This is the latest I’ve ever posted. My apologies for that.

I hope, dear reader, you weren’t worried about us. We’re safe, we’re home and we’ve been invited back to our safe havens, should we need them again.

Yesterday morning, after warnings were issued on the radio, we activated our fire plan by evacuating to our friends’ place on the western side of town. With high temperatures and strong winds anticipated later in the day, it seemed like the sensible thing to do.

Our friends have a fire plan, too. Theirs is to defend their house. The ways they planned to do that were printed out, in large type to save hunting for glasses, and with some red type for emphasis.

By the time we arrived, they’d already ticked off most of the tasks. Committing a fire plan to paper is a good way to remember to do important things amid rising panic. While a sense of urgency permeated the household, mercifully there was no panic.

After gathering valuables and assembling fire-fighting equipment in designated areas, our friends had raked the garden, cleaned out gutters, swept paths and decks, stopped up the downpipes with tennis balls, filled balloons with water and placed them on garden beds*, filled the baths, prepared the fire pump…

It seemed that all we had to do was to sit down and steady our nerves with a cup of tea. But no sooner had we drained our cups than we were assigned jobs. My partner was charged with climbing ladders to fill the gutters with water. I was instructed to hose the garden beds nearest the house.

The radio burbled in the background but nobody had time to listen until we stopped for lunch. While the fires were contained, there were fears of flare-ups after a gusty southerly change, predicted to arrive later in the day. Exactly when that would be was unclear. There was also a chance of a thunderstorm, about which we were ambivalent; fervently hoping for rain, we worried about lightning strikes igniting fresh fires.

After lunch, just when I thought a nanna-nap was in store, our friend showed us an expansive garden bed on the north side of the house. Full of dead and dying plants and weeds, it was obviously of concern to her. We feverishly wielded secateurs, shears and rake until it was cleared.

As the heat built, we retreated indoors for cold drinks and fruit. Then a low grumble of thunder and a pattering of rain on the roof. I wandered stiffly outside to feel it, to smell it and to ask it to stay a while. But the clouds swiftly cleared and the sun came out, replacing that brief respite of coolness with clammy warmth.

I succumbed to that much-anticipated lie-down while the others chatted and listened to fire reports on the radio. It seemed I slept for ages, but in reality no more than 10 minutes.

By four o’clock, when it was clear that the southerly and the fire weren’t waiting on the doorstep, we planned dinner. The menfolk shopped while we stayed behind to check out the CFA site and listen to the weather report. No change in the fire but a strong wind-change forecast for around five o’clock left us feeling edgy. The blokes returned and started cooking. The feared hour came and went, windless.

Dinner was enjoyed, television watched. By an early bedtime we were all too tired to allow ourselves to believe that the wind might deliver the fire in the night. Besides, there was no smell of smoke, no glow, no sirens, nothing.

Some time in the night we awoke to the frenzy of a cold south-westerly. I got up and closed the window, checked the horizon for a red glow and seeing none, lowered the blind. My partner went back to sleep while I lay awake listening to the wind, wishing I’d thought to bring the radio to bed to listen for warnings. I forced myself to take deep breaths, to relax the body, to empty the mind, to see only black…

A huge crash jolted us wide awake and upright.

One of the aluminium ladders, my partner informed me, had been left leaning against the house. It must have blown down. (Note the non-attachment of blame.)

After a day of high anxiety, when often you’ve felt like crying, a little thing like that can make you laugh beyond all reason. And in times like this, you need every chance to laugh.

*If you fill balloons with water and place them on garden beds, any embers landing on them will burst the balloon, thus releasing the water and dousing any burning material nearby. Or so it’s hoped.