Sorry, too busy to get on Mudcat myself, but thanks for thinking of us. If anyone wants to see what midnight at 5pm in summer with half of hell coming at you looks like, I have some photos taken by someone further down the line who had time to record it. They are about 875KB, I'll send them to anyone who asks.

But I do write songs.

There is a small hill behind my house that gives a panoramic view of the
southern part of Canberra including the full sweep of surrounding hills, and
I went up there first in the early afternoon to see what was coming from where, then in the night after the day's battle, then the following dawn.

In my head going non-stop all that day was the stunning recording of Ashokan
Farewell by Mark O'Connor with Pinchas Zukerman, that I had been listening to that morning.

DAWN CHORUS (to the tune 'Ashokan Farewell')

As I stood upon the hill
And I looked out over all
Where the blood red smoke rose
In a towering pall,
From the hillsides all ablaze
That we will not see again
It swept on down the slopes
Like a runaway train.

Of time and of help
We were standing bereft
Garden hoses were all we had left,
Then the fire got behind us
And dropped all around,
There was nowhere to go
But defend our own ground.


In the night upon the hill
When I looked out over all
Too exhausted to stand,
Too defiant to fall,
In the darkness I could see
Just the glitter of the band
Not of stars, but of fires
On the still-burning land.

In the dawn would I see
That most houses survive,
And the gardens of green would revive?
But the whole land around them
Would look like the moon,
It would heal with time
But it would not heal soon.


In the dawn upon the hill
When I looked out over all
And the few birds that sang
Heard no answering call,
From the country and the hills
To horizons all around
Of that full devastation
Came no living sound.

As a mercy, the view
Was still veiled by the haze
Of the smoke I will smell all my days,
And I wondered, as those terrors
Alone we had braved,
What we thought we had fought,
What we thought we had saved.

            Chris Clarke
            Kambah, Canberra, day/night 18th, dawn 19th January 2003