Original subtitles

(FOOTSTEPS APPROACH)

SHANE QUIRK: The thing is that people stayed.

You're not getting everyone out.

I mean, I know some of the people

that shouldn't have stayed, civilians,

that you should just get out when it's that big.

Your heart drops.

You find out people are in somewhere

and you know it's dangerous.

But, yeah, you knew it was going to turn bad

because not everyone got out.

(WIND HOWLS)

(THUNDER CRASHES)

(FIRE CRACKLES)

Emergency warnings are in place on Kangaroo Island,

with concerns about two towns under threat.

The situation is still...

The bottom of flames burning across the trees and you cannot breathe.

You're just going... (GASPS)

REPORTER: In a place called Ravine

there was an emergency warning for that fire earlier on today.

(FIRE ROARS)

The entire island is now under bushfire threat.

Pretty much the worst day of your life, really.

Looking at a tsunami of fire coming straight at you.

The moment when I felt really scared

was when we were trapped down at the beach.

And that's when we stayed the night here

with tea towels as blankets and all that.

Yeah, when she rolled through, yeah, she's on for young and old.

It's a pretty traumatic experience.

Never really want to go through it again.

(WIND WHOOSHES)

(BIRDS TWITTER)

So, this is the house and four-wheeler that I got back here

before I went looking for somewhere to shelter.

That didn't fare so well.

But it wouldn't sell for much at the moment, would it?

Well, the worst moment, I suppose, was trying to locate Jo,

know where she'd gone.

The kids had rung me, so, they knew I couldn't find her.

Yeah, I guess that was as bad...

I was pretty nervous that I was never going to get back to the house,

and if I'd been another 10 minutes later,

that would have been a real issue.

But I had no idea where Jo was,

and I was aiming to get back to try and do something with her.

So, we just physically didn't have any time to do anything.

I mean, I knew from a bit after 7:00 we were goners.

I reckon by 8:30 we were in real trouble. The fire was on the farm.

So, you know, you just can't prepare with that amount of time.

It was horrendous.

Never seen anything like it in my life.

And I've spent my life as a CFS member,

deputy group officer for many years

and I fought many fires.

I don't think I've ever lost a house in any fire I was running,

and yet this one came through and took out 60-odd houses or whatever.

It's just right off the scale. Mm.

Yeah, of course I can remember what it looked like. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, Jo did a bit of that while I was out moving sheep,

so, we got out with the computer.

I think she actually got passports.

She forgot to get my wallet, so, I didn't have any licences left.

Yeah, she got some stuff out.

She was pretty sensible, actually.

Got a, um...

..a blanket wet to cover herself in.

But she didn't have long either.

It came through here. I came in from the other side.

The rams, unfortunately, were here around the tennis court

and that's where I was trying to get back in time to get them out,

but just run out of time.

If I'd gone out with them, I probably wouldn't have got out myself, so...

Yep.

I had to leave them where they were. Not one of them survived.

They wouldn't have had a hope out there.

Mm.

(COOS)

You're a good old fella.

Didn't know if he has to be put down,

but hopefully in another three or four days he'll be back to normal.

Eh? (PANTS)

You're a good old dog.

The thing that was pretty sobering,

I woke up the next morning after a couple of hours' sleep,

and I had a pair of dirty work clothes on,

and that was about all I owned.

You know, that is really quite a sobering thought. Um...

I'm living in other people's clothes most of the time.

It just seems staggering how much you haven't got

when you get in a situation like this.

Yeah, 3 January was a pretty interesting day, obviously.

It was our wedding anniversary, in fact.

51st.

The day began with patrolling hotspots

from the fire that had been affecting us for...since 20 December.

And, in fact, during that day, just after lunch,

we were nearly burnt out from the north

with a fire running up at creek.

We tried to back-burn.

Got home at 6 o'clock in the afternoon

thinking we'd been saved,

but the fire was raging down through Flinders Chase, heading south.

And I knew we would be impacted at some point,

but I thought two or three days.

So, that was up until about 7 o'clock.

I got a message from a friend

who was advising me then

that 10 minutes it would be on Rick Morris's place.

So, at that point we hit the panic buttons and filled up gutters.

Then I headed off on a four-wheeler

to try and move sheep out of the path of the fire.

I reckon when I left I had about maybe 15, 20 metres of visibility,

and by the time I got back after moving one mile

I had about two to three.

I really struggled to find my way back to the house.

By the time I'd achieved that, there were spot fires starting around me.

I dumped the four-wheeler,

got a couple of dogs in the front.

One wouldn't jump in the front. He was on the back.

My wife was just leaving with a vehicle

to go to the local airstrip where they fight fires from

because I figured that was a safe spot,

and we headed off for that.

And it was a confusion getting there because we couldn't see the road.

We just kept running off one side or the other.

And the last I saw of Jo

was she'd panicked

and didn't want to drive through the roadside vegetation

and I saw her backing back.

By then things were getting pretty hot

and I had to park up and find the coolest spot I could.

And eventually the ute was well alight,

and I bailed out of that and went looking for Jo.

