Weather warnings Part 2

The forklift truck training Burnley team haven’t always delivered training you know.
Tara, Lucy and I squatted on the floor in a back room hoping and praying for a miracle after the brief contact with our family. They too were watching the Bushfires on TV. We were all shocked, scared and wondering what the next day would bring… We were told to grab what was important to us at the time from the car so grabbed our bags, cameras and a box of wine.. Which was being spooned by a huge huntsman spider.

After flicking the spider off, we laid in silence wondering if anyone from the company was missing us.. No one had called. Figured. We periodically stood up and went outside, staring at the sky, watching burning embers colour our car. Ash smeared our faces as we stood in the street in disbelief feeling the flecks against our hot skin. The car was white, now it was black. We didn’t care, we half hoped it would be destroyed to teach the company a lesson.

We helped to fill wheelie bins with water in case we needed to defend the home.. It all seemed surreal but for us.. We were in hell but we ploughed on trying to be positive.

The night passed slowly, not a wink of sleep was caught and we awoke to the news that the road was being cleared so we could perhaps leave later that day.. 24 hours passed and we were finally on the move back. We stopped at a coffee shop en route and got our pictures printed to show the “boss” (Steve) or moron as we called him. Prior to the fires we had spoken to him saying it was too dangerous to stay out and he instructed us to get one more sale otherwise we’d lose our jobs and at the time, we were dopey enough to believe him. We rang him from the cafe to speak to him to which he replied, “Is the car ok? Thought you were joking about the fires.” Hardly something you joke about, is it!? When we arrived back to Melbourne, we marched into the office where 16 wet behind the ears backpackers were convened being trained to sell electricity. He welcomed us over and said we’d were his best staff looking sheepish to which we responded with throwing the pictures on the table to show them just how good a boss he was. We explained about how he never called, never checked on us, never reported us missing nor thought about our safety. One after one, the backpackers left, under no illusion about just what kind of boss he was. Next mission was to get the Rogerson’s bill corrected and refunded so they weren’t being charged unnecessarily and at first I was met with, “We can’t.” But this all changed when our story was told that it would look great spread across the media. Immediately the transaction was done and an apology letter was written. We never worked for the agency again and about a year later, the company went bust-deservedly so.

The moral of the story is that it takes one person to start something but a group of people to change the world. To the brave firemen of Black Saturday-I thank you, my family thanks you and the people you rescued thank you.

Please support your local fire service as they don’t just save lives, they save livelihoods, towns, cities etc.. They are the most underrated service of them all. So next time you see a fireman. Thank him and shake his hand because while you were in bed asleep, he was saving a life.