Canberra Bushfires - Mount Taylor (filmed by vk1kcm)

[unclech0pper]

A friend and I went up Mt Taylor during the fires to take photos. I think it was around 2-3 in the afternoon. We were leaving, and as we got to the car we looked up the hill to watch fire sweep right through where we were standing only moments earlier. Got back home in Wanniassa shortly after and it was pitch black in the middle of the afternoon except for the red glow on the horizon.

[supertysman]

i remeber this, i was in issabella plains at the time. i remeber looking at that mountain, looked just like that

[JulieFaithMikael]

Thanks for posting. I was a fire fighter sent to Canberra from NSW.

[mbaustinful]

it seems like hell

sinister

[xamyxisxsnazzyx]

thanks to vk1kcm for the footage, roo465 for reposting. this day was sooo scary. I was 11 years old when this happened, and I remember the whole 'dark sky at 4pm' put me so out of whack. I was walking around the house munching on a box of dry nutri-grain to calm my nerves. we are in conder (right across the road from conder ridge) and we could see the fires coming over from tidbinbilla, and the massive fireball go through Gordon. One thing I am still scared of - the freaking sirens on the radio!

[scottclements78]

I was in Torrens when you were filming this. Saw a car roll onto an old man on Beasley street and it was raining red embers and no one knew what was happening. A group of Irish backpackers walked past amazed and asked if this was a normal everyday bushfire? Never forget that day.

[WHOAitsWhatsHerFace]

I was 6 when this happened, and I lived in Wanniassa, and my Grandma lived in Kambah, but thankfully we were ok. Unfortunately, some people weren't so lucky. The only thing I was upset about was that Mount Taylor was on fire, because my name is Taylor. I'm sure noone that was in Canberra at that time will ever forget this fire.

[nessii1a1]

i lived right at the bottom of mnt taylor..it was so scarey me and my BF where at his house during the fires out near isabella plais when i foud out where it was i was scared for my mum and so they drove up to my BF's house...it was teh scariest time of my life...and yea donate pplzzz

[Venom0ZA]

We were staying in Duffy in Glenmaggie street next to petrol station there.

Wife and I were having a snooze when her Aunt called to warn us, looked outside and it was black!

The fireballs were starting to come down the hill behind us. I decided then and there we are going, wife grabbed her wedding dress and we got out as fireball hit houses over the road. No hope in hell for them that day!

My first month in Australia. I blame the Pine Plantation being so close to the city.

[tenderheart17]

My husband, kids and I were on our way from Belconnen, to Tuggeranong pool when we heard about the fire on the car radio. When we approached the Weston Creek area, the sky was almost black, and we witnessed the panicked exodus of families in their cars.

We went to Chapman instead, where hub's parents' house is. We could hear the fire burning up the hill behind Chapman, and water bombing 'copters. Such a sad, frightening day.

[skippyskater]

that day... i can remember i lived in in holder in emberly st about 600m from the pine forest and that went right up

[coopmen]

Id hate to have been there, the fire wouldnt have been bad for me, but the smoke, damn, the smoke......i hate the smoke.....

[cuteasabug17]

i lived at the foot of mt taylor! at 7 henning place kambah! i thought i was going to die. i was in primary school with bad ashma and it was so scary. it sounded like a train roaring and it was dark as night. i sat with my little sister in the bathroom and huddled with her while she cried. our lives where saved by a change in the wind. i thought i made it seem worse in my memory but in seeing this i can tell my recallections where underestimated.

[jaxkinthebox]

The ash hung around for days, the sound of huge graders desperatley clearing a firebreak in the background. My partners kids lost their house (Duffy) and everything. My parents at Farrer backed onto the reserve, they were very lucky. Australia will always be 'bush fire country' Amazingly the pine trees that made this fire so bad have been replanted, some are already about 2m tall!! As long as we have plantations so close to residensial property this sort of thing is going to keep happening.

[78kccarlyle]

its horrible...every1 plzzz donate we need it...i donated 1000$ ...no matter how much u donate every cent counts

[123danielrazor123]

i remember i got a slushie that day:)

scary crap:(

[fruffy12345]

lol slushie.

[totalballshit]

scary stuff

[fieldofsky]

Thanks for posting this video. Gives me a real flavour of it down there from here in freezing UK

[78kccarlyle]

should donate money....every cent counts

[jessos1]

wow 3:30 in the avo and it like night time

[wekwafe]

your kids are annoying. but nice video. very sad day.

[proudalice]

RIP to all those who sadly lost their lives. and i hope all canberra people who survived are bak on their feet. also thanks to the volunteer firefighters who risked their lives, thankyou

[kambahgirl]

omg!!! i remember that day like yesterday. i was at mums house off boddington cct. scary shit that was.

[lizililee]

I'll always remember that day! Sadly, I didn't get a chance to get a photo or video of it. But this video is great. Thanks mate! That day was something.

[equestrian2992]

i live across sulwood drive, my neighbours house had spot fires. scary to think we were sitting right behind mount taylor..

[meshuggahboy1]

kambah is awesome

yea one of my mates, his mum died in those fires, shame she was so nice

[xoxpanda]

i was so much younger, yet i remember it like yesterday. scariest day of my life. so glad it's over now, though.

[ATKAOS]

i seen the same black cloud and thought it was a storm but it was smoke, i stood on the roof of my building 30ks away from the main fire and had burnt leaves landing on me and the roof, a mate was in the area working and he called to say "come and have a look at this", so i went for a drive through the burning suburbs, fuck it was full on. execpt for putting out the small fire which started in the pines, which i watched burn for a week, when it finally hit canberra, it was unstopable.

[lifethejourney]

Wow it looks like hell

[sharkdefender]

i live in batemans bay on the coast east of canberra.

one afternoon at about 4pm the sky went from beutiful sunshine, to pitch black. not even the slightest bit of light in what seemed like a fraction of a second.

i was driving from ulladulla when it hit. mate i was terified. didn't know what was happening and then cars started driveing of the road everywhere.

the smoke from the canberra fires was so thick we thought the fires had reached us.

i couldn't imagin what it was like in our capital

[Keebrin]

I live in Canberra. It was shocking but it had a beautiful view!

[volfirie]

Interesting how it all comes back. I was nowhere near ACT. I was driving a tanker from outer Melbourne up to the fires near Mt Buffalo, we were listening on ABC to what was happening. Wondering if we'd be diverted north. We were held at Wangaratta for a couple of hours - will they send our Strike Team up there or not? Ended up not. That was a bad summer fire season.

[skittlesnfairyfloss]

im in the RFS myself and i hope that i will never have to fight something as big as this. it doesnt so much scare me cause this is why i joined the brigade but its the property, houses, and most of all the people i am worried about.. great video..

[bobcollier001]

Wow, that's spooky. I live on the other side of Sulwood Drive from Mount Taylor. It was the scariest day of my life. Only a few spot fires came across Sulwood Drive in the end, thankfully.

[Tombothebomb]

i was in bendalong at the time which is about 2 hours away and i could still see smoke i was about 8 at the time im 13 now the whole sky was black and i remember that night i went in my room and i had all ashes in my room and on my bed.

[Tombothebomb]

think about it it wasnt that bad its quite amazing how only 4 ppl died

[Enchantress9876]

vk1kcm is my dad and i am one of his kids in that video that was a very scary that day. but watching this video reminds me of that day. I hope it does not happen again. my friend lives across the road on mount tayor and her fence caught on fire. i could see what was happening from the ground. I was watching Bugs Bunny when the power went out and it never came on again but that was a cursed day for Canberra. hope that it gets better.

[Hughie182]

It was the day before my birthday and i live 30 mins from canberra. It was the worst birthday.

[das0nz]

I WAS IN JERRA When this was going on. We had to go into queanbeyan to be safer. was on holiday and Fark i was scared alrite..

[XxmesmerisedxX]

you can see mount taylor from outside my living room window and we saw the fire going down the hill. it was huge and f***king scary

[antarcticasmelting]

oh fuck this is horrible!!

[Swanmaens]

Oi, that was so bad. Seriously.

We were in Waramanga which was completely cut off because every other suburb around was up in blaze.

Its very nostalgic seeing this video. I remember my dad was up on the roof of our house quickly trying to clear the gutters and one of the choppers came out of no where above our roof and almost knocked my father off.

Scary times. Thanks for this video.

[powerfulwords]

Thanks for sharing this video - to Chris and yourself. I've been close to a bushfire, but not that close. Scary!