(WIND WHOOSHES)

BEN DAVIS: So, this was like... We had a guest room

down the bottom of the house here.

That's the...

..was the en suite.

Got the kids' bikes here.

Yeah, that's probably one of the hardest things

and I think for the kids it was as well.

They, uh...

They just got new bikes.

And, so, then to see them like that, yeah, that's pretty hard.

Um... Probably having a house is what you miss the most.

You know, being able to sit on... you know, sit on your couch at night

and, you know, watch the cricket, watch football, like, all the...

..you know, just the little things that you don't even think about,

you know, walking into the kitchen

and grabbing something out of the fridge.

Both the kids' chairs.

That's all you can really see left of their stuff.

So, that was a Christmas present.

Daughter's Christmas present.

So, she'd barely used it.

They'd been, you know... Some of those things you don't even...

She didn't even get a chance to use her Christmas present, and it's gone.

(EXHALES HEAVILY)

We were in this room when the fire went through.

We can go to the bathroom if we get stuck in this.

No, you don't go into a room you can't get out of.

(SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY)

You go to...

..down the back. Stay away from the glass, mate.

We were in a full-glass room, basically,

so, it's like being inside a tornado that was on fire.

Fuckin' hell!

Don't worry, it's just the screen.

(SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY) Yeah.

(FIRE WHOOSHES)

It's a tough bloody pump, I'll give it that.

Oh, wow.

(EXHALES HEAVILY) You alright?

Yeah, I'll be looking on that side... (SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY)

What was that? Agh... Don't worry about it.

I can't see a fucking thing.

I think you'll need a new cubby house, Ben.

More than that, you're gonna need a whole mob of sheep.

Oh, fuck. Yeah. We're fucking...

(FIRE ROARS)

Shut the door behind you.

Yeah. Good plan.

Come on, you smoky bastard!

(CLATTERING)

Oh!

Grab it again.

Out here. Go. Fuck. Keep going.

(FIRE ROARS)

Can you work the pump?

Get back in! Back in!

Back in!

Yeah.

I mean, because I'd already lost my ute, my brother had lost his ute,

both with the fire fighters on the back.

So, then we were down to just my dad's ute with the fire fighter,

and that had run out of water.

We'd sort of extinguished our fire fighting capabilities at that stage.

So, we sort of had to abandon ship, so to speak, on the house.

Grabbed a few things we could and then left.

I mean, I grew up here,

spent the last 10 years making it my place

and, you know, a family home,

and then...

..yeah, to walk away from that...

..it's pretty hard, so...

Yeah, I mean, it's still hard.

There's a...

There's a lot of hours at work.

It's a lot of time. A lot of money.

Back to zero.

So...

There was nearly a dream here.

It's, uh...

It's mostly been wiped out now.

Yeah, like... This is the thing that amazes me.

See that? The windows have run down.

If we go in there and have a...

Look - the actual shithouse has exploded.

Oh, this is fuckin'...

This is worth millions of dollars.

I didn't realise garlic burnt so well.

There's 12 boxes of garlic here.

DIRECTOR: Roasted garlic? Yeah!

Fucking completely rooted.

Potatoes to plant.

Fucked.

How many tonnes do you want?

Fuck.

It is just so bloody wrong.

It is so wrong.

We sold 750 tonnes of spuds here.

Well, there was...

There's five of us on Kangaroo Island.

And we do 25% of Australia's seed.

There was over 100... or probably closer to $200,000 worth

of tools and shit in there.

This is a Makita drill.

(LAUGHS)

Each one of these here is worth 150...

Ooh, shit.

150 bucks each. Remi.

Ooh!

(GRUNTS)

Agh.

I've lost me shed...

..probably $1.5 million worth of machines...

..my house and all the sheds,

Mum's house,

all the sheds.

The house has exploded.

Yeah, somewhere in here is their wedding rings.

Yeah.

You know, the thing I'm really pissed off about

is that we lost all the history of our family.

Like, it's just...

You got all the photos

and all the stuff for the kids,

and...nothing left, mate.

Not a cracker.

(EXHALES HEAVILY)

Do you start up again or not?

DO you start up again?

That is a bloody good question.

(KIDS CHATTER)

(LAUGHTER, CHATTER)

Fantastic, just so I can touch base and see where they're at.

So, we've got a hub further down

where we're collecting

lots of non-perishable food items,

and then we've got plenty of water

to be able to hand out.

Today is an exceptionally hot day,

and, so, we've been handing out ample amounts of water,

and everyone's been loving it.

In through the back room here,

this is where we have all of our tools.

So, we've got a lot of hand tools, electrical equipment

and things to be able to equip people with...

..to be able to get back onto their properties and start doing things.

All through here

we've got lots of bedding and sleeping bags and things like that.

So, we've had plenty of people come in.

At the moment we've got dozens of locals out there

in campervans, caravans, people's sheds and things like that.

So, they're just living with the bare necessities,

and whatever we can equip them with has just been fantastic.

As a club, we purchased a washing machine and a chest freezer.

