Fire hit when it was thought the threat was over

Just hours before it was unexpectedly consumed by the Longwood bushfire, the couple had filled it with groceries.

“I said to my wife, if we make it to Saturday, we’re fine,” Mr Booth said.

“Because the fire was going south from Longwood and we came and went, I was dodging police to fill up a generator with fuel, because the power was off, to keep freezers going.

“We were going to be bed surfing and motel surfing for a couple of days.”

Saturday morning came.

The weather was cooler; the panic had subsided.

“I said to my wife, it’s all over now, we can go and buy some food and we’ll go back out,” Mr Booth recalled.

“So she bought about 100 bucks worth of food at Burton’s supermarket and we came home and filled the freezer.”

The couple settled in to watch TV when there was a knock on the door.

It was a policeman, who told Mr Booth the fire was just behind his neighbours’ property and asked if he was staying to defend his property or leaving.

“I said, well I’d like to stay, but I’m not much good hobbling around, so we left,” Mr Booth said.

“That was about 2.30 on Saturday afternoon (January 10).”

By 5pm, their home was up in flames.

The Booths’ neighbours, Bethany and Neil Devanny, who have lived on 700 acres next door since 1992, said trucks had been called from the other side of the ridge to perform asset protection for the properties on the Longwood-Mansfield Rd.

“The problem was that explosions started happening at Mal and Erika’s, so for safety’s sake they pulled out and Mal still doesn’t know where the explosions came from,” Mr Devanny, who is also a CFA firefighter, said.

“But it has to be the first thing is you look after your crew — I had to do the same thing a couple of days before over in Ruffy, you know, we were burnt in, and I had to get the crew out on to black ground so they were safe — so first priority is people.”

The Devannys’ house was saved, but the property sustained severe damage.

“This is our second time of complete burnout,” Mr Devanny said.

When the Booths had moved to their 205-acre Gooram property in 1997, they had concerns about fires coming from the north because their driveway slope is around 15 degrees.

“Every five degrees of slope a fire doubles in speed,” Mr Booth said.

“We built a pretty elaborate defence system against north fires.

“Ironically, since we’ve been here, there’s been three close fires and they’re all from the south.”

Mr Booth believes that his and his wife’s home was the last house to burn in the Longwood bushfire, which claimed more than 100 houses.

It wasn’t just the home containing years of memories and possessions, including 300-year-old furniture that had been moved from England with Mr Booth in his younger years, or the several vehicles, machinery and garden equipment that were lost, Mrs Booth’s detached hexagonal art studio was also razed.

The couple’s son, Tony, used to handcraft violins.

All of those were destroyed, too.

Mr Booth pointed out things as we walked.

A bullbar had melted off the front of a ute.

The metal had trickled downwards along the earth like lava, and just as hot, before setting in shiny streaks of what looked like silver volcanic rock.

Just over a metre away, a plastic IBS (intermediate bulk container) wasn’t even melted.

The contents of a shed, including a historic aeroplane Mr Booth was hoping to restore, were untouched while most things around it had been scorched.

The home was levelled, hoses melted, trees singed, but hundreds of bright pink belladonna lillies bloomed around the black and grey ruins in spite of the monochromatic landscape surrounding them.

All proof that fire is indiscriminate.

Mr Booth is staying in temporary accommodation at the Blaze Aid camp within the Euroa Showgrounds, and also volunteering with the fence rebuilding crews, while Mrs Booth is staying with the couple’s daughter in Tasmania.

They will soon move into their friends’ unit in Euroa while they decide where to go from here.

You can watch a video from our visit here: