A black day for someone

Our day started uncharacteristically early, to find us swimming in the Mataranka pool at 6:30! Wonderful! The fruit bats were back in their trees above, some settled for the day others squabbling over who knows what.

The Mataranka pool

Flying foxes in the trees above

We set off at a gentle pace as our intention was to stop at Katherine Gorge for a couple of nights and Katherine was only a little over 100km away. Suddenly we saw smoke again and thought it was another bushfire. Within minutes that smoke, which started as blue, turned black and ugly, billowing fiercely. It was clear this was no bushfire and when we caught up with it we were horrified to find it was a Winnebago, much bigger than ours, the very smart Longreach, totally engulfed in flames just off the road in a rest area. One or two vans had stopped but very few people were around. We stopped, and our main concern was whether there was anyone inside. A young couple, first on the scene, had tried all the doors and knocked and shouted but were driven back by the ferocity of the fire. Another couple of grey nomads had tried to help out with their fire extinguisher, also a lost cause in the face of it all. By the time we turned up, only minutes later, this was the scene.

A once-proud Winnebago, rapidly reduced to nothing.

This is what remained. It took all of 15 minutes.

What a scene of devastation and no sign of the owners. The one optimistic sign was that the vehicle appeared to have had an A-frame attached, which would indicate it was towing a car behind, as many do. Therefore it was possible the owners had driven off somewhere. We later met up with the couple who had tried with their fire extinguisher, who had waited until the owners were contacted by the police and returned (the young couple had had the good sense to note the rego, which allowed the police to identify the owners). They were indeed towing another vehicle and had gone into Katherine for some business. It seems they were farmers in their 60s like us, from the Townsville area who had sold up and bought this big thing. (So many people do this.) They had been on the road about a year. It was apparently heart-rending to see his reaction.


What had happened was that they had stopped for the night in this rest area. In order to put out their awning without risk of being knocked by some other vehicle arriving in the dark, they had gone onto the grass verge. For reasons unknown, a grass fire started up this morning and the grass under the Winnebago caught fire, which obviously spread to the vehicle. It was all over very quickly. Scary!!