopped heading south, because if it had headed south, I reckon it wouldn't have stopped. I seriously believe this wouldn't have stopped until it hit the sea. So we went there, and, um, first thing I did before having a beer, which is all I was desperate for, was ring the insurance company. Because I was panicked about the fact that if you don't tell your insurance company about what's happening, um, within a certain time, I don't know what might happen. So I was concerned about that. I rang this poor woman in Sydney, which is where the number went to, and I said, look, we— she said, what's the problem? And I explained, and I said, look, there's a whole bunch of houses here that will have burned. And she said, well, like how many? And I said, look, There's probably 30 or 40. I said, think Canberra in 2003. That's the kind of fire problem you've got. She said, oh, right. I'll call my manager. We're going to have to start setting up for this. And I said, yeah, I reckon you will. Then I had a beer. So that's the story of my fire. It was much more dramatic for Ros. All I had to do was keep doing the stuff that I'd been doing for a good many years. At no real time did I feel threatened. We were just doing the job for which we don't get paid, as I'm sure everybody knows. But I thought I'd mention it just in passing. And the next couple of days were fairly dramatic one way or another. I went back up to the station in the morning, sat around and sat around and sat around and sat around, which is what you do a lot of in all fire brigades. It's called hurry up and wait. You just wait for the actual fire to happen. And it was on the Sunday, I think, um, an officer from somewhere, a regular bloke, a full-time guy, came and had a chat to me. He said, look, I understand you haven't been back to your place yet. He said, I'm a bit pushed for time, but you deserve to go and see what's going on. So we went up to my place, had a bit of a look around, and thought, yeah, It's shambolic. Places burned to the ground. Girls— the girl's car was burned, my car was burned, everything was bloody burned.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 31:45
How did you react internally when you saw it?
Quentin Addison (Guest) · 31:50
Well, there's nothing you can do, it's burned. Okay, for me, and I recognize it's a male thing mostly, right? And it's— there's nothing heroic about this, it's just— it's a bunch of stuff. I've never been terribly um, what's the word, avaricious, I suppose, you know, um, money orientated. I lost a lot of bloody tools. I figured that the insurance would sort everything else out. It's funny how you get that wrong. Um, but we were at least insured, and I just put a plug in here if you haven't thought about being insured, people. I'm sure you do now. It's a really important thing. It was just, for me, devastating. And I thought, Roz is going to hate this, because we had lots and lots and lots and lots of stuff that we'd collected over a lifetime. And we'd been together at that stage for '72 to 2009, whatever that was. And I suppose that's pretty much the end of the fire experience. Ros had done absolutely everything, and I'd gone to some trouble to tell her that I thought she'd been a real bloody hero. We, um, subsequently got written up in it, the newspaper, in, um, Sydney Morning Herald, because one of their feature writers was a guy that we'd known in Perth, and he came up and had a chat and took some photos, and he I made sure that he recognized what she'd done because there was nothing written down. Obviously, I had hammered it into her head over the preceding 9 years because she just went tick, tick, tick, tick, tick and did absolutely everything right. They stayed upstairs until the room filled up with smoke and they went downstairs and they waited to look. There was no fire to be concerned about. They moved to a safe and secure place. Couldn't ask for anything better. And as I mentioned in passing, I don't quite know how it was that she happened to be wearing a bit of shirt, a shirt, um, a casual shirt that I, that I bought in Adelaide in, I don't know, 1970-something, 1980-something, on a trip to Adelaide from Perth. Um, she had it on, so I've still got that bloody shirt. It's the only thing I've got left from the fire. Anyway, that's the fire, and I suspect that most of you guys have had similar stories, some of them much worse. Nobody got hurt, but a few of our friends and people that we know died in the fire, including one of our firefighters, but not, not as a result of fighting a fire. That was actually our only fatality from the CFA's perspective. I'll just flip sideways and back a little bit to the Sunday when I was back at the station. I mentioned that on the same day, this gentleman fire officer from somewhere, who took me up to our place to have a look. I've no idea who he was, where he came from. If by any chance he ever gets to look at this, mate, my thanks from my heart. It's the nicest thing that happened to me in many, many years. Somebody took the time to care, to take time even though they were pushed for time, take me up and have a look. It was bloody brilliant. Thank you. Sorry for the interruption. This is Ian Westmoreland, the founder of Kintsugi Heroes, and thank you for listening to this story from one of our amazing heroes. Our mission is for these stories to provide hope and inspiration to people experiencing life challenges and to also educate the broader community on how best to provide support. If you would like to help us to continue to produce more hero stories and cover more diversity themes, we would welcome all donations. These can be made via our website, kintsugiheroes.com.au. The donate function is at the bottom of the home page. We'd also welcome any feedback. You can email me direct using ian@kintsugiheroes.com.au. Now let's get back to the story. This is probably from the day after the fire. I started to hear something which I heard for a long time, and it nearly drove me insane. There were two questions, two things, two statements I kept hearing: why weren't we told, and where was the CFA? Well, fact of