So, we're now calling this back room the laundry.

We've got our chest freezer full of bread and frozen meat

to be able to send off to the community as well.

We've got people coming in with Eskys that we've provided them with

and little butane burners or barbecues

where they can go home and have a bit of a feed. It's good.

A lot of our donations come in

from a place called Island Care in Kingscote,

where they're receiving donations statewide.

We've almost been a little bit overwhelmed

with all of these supplies,

but these will definitely be sent out in care packages

as we make visits out to residents.

We'd been out on the front all day.

The day the fire swept through Parndana

was a really, really big day for us.

And to kind of go home and see the devastation

that the island was under after that day

and to see it first hand so severe,

we just thought we had to do something

and support the community as much as we could.

So, we put together the caravan and made sure it was good to go,

and decided we could use that as an office

to be able to start collecting paperwork.

This is not an official emergency hub,

it's just something that the community has put together

as a local initiative.

And the amount of people we've helped...

Like, we're seeing a constant stream of people throughout the day,

and then around dinnertime we'll see people for a meal at night.

These people aren't just coming in for a visit.

They're coming in to pick up essential supplies.

I've seen people walk in that I know have lost absolutely everything

and go, "Oh, no, no,

"I only need, like, a shovel

"and I'll stay for dinner and I'll be right"...

..head off, get a few jobs done and then come back again.

And I think just knowing this is here for them has been amazing.

But to see people come in so torn and so proud

is really quite heart-wrenching

to know that they have to, you know...

..reached that point themselves to ask for help,

which is a really hard thing to do.

We've got a few guys that have been staying here,

actually, at the emergency hub

who have lost everything

and have loaded up their own vehicles

to go out and visit their mates

and take them supplies,

take them a few bags of feed and some food and clothes

and just check up on them and see how they're doing.

So, I've got myself and my three boys and my partner living in here.

And basic is basic. You don't need much to live.

We are being supplied with water, food,

and all we need to do is make sure

that all of our other friends have got shelter, water and food,

and that's all I'm focused on.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

Yeah, I've done things that I wouldn't normally do.

I've pushed myself further than I normally would.

And coming here was a place to feel safe, number one,

and have friends around.

And you read on the sheets on the walls,

there's a lot of comfort in community.

So, you need to talk to people,

especially if you're not sleeping so well

and you're waking up with night sweats and terrors that wake you.

Yeah. All the guys I talked to

had about three...probably three different nights

of just sheer hell on earth, is what you've been through,

so, you recount it in your head and you wake up to it.

(KIDS CHATTER)

Yeah, that day just turned nasty.

And it was more about not fighting the fire but looking after people.

People first and then property, houses.

And...

Yeah, like I said, it's just all a blur, running around and...

Like I said, we're a small crew out here, so, that's...

We're all stretched. (SIREN WAILS)

And then just work into the night,

a few hours' sleep and get into it the next day.

We don't really leave the fire ground until the job's done.

(INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER) Are you up Stokes Bay area at all?

There you go.

But you hear that, and all your friends live down there,

so, that's the bit about this fire is we know everybody.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

That's why I've been here every day

because these guys, they have to...

..when the flames pass their farm,

they have to go back and look at fences, look at their livestock.

So, they're still doing this and working the farm,

whereas I just live here, so, I can come here,

I open up, cook breakfast...

..and I just have to worry about how I'm paying my rent.

That's all I need to do.

(OVER RADIO) If you can't get out with the front,

drop your side and just leave your front open.

Just keep following us.

All good. Just keep following us.

But drop your curtains on the side so only the driver in front is open.

Over. You've got 200 metres to go. Over.

Some of these guys have done up to 20 hours,

probably 19, 20 hours straight.

And if you're doing something and it's being productive,

you don't just stop and go home.

Your adrenaline is running, so, you can't sleep anyway.

So, even at the end of those shifts,

we'd sit down and have a beer and talk about it.

And that's when...

You know, I live across the street and I've slept on the floor here.

You just collapse in a heap and get up and go to work.

You might get two hours, if you're lucky. Broken sleep.

And...

So, really, we've been doing this for a month flat-out.

It's not until this is all over

you're going to go, "Wow. Now what do we do?"

Because we're still in it.

My mate lives down here.

We just sat on the same track

protecting his house.

After we did a 17-hour day and then...or a 19-hour day,

and then went to bed at 4:00 in the morning,

got up at 6:00,

and did 17 hours.

And I was sitting in his toilet,

and I could see smoke coming out of the walls and off the floor.

And I went out and I said, "I need a day off."

That was a week and a half into all of this.

Yeah.

Oh, when you ask...

.."How's it going?"

you know, fucking hell, it's a blur.

That's WHY it's a blur.

Because you're not going to go to sleep

when your mate's house is under fire.

It was the sheer intensity of the fire and the fact that it happened...

People couldn't be in front of it trying to do something with it.

Like, normally, a fire comes through

and there'd be a bunch of farmers there

with their small units and they'd make sure sheep were out the road.

Generally we can pull fires up.

