This morning (wed 11) we got up very early and left
Melbourne to drive 150km to meet some people who are simply livid at the extra burden being placed on them by
police roadblocks just north of the
Yea-Murrindindi fire area.
To set the scene, the devastating firestorm to the south has past and now many small communities who were not hit by it are facing the day to day uncertainty of a regular bushfire.
While constantly under smoke and occasional ember attack the areas referred to in this post are not burnt out and not even at "urgent threat level" but they are in the path of where the fires might go.
The authorities have responded by placing one way roadblocks on many main roads that are severely hampering the day to day business of locals running there farms. The area I have been directly involved in has a system so dumb that one farmer
cannot go north 1km to his second paddock to attend his animals and another could not get private firefighting equipment south past a roadblock to assist in his fire preparation.
Basically you can leave to go to a "safer" area - but you cannot go to the local
shop you can almost see from your front door to get supplies and then return as you would need to pass a control point.
We called up a few locals and asked how can we help, in a surprise to us they asked for bread, and another wanted gates unlocked for horses get to water..
Just think about that statement for a few seconds - in a modern country like Australia, a combination of bureaucracy and rushed reactions has combined to put people already under severe stress, in a situation where they fear leaving there farms
to get supplies as they cannot return.
This posed an interesting access situation for us as we had no intention of running road blocks. We were however given the go-ahead to cross heavily bushed properties including cutting fences etc if necessary. We configured the patrol a bit differently for this job as we had also gone in last weekend and one vehicle had suffered a stake though a tyre in the process and winching was required. We took 2 of everything (chainsaws - fence cutting equipment - power grinder) and extra tyre repair stuff including a full size jack, as we carried no camping equipment.The forest stuff was a good 4wd drive but some surprisingly soft paddocks covered in cow dung were enough to make us ask "Is this really necessary", at one stage I even considered fitting the chains but thankfully didn't have to.
In the end our biggest danger was of getting nearly "hugged to death" by locals as we handed over the bread etc.
This stuffing around at a time of need should be un-necessary and we all should be able to do better than this.
Robin Miller