the matter is, people, they were told. I listened to the three people tell them. And they brought that— the message was broadcast on every radio station as far as I know, certainly on the ABC. And by and large, I've got to admit, I don't listen anywhere, anything else. But it was on the, on the radio. I'm pretty bloody sure it was on the television that night. So why weren't we told? And where was the CFA? Now, I heard that because, for example, we had a fire in St Andrews, and they didn't have a fire in Kinglake, which is just up the road, as I've mentioned once or twice. So their fire truck, one of their fire trucks, was down here fighting our fire, because they've got a truism in the CFA, and I'm sure it's true for the RFS: you fight the fire you've got, not the fire you might have. So they'd come down to help us, which meant that they couldn't be up there fighting their fire when it finally blew up the hill. They caught a lot of flak from the local community up there, which they just didn't deserve. So those two statements made me really, really angry, to be honest, because it wouldn't have mattered if we'd had every single firefighter and every single fire truck in Australia fighting that Black Saturday fire. Which actually ran for several days. All that would have happened is we'd have probably lost a few more fire vehicles, because we did lose a few, and killed a few more people. Now, we didn't actually lose a single firefighter to the fire, okay, not one. Now, we did lose 173, sorry, 173 people in total, and I've forgotten how many bloody thousand houses. The CFA were doing what they could when they could. And the message that I've taken from that as part of my role, which we'll get to in a minute, is that you cannot count on the emergency services being there at your house in the event of a fire. So I'll just kind of put that into some kind of context. I was pretty angry about this whole thing. I decided that Under those circumstances, we're not going to let this happen on my patch ever again. As I said, at that stage I'd spent 9 years in CFA. I continued to serve for another 11 years, so I put in 20 years and 3 months, and I said, that's it, enough. It was 2020. Just to make a direct connection between the fires in the Alpine region and the 2000 19, 20 fires. I actually, my last fire deployment on a fire truck was down to the south, the south of Melbourne in East, sorry, West Gippsland. And in a little quick attack, little quick attack with only 500 gallons of water on it, 500 liters of water on it, 2 people on it. So we were down around about an hour and a half or 3 hours or so from here, fighting fires down there. And that was my last formal fire situation. But in the meantime, I had become a community safety coordinator, which was a role established by the CFA as a result of the Royal Commission. One of the Royal Commissioners came out with a bloody 2-centimetre-thick couple of books on what happened, what needed to happen differently, and how it all could be improved. And just ironically, one of their first statements stuck in my head was, CFA needs to get more involved with the community. Anyway, it was a really good idea., and the CFA implemented it practically by appointing in each brigade a person whose job it was to work with the community to broaden their understanding of the fire risk and the fire behaviour and fire planning and what to do in the event of a fire. And as part of that program and process, we were sent off in the 2019 fires, 2019 and '20 fires, I spent a week in Wollbost, based at an incident control centre there with another colleague, driving around, talking to people in the local area and saying, "Guys, weather has been pretty crappy, as you know. There's been major fires. We're expecting really bad weather to happen in the next couple of days. If you don't have a fire plan and it doesn't include getting out of here," We strongly recommend that you do. There's an area set up on the football ground or the cricket ground in Orbost. It's surrounded by fire trucks. It's just across the road from the fire station. There's food and hot water and a place to put your caravan. We strongly recommend you be there. And a few other odds and sods like that over the 5-day period that I was there. We also took a convoy of buses down to a place called Cann River and picked up a whole bunch of people and a convoy of vehicles to come back to Ulbost where they could camp to get out of Cann River because it was pretty horrific down there. They'd had a lot of fire and they expected a lot more. The Victorians around the place, we also spent a bit of time at Marlowe and probably about, I don't know, 50-odd to 100 km in and around Orbost, talking to people and suggesting strongly that over the next couple of days they move to a safer location, or if they had appropriate plans, just going through those plans with them to make sure that they made a lot of sense. And then I spent a week in Malakuta working with the local council and the local fire resource people and the emergency services guys and Red Cross and what have you, once again in a slightly different role because they'd had their fire and it was about making sure that they had access to the things that they needed and that they, they've had communications with people like Red Cross and the local church groups and understood what was available to them and generally try to be a helpful, a helpful person. And it helped that I that I'd been through the process myself, I could say, look, I know how you feel. Lost my house. There's an important thing that I want to talk about, and that's time. I said that I didn't really have a problem with the house burning. Well, of course I had a problem with the house bloody burning down. I had to build a new one. It took me 12 months before I, what effectively is called, hit the wall. I felt fine, went back to work in— I think I was back at work in 2 and a half weeks. Not one of the smartest things I'd ever done, but I spent 40 years in IT. Well, at that point, 39 and a half years in IT, and figured I was fine. Obviously, I wasn't. Finished up being