You know, if it had been daylight and planes could have been flying,

houses wouldn't have been lost.

I've heard it said that it was blowing 140 kays.

Now, I've been out in some pretty strong winds,

obviously, living on Kangaroo Island.

And you might curse them and lose your hat, but you can stand up.

That night I was struggling to stand up in some of them.

Basically went from the south coast to the north coast

in maybe two hours.

And if you're trying to save anything in front of that,

then you're kidding yourself.

In hindsight, there was nothing I could have done.

You know, the ute was the safest spot in the corner until it caught alight.

(CHUCKLES SOFTLY)

Once a park catches fire, it's very hard to stop,

especially if you have high fuel loads,

like we have in this area here.

You've got weather events with strong winds, high temperatures.

You can't really stop a fire anymore.

The reality is,

if you look at the analysis of fire and the landscape

and the climate that we currently have and the climate predictions,

the experts are really all quite clear about it.

You can't really prevent this with prescribed burning,

with cutting bigger patches out.

It will not change it.

You cannot stop fires with the climate that we have.

When you're not allowed to burn strategically

like we used to burn out our creek lines and roadsides

and this sort of thing...

Now we're not allowed to do that. We get fined.

Can be quite large fines if you are seen to be doing anything like that.

So, we have sort of got our hands tied.

And then the people in power

to do the so-called reduction of fuel loads,

they do not carry it out.

There's a classic of this with the park.

Flinders Chase Park itself, for the past 30 years,

that has not had a proper break, earth break, like it used to have.

When does it come about

that they'll listen to local knowledge

and go from there?

You know, we haven't been able to take sensible management

for managing native vegetation

for the last 30, 40 years.

This place was last burned in about 1952, I reckon.

So, we had huge build-ups around here and everywhere else in between,

and it just steamrolled through that.

We've just got to do something with the landscape.

We just can't have forestry and native vegetation

linked one to another.

It's exactly the same as the Chase.

It had gone through and totally wiped the Chase.

That can't happen either. You're going to have to have that broken up.

I mean, we've just wiped out, you know...

..goodness knows how many wildlife in this.

And that's not conservation.

Not at all.

Always been against bushfires. They are...

They're not a necessary thing when they're out of control.

They're OK if they're working for you but not against you.

I've raised my family here,

and the main gist of all of this is fairness for the community people.

And there's so much wrong I see in all of this

through not being done the right way.

Legislated whichever way you go. Red tape.

It's Australia-wide, but we cop it on Kangaroo Island at a regular basis,

and people get hurt.

We need to see change. And everyone promises change.

And I'm not supposed to talk about things

because we're supposed to move on.

But, if you can't learn by your mistakes,

what is the point of all this anyway?

BEN DAVIS: It's only 13 years ago that all the national park burnt.

And here we are again. You know?

But this time it burnt properly

and then it burnt everyone.

You know, this time round they let a fire start,

and then it was a bad day.

There is a bit of 'us and them',

and not just between farmers,

but in general between governments, farmers,

different departments have different views.

At the end of the day, this park has always been here.

And, if you look over the last 150 years or so,

there's been a lot of land clearing here on Kangaroo Island,

and more and more, especially after the Second World War.

We have inserted ourselves into a landscape

that naturally has got native vegetation,

so, we can't then turn around and say, "That is the problem."

That's always a challenge.

You know, who's at fault? What's at fault?

Do we simply want to get rid of all the native vegetation

to make it clear, make it safe?

I don't think that's the answer.

BEN DAVIS: Just more frustration of the system,

that you keep making the same mistake and just you don't learn from it.

I mean, there's a lot of people around that are quite angry.

They've got not much left and got out just alive.

Yeah, and I'm pretty angry, really,

that this is the sort of loss we suffered.

It didn't have to happen.

With good management from a lot of people, this didn't have to happen.

We didn't have to bury 2,500 sheep.

We didn't have to go now and rebuild all our sheds, houses, fences.

We lost all the fences.

There's always a fire risk.

Always has been, always will be.

But it doesn't have to be as bad as this.

What am I most angry about?

National Parks and Wildfire Service.

They don't do anything.

Right? They sit there, they make all...

They get paid all year. They do not do their burn-offs.

Right?

They've done one hell of a burn-off now.

Parks need to be burnt.

I mean, you drive around now and you look

and everything's regrowing.

That's what it does.

It burns and everything's reshooting

because that's what this scrub... that's how it lives.

But it needs to be burnt

at a time when it's not going to be a monster

that just keeps rolling across people's places.

Frustration is there quite a bit amongst some people

and other people just get on with it.

They know it is so complex. You can't blame anyone.

These things just happen and there's no easy solution.

(WIND WHOOSHES)

That's right. The fire could have been put out...

By two people. ..two people,

..out, right out west...

By bulldozer and a grader.

..and would've saved save two lives and over half of Kangaroo Island.

Good mate of ours, like, Skinny,

he had his bulldozer sitting there and he's watching it.

He watched the lightning strike.

He was sitting there and he could have moved in and stopped it.

