Being Lost in Australian Bush Fires – Learning To Read The Signs

I shouldn’t be here.

It’s a dreadful feeling—I don’t belong here. It’s uncomfortable, it’s wrong, it’s dangerous.

We woke this morning to find smoke from bush fires thickening the air like a foul yellowing fog. Buildings and trees and mountains are gone. In their place, creeps this silent monster that stings my eyes and throat, twists my stomach, and clouds my thinking mind.

How did we get here?

We came to Australia now, during the most significant fire disaster in decades, to join friends from the United States who had been planning their trip for months. This design to connect with old friends while abroad gave us hope for a dab of consistency in a sea of unfamiliarity when choosing to leave home for a couple of years.

These friends graciously invited us to be a part of their Christmas break. We came to realize what a gift this was, as it turns out they were already traveling with an Australian family—old friends of theirs.

Despite best intentions on everyone’s part, we inevitably felt like a five-person third wheel and parted ways after two days in Wentworth Falls. The view of the Three Sisters in Blue Mountain National Park was hazy. Our feeling of belonging too.

Another one of our plans for keeping a sense of community while on the road was to find other worldschooling families. In fact, Leo has stated he is most excited about this possibility. After months of searching online, Chris found one! We left our smoky little town in Wentworth Falls to follow this trail, hopefully to clearer skies.

In Sydney, we had a fantastic day getting to know this charming family from Las Vegas (of all places!). Our kids played all afternoon in the parks of Darling Harbor while we traded thoughts on a thoughtful, traveling way of life.

Our shared path was sweet but short. Too soon, they went on their way with plans to fly to Taiwan (what a coincidence, we just came from there!), and we were left to quickly figure out what was next. In a record for the Santillo family, at 8 PM, we still didn’t know where we were sleeping that night.

Amidst the sight of scuttling cockroaches, the sound of water pouring into a bucket from a broken A/C unit, the thumps on the wall from screaming children next door, and the feel of springs sticking out of a mattress like ribs on a stomach stretched too thin, I wondered:

Have we lost our way?

That night, we doubled down on the third intention for this nomadic lifestyle. In the interest of finding ways to maintain a work ethic and be of service to other people, I have long hoped for an opportunity for us to connect with local families through Workaway. At this site, people offer room and board in exchange for odd jobs.

After months of searching, we had a match!

It was too early to get to Dederang, Victoria, though, they weren’t yet ready for us, so we planned to take the train to a town where we could leave Sydney prices and Sydney crowds (and our disappointing hotel room) behind. Incidentally, this time of year is when all the Australian school-age kids have their big summer vacation, and the travel season is at its peak. Hotels are booked, tourist sites are packed, and prices are high.

We should have seen this coming.

We pulled sleeping kids out of bed to pack up and stumbled to the station for an early departure. What? The train is sold out? For the next three days? But our reservations in Albury… Okay, we’ll try a bus. It’s a bus that leaves in 12 hours and arrives at 3 AM? Not ideal. Okay, we’ll take a train as far out of the city as we can and rent a car. Prices look pretty good out there. What? A $300 fee for returning it in Albury?

Do you ever get the feeling you aren’t on the right track?

We now have on our phone an app that charts bush fires with minute-by-minute updates. It was when we were finally in Albury, a little oasis of clear lines amidst blocks of grey and red and yellow diamonds that indicate a range of fire emergencies, that we got the message from our workaday hosts:

They had been evacuated.

All of these intentions, these well-laid plans, these designs for a meaningful way of living, they’ve come up against a wall… of fire. Dreams gone up in smoke? Isn’t that what they say?

For better or worse, I’m a person who works by intuition. If it feels right, I know. If it doesn’t, I know. But, I’m also a person who believes in setting meaningful intentions, stating goals, having a purpose.

How do you know when it’s time to cut and run?

I can hear your thoughts on the other side of this computer—“It’s when the world around you is on fire, you idiot!”

If we’d abandoned our plans to visit Australia while our Alexandria friends were here, though, we might never have discovered Wentworth Falls, where we had many memorable chats with the local grocery store clerk, bus marshal, and barkeeps, watched the boys swing on a rope into a lake for the first time, and discovered a world-class yoga retreat center.

If we’d not paid exorbitant fees to drive a car to Albury, we would not have stopped in tiny Tarcutta where the only other people on the street were a family of five who left Seattle in June to be world schoolers like us (can you believe it?).

If we’d not continued on to Dederang once the evacuation warning was lifted (yes, we doggedly stuck to that plan), then we would not be helping two families (our host’s and our own) to live through the trials of a bush fire disaster. Yesterday, while the skies offered rain to Australia for the first time in months, I picked up a shovel and a scrub brush and helped a girl clean out her stable in expectation of bringing her horses back once the fire danger is cleared. And I felt right at home.

I just want to share, with tears of relief and understanding welling, that wonderful feeling that I’ve been seeking. Despite all those questions and trials, I feel I’ve found it: I belong right here.