diagnosed, woke up one morning, said to my wife, I'm not going to work. I've had enough. They're driving me insane. It's not. It's just crazy crap. All this, all this stuff which they think is really, really important is, um, not at all important, really, truly. So I woke up one morning, Monday morning, and said, I've had enough, I'm not going to work today. So I rang the GP and said, um, this is not like me, um, I'm not going to work today and this is why. He said, um, I'm glad you phoned me. I think you should come and have a chat. So I went to see my GP, which was one of the smartest things I've done in a reasonably long, long lifetime. And he said, I think you've probably got depression, possibly PTSD. Anyway, they ran a few diagnostics and decided that I really should go and see a psychologist. Again, one of the smartest things I've ever done. So if you're not dealing with something, first of all, talk to your GP. Secondly, talk to your community. All right? And thirdly, talk to professionals. They can help. They do help. I don't know that you ever actually get over PTSD, because I, you know, I've fought the bloody thing for a long time, saying, I'm not getting flashbacks, I'm not having this, I'm not having that, I'm just not sleeping. Bite everybody's head off all the time. I think most people are bloody idiots. Um, and generally speaking, whilst I'm reasonably driven, you know, I used to be a classic, as I used to say, Type A person, right? You know, it's got to happen, it's got to happen now, and it's got to happen my way. I learned along the way that not the best way to deal with life or with other people, but ask for help. Don't be afraid to admit that you've you're feeling crappy, right? And that you actually can't solve it by yourself.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 46:23
What about Ros? How, how did she cope after the event? And did she get to a point like you where she needed help?
Quentin Addison (Guest) · 46:34
Well, she never acknowledged it, um, I'll be honest. And that's partly, I think, um, because I'd spent a lot of time telling her what a fabulous job she'd done, which is exactly what she had done. I mean, there was no panic. I mean, there might have been panic, but she wasn't showing it. We've had a pretty good relationship over the years, and, um, I eventually got her to see a psychologist because we all know, believe it or not, that whether we admit it or not A little bit of help goes a long way. The other thing was she had a very good women's group. They called themselves the Ladies of the Black Belt, were people from north of Mittens Bridge, all of whom had been fire impacted, directly fire impacted. There'll be a lot of people who won't understand the impact that it's had on the people who were directly impacted by the fire. People who are neighbours who didn't actually have a fire, people from surrounding areas, friends, relatives. If you think about dropping a pebble into a pond, in the first circle is the people who were directly impacted by the fire, who fought the fire, is so— or the next level is relatives or close friends of people who were in that thing, and the ripples get further and further apart. Everybody has been impacted, you know. The whole of Australia was impacted, and the goodness that flowed from that was fantastic. Okay, and my last, my last thing is people will offer to help. They're just incredibly positive and always, always accept the help. Don't feel bad. I mean, I started off saying to everybody, now listen, I've got a very good friend that I did court course with. I went to dinner with them after the fire and they said, look, here's $200. I want you to— we want you to take that. And I said, listen guys, there's a whole bunch of people out there are much worse off than I am. All right, please hold on to it and give it to them. Um, 12 months down the track, I had another dinner with them and we were talking about this whole process. And they— I said, one of the things I have learned is take what's offered because people genuinely don't know how else to help. And that's all they— they'll do what they can. And she walked into the kitchen and said, um, Reckon you could take this envelope now? I said, thanks guys, with pleasure, thank you so much. So be prepared to be offered help and to take it, and then pass it on, pass it on.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 49:36
I love that Ros had that group, uh, the Ladies of the Black Belt. I mean, that would have been so healing for all of them.
Quentin Addison (Guest) · 49:43
They are still meeting. They are still meeting every Thursday.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 49:50
Love it.
Quentin Addison (Guest) · 49:51
And she, she pretty much kicked it off.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 49:54
So, Quinton, I just want to thank you so, so much. It's been a, it's been a pleasure. And I, yeah, everything that you've shared is absolute gold, and I know will be greatly appreciated by those who hear it. So thank you so much.
Quentin Addison (Guest) · 50:11
Well, absolute pleasure. Let me know how you go.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 50:15
I will. Thank you.
Quentin Addison (Guest) · 50:17
Thank you.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 50:23
We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Kintsugi Heroes with the Alpine Bushfires Special Series. Please like and share the show to your friends so we can get this out to even more people. If you have a story you'd like to share with us, please reach out using the contact details below. And join us for our next hero's story. Until then, keep being you, and remember that we are all heroes in our own unique way.
Quentin Addison (Guest) · 50:54
Only when it's broken, only when it's broken, when it hit you in the middle of the night and the truth burns so bright. Only when it's broken, only when it's broken. Take pride in those cries, it's only for tonight. And then you rise, only when you Broken. Only when you're broken. Only when you're broken.
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