They were stranded. With fires raging around them, a group of Yellow Rock residents who had fled to the lookout thinking they would be safe wondered if they would survive.
As they grew increasingly desperate, even considering hiking down the cliff to reach the Nepean River, suddenly out of the smoke emerged a Fire and Rescue NSW truck.
Headed by relieving station officer Tony “Gutters’’ Gutteridge, the four-man team from C Patrol at St Marys took control.
“It was hectic, we had been going from job to job, doing snatch and grabs [rescues of people trapped in the fire] and the guy driving my truck, Phil Holdsworth, got a call from his wife saying his sister was trapped down there.
“We were on a mission, we drove through flames to get to the people, ran over trees with the truck, we had to get out there,” said Mr Gutteridge.
“I said to them: ‘You can’t stay here, it’s not safe’.
“It was a little bit of a nightmare, I thought, ‘I don’t like this’, with the amount of smoke coming through and the heat, a few spotfires under the cars and they would have been in trouble.”
The fire truck led the convoy of cars a kilometre back along Yellow Rock Road, between burning trees, to the home of Susan and Bob Pearson. There, for the next five hours, the residents sheltered as 30-metre flames surrounded them: 54 people, 23 dogs, three cats, a bird and a diabetic horse on a float parked outside the front door.
The youngest was just 13 weeks old; the oldest, Mrs Pearson’s 90-year-old mum Maud.
Outside, Bob Pearson joined the firies in battling the blaze, using water from the pool as the fire truck had run dry.
Inside, Mrs Pearson and her daughter Christie grabbed every tea towel they could find, wet them in the pool and handed them out to drape over people’s heads.
With the power gone and the house on tank water, the pumps didn’t work, but some had bought supplies of bottled water and handed those out.
Mrs Pearson did a loaves and fishes trick, managing to keep everyone fed on just four packets of biscuits and three packets of Jatz crackers.
Ice-cream containers full of pool water were passed around for the dogs who remained surprisingly calm, Mrs Pearson said. Buckets of pool water also saved the toilet situation, which had threatened to get out of control.
Catherine Robley, who was with her elderly father, said they sat in the house and “watched all the area around us burn’’.
“It was a bit of an eye-opener as the fire came out of that valley,” Mr Gutteridge said.
“We didn’t know the fire wall was coming until it was on top of us.”
At around 8pm, the Riot Squad arrived.
“They said we’re going to leave,’’ Mrs Pearson said. “Everyone will drive out, single-file. Whatever you see along the way, even if it’s your house burnt down, you can’t stop.”
Mrs Robley said she had no idea of the damage that had been wrought until they left with the police escort. “It was absolute hell on earth,” she said. “They said you are going to be shocked by what you see, but ... you can’t pull over, you just have to follow us out to Springwood.”
Twelve houses were lost in the street.
Robyn Gillies Tabrett, who brought Rosie, her border collie, and Rumble, her horse, said she headed to the lookout because it had burnt just weeks earlier and “I thought it was the only place I stood half a chance”.
But as time marched on, “I thought, great, we’ve got to the lookout and now we’re going to die here”.
She called her husband who couldn’t get through to the RFS but managed to call ABC radio, which broadcast where they were.
Renee Jenkins had her 21-month-old daughter Poppy with her. “She didn’t even know it was stressful. She was just having a ball with all the kids around.”
At an informal “reunion” this week, where the residents thanked their saviours, several people revealed they had lost everything, including Nicole Molony, who had been at the lookout with her son and two grandchildren.
Jennie Hall, from Yellow Rock Road, also lost her house and car. Incredibly, on the weekend the replacement car she had had for just two days was written-off when a motorist distracted by the army trucks outside the Springwood Country Club ran into her.
“But I’m still here,” she said.
Mr Gutteridge, who said “you couldn’t give me a home in that area”, hopes he never has to revisit the bushfire “nightmare” outside generous Bob’s place — a 14 hour shift with fellow firies Phil Holdsworth, Andrew Sarson and John Bugelli.
“It was a first for me and hopefully the last. Your training cuts in and you do your job. We just did what we had to do.”
