Weather warnings

The forklift truck training Burnley team haven’t always delivered training you know…….

February 2009: Black Saturday Bush fires. Firemen!? What can I say? I lived in Australia 2008-2010 and spent most of my working days singing karaoke, making coffees and working at functions but what most people don’t know is that I sold electricity and did door to door sales.. Yep. I am that person that interrupted family time. Annoyed you off and was often questioned to see if I was another nuisance and I know you all automatically thought, “bog off!”
I lived, breathed and sold Country Energy until I was rich and could survive in Australia for a month or 2. I made friends and this grew to become my family. All different nationalities but one goal-to make money! Where am I going with this, you’re thinking..? Well… It all began on a 48 degrees February 6th in a town called Churchill.

Churchill, Victoria, Australia 2009.

It was a hazy but hot day (48’c) my water was almost bubbling with the heat. I was on my own-door knocking whilst accepting any sort of soft drink I could when I stumbled across a house in a cul-de-sac. It seemed shaded so I gave it a knock and was greeted by an expat from the motherland who went on to explain how bad my company had been and that they had been charged twice for a bill with us. I skimmed over it, accepted a cool drink and offered to photocopy it and sort it leaving my name, number, passport number etc. I was determined and the next day I returned with the photocopied bill to show my honesty.

With no signal on my phone and sweat pouring from me I carried on regardless but they kept me a while chatting and sipping refreshments. I tried to muster the energy I set out with to leave and after finding signal on my phone was able to reach Lucy and Tara, we set off on our merry way home. Driving through the wilds of the bush before my phone beeped into life. The two people who I’d just visited warned me to turn around and go back as we were driving right into the Bush fires that had mutilated the land. We did as instructed and were overcome with the sight of flames licking the pretty views creeping over hills and fields nearby.

When we got back into Churchill, we stopped and I stood on a nearby hill seeing explosion of house after house, helicopters dropping water from buckets, the fire spreading and the smoke masking the sky. It could only be described as an action film.

The Rogerson’s whose bill I photocopied, took us in that night and I prepped myself. I thought now was a good time to make a goodbye call to my family.

To be continued