The Parks wouldn't let him go in there... Couldn't go.

..'cause you can't damage the park's, you know, vegetation.

So, he was sitting there for eight hours.

And then they said, "Oh, you can go in now."

It was too late. And by then it was already too late.

When he first saw it, it would have been the size of two utes.

He had to wait for permission from National Parks. We had to wait eight hours.

'Cause it was IN the park.

If it was on his own land he could have just gone and done the scrub.

Could've been there in 15 minutes. He could have driven in there and pushed up around it,

pushed a break around it, it would have all been done.

There was no dozer lines put in until he had permission

'cause otherwise he'd get sued by Parks.

So, we got to the fire at about 11 o'clock

when he said, "Can you get out and have a look at our farm?"

And no worries, so, we've driven out there.

And there was our two units and one other unit there

and then... Private unit.

..yeah, private units.

And then a thing went out over Facebook,

and there was about 30 farm units there before a CFS truck got there.

Oh, it was out of control. There was nothing we could do about it.

(WATER PATTERS)

(FIRE WHOOSHES)

(FIRE CRACKLES)

It was sighted earlier

by people out at my property

that my son and I have got out in the West End,

only kilometres away from where the impact was, and...

My daughter phoned me. She was out there.

She phoned about 3:15, 3:20 on the morning of the 30th

and just said, "Dad, there's a fire in the park close by."

We were crewed at the school,

and when the pagers first went off at 4:30 in the morning,

we were told...

.."No, hang on, just don't rush out yet

"because the lightning storm is still coming through."

I flew out to the site,

coming into the scene where the ignition point was.

Got the western end of the island through there.

You've got your border road that comes back up through here.

And you've got West End Highway through here.

You've got Shackle Road.

We had a lightning strike in here.

So, that was the initial impact there.

And then we had the other, the second strike,

which was actually the ravine strike out there.

Now one machine was right there in the area.

Mine was on the low loader here at the farm.

That's only 30 minutes away.

Some people said, "Oh, you weren't responding straightaway."

It's not that we weren't responding straightaway,

it's because we were waiting for the band to come through

to ensure that there wasn't other priorities

that were going to be greater

than going to a fire that we couldn't access anyway.

Had we been able to go in there, do a ring around this area,

which was done quickly with two machines,

and then you do a path back out again

so trucks can actually drive in

to do the containment afterwards.

But what had happened then,

we were left stranded with the idea we weren't allowed in there.

So, once we've had the edge

put up through here to stop the fire on the back,

we've come in through behind

with a loader from there and a dozer from this side

and...to try and meet up.

This fire here took up a lot of appliances,

bulldozers, graders,

all trying to contain what was started off as a small, little fire.

And the main thing with all of this

was we spent several days trying to contain this one

that I believe we could have put out in a matter of hours,

and the other fire was building the whole time.

Had that not been there,

then these resources can be used for the main one.

I actually thought that the fire on the eastern side of Shackle Road

was the fire that was of the greatest priorities.

We could attack that one.

The fire on the western side was 17 kilometres in.

You know, if we had have gone in there with the dozers to there,

I don't think that we would have made it

before it would have gone through anyway.

I could have 95% guaranteed putting that small fire out

had we been allowed in there with bulldozers.

Look, we did the best that we could on the day.

(PHONE LINE RINGS)

STAFFER: CFS Media. This is (BLEEP!)

DIRECTOR: Hi, (BLEEP!) My name is Stephen.

Look, I'm just doing some research

into specifically the fires on Kangaroo Island

just to get a top-level perspective of, I guess, the entire effort.

What we heard was, if I'm totally honest -

and that's why I want to speak to you guys

because I want to get the truth of the matter -

we heard a lot of anger

really around the fact that they were told

that they couldn't put out the fire when the lightning first struck.

So, we're really just looking to corroborate that.

Yes. Is that what you mean?

Yeah. Correct.

The Premier has ordered an immediate review

into South Australia's deadly bushfires.

We will immediately push ahead with an inquiry and a review

into the bushfire preparedness.

Trust that the review will be managed quite tightly,

but it's a great vehicle

by which to capture a whole lot of disparate views and opinions.

Could've? Maybe. Should've? Maybe.

But people always say that in fire situations,

and they need to be strong in their evidence.

If that's correct, if they're correct, and they may well be,

we need to know

because after 2007 fires

a lot of this came out and nothing was done,

nothing was done by the government at the time.

We need to get to the truth of what really happened.

I think if you're going to have a fire in the middle of summer,

it's not a good idea.

Not in 50,000 hectares of scrub.

So, if a fire is in there

and you've got the opportunity to put it out,

you probably want to put it out.

There was never enough effort put in initially

for the fire to be stopped before it got going,

before it turned into this and it WAS controllable.

So... And when it was... it started off.

It's a lightning strike. So, it's a small fire.

Early morning it rained.

(ROTORS WHIRR) So, you know, it was...

You start bombing something then and get it wet, it's controllable.

There was no need for this to happen.

We have to become more resilient

in terms of what sort of buildings are we putting in the landscape?

