Word: mintener
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Like many residents in the cluster of towns northeast of Melbourne, Michael Minten and his partner Sharon Collins were caught completely off-guard when last year's 'Black Saturday' infernos swallowed their property in Flowerdale, Victoria. Minten went ahead to work in the morning, leaving Collins at home with their toddler. The sky was a hazy amber as the fire raged in nearby towns, but no one thought the flames would reach Flowerdale. With typical summer temperatures of 115 degrees, Collins did what she usually did on hot days: crank up air-conditioning full-blast, and draw the blinds...
...midday, Collins noticed the phones and electricity were not working. By the time she decided to leave the house, the sky was black. "She had no idea that she was in that much danger. She couldn't see anything," recalls Minten. "She crashed the car into a tree on the way out." Eventually, Collins spotted the faint headlights of another car through the haze and followed it up the windy road to a pub where she, her son and other Flowerdale residents stayed briefly before they were evacuated to Yea, a nearby town. The couple's weatherboard home burnt...
...Minten and Collins are among them, waiting to build their new home on a new block of land in Flowerdale. And Minten insists that apart from not planting trees near the house, they will not do anything differently. "All these bushfire prevention ideas are a load of rubbish," he says. "The brick houses were just as burnt as the timber ones. It doesn't matter what the house is made of. A fire like that will destroy everything in its path...
| 1 |