I've chosen this for the Bushfire category of my 2025 Aussie Reading Challenge. I seemed to remember a few different fire themed novels around the place, including one called, 'You Name it, It's Burning.' I couldn't put my hands on that one, but luckily Ash Road was in a pile of recent acquisitions from a goodwill shop.
MY THOUGHTS:
This was first published in 1966, and won the Australian Children's Book of the Year Award for Older Readers in 1966. It is one of those stories that just covers one single day.
Three fifteen-year-olds, Harry, Graham, and Wallace, are delighted to be camping unattended in the Aussie bush. They're a bit annoyed when they're forbidden to light campfires, since they'd been looking forward to their own cooking, but the north wind is hot and hard, and the scrub as dry as tinder. The locals know that a tiny flame may quickly become a monster. During the early hours of the morning, the boys accidentally start a raging blaze anyway, when Graham knocks over their bottle of methylated spirits near their faulty heater.
Consequences are catastrophic. Many properties are burned to the ground, livestock and wildlife are lost, and human lives seriously endangered. As well as the culpable trio, the story focuses on several residents who live along Ash Road and mistakenly assume their location will remain well out of the raging fire's path. While able-bodied adults head off to assist with relief efforts, the children and elderly folk left to hold down the fort are terrified to find the fire closing in on them.
Five-year-old Julie Buckingham unwittingly overflows the bathtub and depletes the family's rainwater stores; Grandpa Tanner remembers an identical blaze around 1913, Peter Fairhall feels frustrated by his grandparents' protective initiative to send him away, and the George family are trying to protect their perishing raspberry crop. The day doesn't unfold the way anyone expects.
It was a contemporary tale of its time, but Australia was on the brink of a total change. Currency is still pounds sterling, temperature is measured in Fahrenheit, and distance in miles. Only fairly senior citizens would remember this now. (Not me! I wasn't born yet.) Therefore it's an interesting snapshot from the not-so-distant past. I once updated all my technology details for the second printing of a contemporary novel, but this example suggests it may be more interesting to let novels age like fine wine. I would never change things again.
Under Southall's skillful pen, the fire becomes the main antagonist it deserves to be.
'The smoke cloud was a pale brown overcast with billows of white and curious areas of mahogany and streaks of sulphurous-looking yellow. The sun shone through like a white plate in a bowl full of dye... There was ash on the road too, unnumbered flakes of it lying in the gravel and in the grass at the edges and caught up like black flowers in twigs and foliage... It was like a black and white photograph of enormous proportions, in the midst of which candles burned mysteriously.'
And how about this excellent description of the vile temper of the day itself.
'It was an angry day; not just wild or rough but savage in itself, actively angry against every living thing. It hated plants and trees and birds and animals, and they wilted from its hatred or withered up and died or panted in distress in shady places.'
In spite of his evocative descriptions (which I believe helped win him that award), I find the fleeting time span covered doesn't really do justice to the extensive cast of characters. The plot has unpredictable moments when it draws complete strangers together, but it is ultimately one day in their lives. An extremely traumatic day, I grant you that, but I prefer longer time spans in stories to really get to know people. And the untimely death of one character who couldn't ever win a trick saddens me enough to knock off a couple of stars.
Still, if part of Southall's goal was to warn people about the potential terror of bushfires, and subsequent need to take extreme caution, he surely succeeded.
🌟🌟🌟
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