What sort of fences?

How do we do prescribed burns?

How do we resource that well that you get the best chance?

And surely do something about climate change

so this doesn't get worse and worse.

Clearly, the landscape has become drier,

so, this event may not be the last one.

Touch wood.

And here we go with climate change.

Why don't we just call it the earth does what it does in nature.

And climate changed the jobs for the boys.

And, people, get off the bandwagon.

My own personal thoughts

is will climate change affect me at being 45 years old?

And it may slightly.

Will it affect my kids?

Yes, it will.

Will it affect their kids?

Most definitely.

Did climate change cause this fire?

No. This was lightning.

This was lightning in inaccessible country.

This was just the perfect storm

and the perfect opportunity, the right conditions,

and it made a run.

If in event this happened again, I would be prepared.

I've gone past 70,

so, I'll be prepared to go straight in with a bulldozer

and I'll wear the consequences afterwards.

I think it's a childish behaviour on all parts

to say, "You're not allowed in there."

We don't... We hardly make a mark.

We make a clean break, yes,

but we don't go in there and devastate the country.

Turn around now and have a look at what devastation looks like

through not doing firebreaks properly.

And the farmers and everyone here

deserve a lot better than what we get.

We euthanased about another 12 today. Yep.

It doesn't. It's...

..a pretty hard...hard day when you've got to go out

and shoot something that you thought enough of to look after.

I don't think any farmers would find that very easy.

(SHEEP BLEAT)

However, it's a fact of life.

You can't leave them suffering if they're not going to make it.

And they've had three weeks now to get over it,

and a lot of them have, of course,

and we've put a huge amount of time into them and continue to do so.

The fire come through on the Friday, right?

On the Saturday we were cleaning up dead cows.

These poor bastards didn't even have ears on them.

To lose all my animals as well, that was the hardest bit,

to have to come back then and try and deal with,

you know, the fact that you've lost

everything that I've spent the last 10 years breeding up

and buying...you know, buying good animals to breed

so you've got a good bloodline going

to then have nothing left.

It's... Yeah, that's probably the hardest bit.

You know, I've got a sheep dog and no sheep.

You know, I've got a house dog and no house.

I fear that, you know, all that work

is going to be really hard to...

..to get back, you know, to anything close to where I was.

You know?

So, I've got... I mean, I've got my family.

Everyone says that. I mean, that's the most important thing.

But it's still hard to, you know...

And I know it's hard for them to come back and look at it.

And they always ask, the kids are like,

"Are you staying out there again, Dad?"

You know...

And that's probably the hardest thing for me at the moment.

SHANE QUIRK: Seeing our mate's house

that have got a couple of small kids that don't have a home anymore.

Adults can get over it. They can get over their loss.

But small children with a room full of toys is their world,

and that'll be the hardest thing for them.

You know, you've got to look after the young people.

Adults can bounce back.

Hey, look, mate, I am fucked.

Bullshit. Yeah, well, I...

It's taken me over 20 years to get to here.

I just don't understand.

What...

Fuck.

You know, like, I used to...

..turn over fucking...

..employ 14 people.

What do I do now?

The marks on the road where two people died.

We drove past when the cops were marking that out.

And that's just going to be a memorial for those couple of lads.

I mean, that's the pinnacle, isn't it? Lives are lost.

(WAVES CRASH)

We're more than lucky here.

More than... More than lucky.

We've got... You know, still got the business. Still got the home.

Other people...

Mm.

I've thought a lot about it last night. A lot.

Spent a lot of time thinking about it, and it...

I'm...yeah, not...

Not fully comfortable.

Survivor's guilt is such an apt word.

It's...

And it's... Almost everyone on the island is affected by it,

and it goes as far as some people even reluctant to say, you know,

that they had a good weekend

or that they enjoyed the movie

that they recently saw on the mainland

or that they actually go and support some of the local businesses

just immediately after the fire

and have a glass of wine at the cellar door.

You know, our life is... essentially, it's normal here,

whereas for so many people it's not normal.

They don't have a home to go to.

Those people are hurting,

are really hurting.

From the pubs to the sporting clubs to accommodation,

it's farmers, it's shearers.

Shearers...

..they're...

There's 100,000-plus sheep gone.

This fire has echoed through every aspect of the community.

HEIRI KLEIN: I've also spoken to one particular couple.

They run a farm and they lost pretty much everything on the farm,

and they kept stressing that, since they didn't lose their house,

they are so much better off than all the others.

And I said, "No, don't kid yourself,"

you know, "it doesn't diminish what you went through because it's huge."

MATTHEW JOHNSON: We evacuated here on the Friday.

I went to the CFS station.

I've been on and off fire trucks, farm units, food runs.

So, you never even contemplate being open.

Even if we did have power and we did have the ability to open.

Not when something like this is going on.

You just...

..do what you do.

You help.

Help. It's all hands on deck.

How do we go forward?

How do we try and be as helpful and as kind to each other as we can?

Because it's tough.

Not so much for me,

but for the people that have lost everything.