[aussieringer]

my mates and sister were up in the brindys for about a week before with hours with out sleep and food trying to prevent a lossing battle and one of my mates was the unlucky one that had to go though and remove the people that didn't make it i take my akubra or hat of to u guys and girls u have made me and alot of other people proud

[sorny1]

little guy who cares about Queanbeyan if it was burning i wouldnt piss on it why would u even mention the bushfires were scary your in Queanbeyan and dont try to look good saying you lived there at the time! budget aldi shopper!

[species81]

I was there also, in Kambah, and watched Mt Taylor burn and then the firestorm came down from the other hill (Mt Awang)and hit us. I had never seen anything like it berore. It happened so fast I didn't even have time to be scared. Lots of damage. This brings it all back. I hope I never experience anything like this again

[desolationrow]

I remember standing on my roof and watching the Mt Taylor fire start. I live underneath Mt Taylor and it went from not burning to an inferno in about two minutes. Then the poweboxes on the powerlines started exploding and an exodus of kangaroos came down the mountain. It was pretty scary stuff.

[deathbyargon]

Well, coody buddy bruntu brun.. and milli milli. Bushfirz was scawy. tomi babe xoxoxo

[Buiscutdb]

hey labrie i was in fadden for a bit that day helping a mate pack his stuff and helped a little trying to put the fire out just behind my mates he was right on the hill last house then all bushland it got a bit ruff and the fireys told us to go

[cheeseflap]

I was in Gordon and there's nothing but bushland behind our house and the fire got within 100m of our house before it was beaten back. No shit, when it subsided someone in our street tried to set their back pergola on fire as some kind of insurance claim to get an upgraded one or something. Ultimate reckless dodgy-factor...

[littleguy2001]

I will never forget the feeling as i walked out of Aldi in Queanbeyan that day, was like midnight and the whole atmosphere was so hot and just the redness on the hills.

Also driving over into Queanbeyan (where we were living at the time) and ash on the car.....scary stuff.

[labriefanau]

Fadden Hills resident here and the fire didn't hit our homes only the ridge, but I thought they would flare up again right after dying down up there

[vk1kcm]

I'm the one who shot this video.  It was shot from where I live in Kambah, near Village Creek Primary School. That's the voices of me and my kids you hear at the start.

The radio traffic you hear later on in the video was the NSW RFS local area comms channel from a handheld scanner.

I'm a little surprised to see it here but that's ok. I originally posted it to 2600 and AARnet's mirror site.

[roo465]

Sent you a message mate ;)

[Buiscutdb]

yeah what a brutal day was living in theodore at the time and watching the fires from theodore hill watching bonython and gordon almost going down and everyone fleeing the valley was a ghost town kinda exciting tho chasing all the fires around with the camera

[Chessiness]

I was watching from my house down in woden valley. I watched a DVD that day till the electricity went off. Those were the times.

[tamzinsw]

It's quite emotional watching that - not bad, but emotional... I went to school in Weston Creek and some of my best friends lost their houses! I remember spending the days after hunting through rubble, hoping that something would be found... Seeing it again brings it all back!

[danfaninoz]

Thanks for posting this, I live in Holder, came within 4 blocks of us so we were lucky

[myspud]

I am also from Kambah and was stunned to see the size of this fire.

[mddawson1]

That was one spooky day. I was watching the fires getting closer & closer from 10am (I'm in Lanyon Valley).

[Muzooly]

This brings tears to my eyes. I wasn't there but my brother lost his house and it was just devastating... it must have been really scarey.

[roo465]

If I have upset anyone, my apologies. My intention was not to upset people, but to show the people who haven't seen it.

[willandrews69]

hey bro i'm from Kambah that fire burnt me back fence down

[roo465]

Thanks for the replies :) The video was filmed from Kambah, although I'm located on the Pearce side of the Mountain.

[sKiiTs8]

@roo465 I'm in Pearce, as well. I was 5, just 2 days after my birthday, was really sad watching it all burn

[2bpencil]

I live right on mount taylor... So that Video would have been taking somewhere in the Torrens-Pearce Area. We were on a holiday when this happened so we had to stay in a pub overnight... crazy

[elaineangela]

Amazing. What suburb were you in?