Bushfire family

In December 2006, we drove down to Victoria, primarily to visit family, both C's and mine. Many members of my birthfamily live in northeast Victoria, a land of wine and fine cheeses, snow-topped mountains in winter, magnificent trees, golden and rust shaded leaves in autumn.

But we were forced to stay with our friends in Canberra longer than we had intended. There were fires ringing the little town that housed my precious birthmother, stepdad, brother, sister-in-law, nieces and nephew, grandmother, aunt. I rang everyday to check with them whether or not we should drive in; we didn't want to be nuisances, tourists caught in the force of nature needing rescue.

We did go in, my family assuring me that it wasn't as bad as what was reported. There were fires, we saw them at night, red edging the mountaintops. The morning we left, the smoke was almost impenetrable, and the sun was struggling.

Before that, in January 2003, my birthmother described driving home from work as like 'entering the jaws of the dragon', the bushfires producing heat and smoke of fearsome proportions.

My adoptive father was being consumed by lymphoma, and would die on the 13th of that month. My birthfamily were threatened by consumption of a different kind, but came out of the jaws of the bushfire, coughing but whole.