Unfortunately, the truth that it was...'disallow' was the word,

"I do not allow you to put out that burning fire"...

So, we found a burning fire. We were not allowed to put it out.

In hindsight,

I would have been happy to be the guy in the plane that lost his job.

I would have been happy to be the farmer in the bulldozer

that would have lost his job.

And we weren't allowed to extinguish a fire that's killed two people.

So, yeah, that's the kind of hurt and anger

that's flowing around at the moment.

SAM MUMFORD: It worries me that people are talking class actions,

and all that's going to do is divide a community.

The only way we'll get through this is as a community.

I'm incredibly proud of what's happened here.

These guys that work in the Parks and these guys that work on KIPT

they have worked their absolute... off on this fire

and, mate, they're part of this community, right?

The rocks will be thrown, right?

There's going to be a coronial inquest into this fire.

So, they shouldn't be thrown from here.

Once it's all said and done, the government will come back and say,

"Well, this is what happened and this is why it happened."

We don't need to put division in this community

when the whole community is hurting.

We need to get through this and we need to get through this together.

You know, if it wasn't for the community,

you know, outflowing and help,

I guess I'd be very angry and bitter.

But even the help of other people

doesn't overcome the fact that, you know,

we're canned, and we didn't really need to be canned.

That's probably the scariest thing.

That would be the scariest thing looking forward,

would be its ability to create divides within the community

and affect friendships and whatnot.

That would be the biggest concern.

I think this is a real opportunity

and a good test for leaders as well

to show what they can do,

whether they can be divisive or bring people together.

It's easy to start shifting blame,

but at the end of the day, you have to get out of this all together.

I think we can be a stronger place after this

and things will bounce back.

Things will bounce back.

MATTHEW JOHNSON: Kangaroo Island

has one of the tightest communities going.

People care.

People genuinely care about each other,

whether there be, you know,

your neighbour next door or Joe Bloggs 50 kay down the road

or the fellow at the other end of the island

who you've played footy against your whole life,

and, you know, you may not be best mates on field,

when something like this happens

all that...that none of that counts.

SAM MUMFORD: I'm incredibly proud to live where we live.

The thing that everyone says, like,

"Kangaroo Island is a beautiful place to visit."

Mate, it's a better place to live.

Everybody cares for everyone.

And when something like this happens,

you realise, you know, just how lucky we are to be where we are.

So...

And that's how we're going to get through this.

The community is too...

..too strong to let...

..this beat it.

That's what keeps you going.

You know, you know you've got support.

I don't know how would have gone trying to do all this by myself.

Like, you can't even imagine

the amount of work that's been done here by other people is...

Yeah. It's crazy.

I can't tell you how grateful I am.

I mean, within two days,

I had people out here helping me with the livestock.

A week later, the army arrived and tore all my fences down,

you know, helped me start rebuilding, installed a toilet for me,

cut down trees that were a hazard.

Just amazing amount of work.

And they did that in a day and a half.

It's months of work for me

what they managed to do in a day and a half.

I've got a mate here, he's still here,

he comes, you know,

given up his, you know, jobs that he should be doing himself

just to come here to make sure that, you know...

..that I can get more jobs done.

SHANE QUIRK: We're living off the donations,

off the food that people have donated.

So, I don't have to worry about buying food. So, that's a godsend.

(LAUGHTER, CHATTER)

But, yeah, it's just living.

A lot of these people are proud

and they wouldn't accept donations normally.

And I'm the same. I...

You know, I work, I work hard,

I don't really need donations, but...

It's not until you have a look at what's gone that...

You know, if you've got a toothbrush, someone will take it.

It's down to the bare essentials

that you can't say no anymore,

and you just start rebuilding.

So, people with no clothes except for what they wore on that day.

So, yeah, you can't say no to a donation.

Um...

Probably the...

(QUIETLY) Just cut it.

(SIGHS)

That's the difficult part - the help.

It's amazing.

(EXHALES HEAVILY)

Yeah, it's mind-blowing, really. Mm.

The army.

Blaze Aid.

Friends have lent us all the gear this year.

You know, it just goes on and on.

(SIGHS) That's the toughest part to deal with, actually.

Yeah, I guess I don't like charity much.

That's the hardest part.

People are well-meaning, and I guess I would have done it for others.

I had people ring and want my, you know, bank balance account. And...

You know, I really can't handle that. And...

But the community spirit is great.

Yeah.

We're all in this together.

And we'll dig through it and keep going.

JADE VIVIENNE: This island, virtually, runs on tourism,

so, it's crucial to have people realise

that, yes, we've been burnt out,

but it's not going to stop us from moving forward.

But I'm absolutely optimistic it will bounce back,

everything will bounce back,

and it also shows how much support there already is

from the mainland and from consumers,

from tourism campaigns.

MATTHEW JOHNSON: The ripple effect from this will go for years

until an absolute minimum for the tourism industry next summer...

..when hopefully we're back up,

as, you know, South Australia's iconic island,

Kangaroo Island and nature's paradise.

The Kangaroo Island that people love is still here.

We've still got half of the island untouched.

Come here. Enjoy it.

There's so many beaches and cafes and wineries.

The wild, rustic,

you're-on-the edge-of-the-earth feeling is still here.

Experience the culture. Experience the locals.

Come and see us. You know, that's the most important thing you can do.

Kangaroo Island really needs you to come.

I travel ban will be placed

on all non-residents, non-Australian citizens,

coming to Australia,

and that will be in place from 9:00PM tomorrow evening.

There's panic and confusion across the state tonight

as South Australians prepare to go into total lockdown.

From midnight we're being told to stay at home.

So, this used to be the big shed.

(LAUGHS)

She all got ripped down.

Cleaned up.

Seeing everything you've worked for...

..get pulled down and crushed,

just get...yeah.

Like your whole life just destroyed.

You know? Very depressing.

Yeah.

And then having to clean it up.

(CHUCKLES)

SHANE QUIRK: Yeah, as a tradie I've just been flat-out working.

So, yeah, it's normal.

That's the normal.

What amazed me - how quick everybody just fired up

when the farmers had to do their fencing,

and it's just kept rolling.

Last 12 months it's been pretty crazy, really.

It just never ends, so...

Yeah. It helps you forget about it all.

Everything's just so slow.

They talk about recovery, but...

My case manager,

he's got about 10 people over here,

and I know not one of them have got their loan yet,

14 months on.

We're farmers. We're not bloody accountants.

You could start another bushfire with the amount of paperwork.

You know, we all pushed ourselves that much that it was...

And I look back on it and I think,

"How hard can the human body be pushed?"

And I...

You go to the brink, that's for sure.

PETER LOCK: You know, when you've been burnt out,

you're right at the bottom of the bottom...

..so, you've got to...

All you want to do is see stuff going ahead to make you feel better

so that you can actually work towards it.

Everyone's struggling.

You're basically fighting all this on your own.

You've got your mates you just talk it over with.

And they were in the same boat.

They were busting their arse and getting nowhere.

So...

I don't know what the secret is to it.

SHANE QUIRK: You know, I drive around the island

and I still go through what we were talking about on the radio.

So, it is a flashback. It's a...

It's weird. It's...

Yeah, it gets you. It's got me.

But, you know,

like I say to the crew...

..it's the new normal.

Of course you're going to get stuff like that.

Yeah, you might have a tear, and you... Yeah.

But if you watch the news...

(CHUCKLES DRYLY)

..it's not the worst thing that's happened to anybody.

PETER LOCK: Quite a few times I've wondered

whether it was worth going on.

If it wasn't for all the mates around here that got burnt out as well,

like, you know...

I think it's just that everyone else has kept everyone together.

Because it's been bloody hard yards.

This will all be 500-tonne cool room, this section here.

Grading plant.

I've got the footings down for the shed,

but I just need to finish paying for the shed.

There'll be a massive solar system on the roof.

Be a big workshop at the back,

and the trucks will come through and load undercover.

So, yeah.

If all the measurements are right, it should work mickey mouse.

Ah, there's always great challenges.

It's great fun. It's part of living the dream, mate.

(BIRDS WARBLE)

DAVE HALLORAN: Hopefully now we've had some meeting

with the Parks people from Adelaide,

they asked me to come in to put some opinions forward, which we did,

and instead of doing controlled burn-offs in October, November,

I said that's way too late,

and now the new bloke we've got in there, he's really good,

so, they're burning this time of the year.

And also interested in doing the big chain breaks in there

that we want to try and achieve.

Let's hope something has sunk in.

You know, I've been out to Flinders Chase

and it's just that big that you can't carve it up in sections and...

You follow a management plan

and you can try, but it's all about the response

and do we learn the lessons?

Do we...

If it happens again, how are we going to deal with it?

I'm hoping for a decent victory soon.

The spuds coming out of the ground are good. That's a victory, I guess.

That'll help pay towards some of the stuff.

Just got to take little steps

and take a bite and chew like hell, I think.

Just keep fighting.

The only thing I can think of doing.

Hopefully I'll be back on my feet within three or four years.

Hopefully.

If all the stars line up.

(LAUGHS)

So, yeah.

Fucked if I know.

We'll get there.

NEWSREADER: The scathing report

found the fire service prioritised National Park buildings

over homes.

They found that there were systemic failings

in the way the CFS managed the KI fires last fire season,

failings in communication

and also bushfire-fighting procedures.

It also found there was a disproportionate focus

on trying to save a National Park visitor centre

instead of focusing on saving homes on the island,

many of which were lost.

There were nowhere near enough resources on the ground

to fight this unpredictable blaze, according to the report,

nor was there adequate technology,

which meant that CFS crews were actually getting lost

while fighting the blaze.

The CFS has been accused of trying to cover up this report

because it was finalised last October

and it has just been released now.

The CFS said that they wanted to make sure they briefed

all of the volunteers involved

before speaking publicly about this.

It has now been released publicly.

And indeed there were 11 recommendations for changes

made in the report,

all of which have been accepted by the CFS.