By Casey Neill
Terry Ross spent three decades rebuilding a 1946 Chevy ute.
“My dad was a Chevrolet fan. It was always Chevs in our family,” he said.
“I just wanted an old car to do up. I found this one.
“Over the next 30 years, as I had some money and time I rebuilt it.
“I’d just about got it right.”
Then on 7 February 2009, a bushfire tore through his home, located 3 kilometres out of Marysville.
He normally kept the car in the garage, but had moved it to a shed on the property’s north to replace the radiator.
“When the fire came, the first thing that got hit was the shed,” he said.
“It hit it with such force that it hit the walls and diverted it around the house.
“While I lost the shed and the ute, it saved the house.
“I was the only house left on my side of the street.
“Luckily I didn’t lose my life.”
Terry was armed with a fire hose, a pump and 26,000 litres of water when the fire front arrived.
“You had to be there to feel the full force of Mother Nature,” he said.
“It was like a tsunami of fire.
“If you were in its way it took you with it.
“I was in the driveway when it came. It nearly blew me off my feet.
“Daylight turned to pitch black.
“I couldn’t see the hose in my hand, it was that dark.”
Terry took shelter on the south side of his home, where his tank and pump were also located.
“A lot of pumps failed because they didn’t have any oxygen but mine kept going,” he said.
He said the fire sounded like an aeroplane landing in his driveway.
“It felt like my back was on fire. The radiant heat was just unbelievable,” he said.
“With all the smoke I was having trouble breathing.
“In a moment of desperation I called out for divine intervention, and with that the light came back on, the front passed and the sun came back out.
“Everything I could see was burning.
“The shed, all the walls were blown out.
“Every tree I could see was on fire, just like candles.”
He spent the next four hours putting out spot fires. The wind was blowing so strongly he had to point the hose away from the flames and let the water blow back.
His wife, Grace, had gone into town earlier in the day to warn the guests staying at their holiday cottages to head to Alexandra.
“She didn’t want to be there. That was our plan. I didn’t want her there either,” he said.
“It was someone else I had to worry about.
“I didn’t know if she’d got to Alexandra, and she didn’t know if I’d made it.
“For three days both of us didn’t know if the other had survived.”
Terry heard that people were getting phone reception to Melbourne on top of Mt Gordon so took a trip and managed to reach his daughter in Warrnambool, who’d also been in touch with Grace.
That first night, Terry heard radio reports that Marysville had survived.
“I went to bed with that in my mind,” he said.
“When I woke up in the morning, I thought perhaps I’d better go for a drive in, just to see if our holiday cottages were OK.
“I just couldn’t believe what I saw. The whole town was just wiped out, including our cottages.
“I saw bodies in the street.
“It was almost surreal.
“In one part of my mind I remembered that radio report saying that Marysville had survived, and I get in there and it’s wiped out with bodies here and there…”
His cottages were “just a bit of white ash” and there was no one else around.
“It seemed like the whole world had been wiped out,” he said.
Terry is a third-generation Marysville resident.
“My grandparents had a guest house there in the 1920s,” he said.
“My father was born there. Marysville runs through my blood.”
He heard the Narbethong pub had survived and, sceptical after his shock trip into Marysville that Sunday morning, was pleased to find it untouched that night.
“There was greenery. There was no sign of a fire. It was a little piece of paradise,” he said.
The owners put on meals for everyone, and the diners shared their stories of survival.
“I was going down there every night,” he said.
“It was just like a home away from home.”
The fires were still burning and Grace was stuck in Alexandra.
“All she wanted to do was get back home,” he said.
“Where I was was the safest place in Victoria because there was nothing left to burn.”
Terry had been driving around in an old farm four-wheel drive, so borrowed the neighbour’s car and set off on a midnight raid to bring Grace home.
“She was in a private address with six or seven others from Marysville,” he said.
Close to town he noticed headlights behind him from heavy earthmoving machinery, let the vehicle pass and “got up his backside” to sneak through the roadblock.
He took a back road home, confident the officer at the one roadblock would be asleep.
“At Acheron she saw the police car parked there in the dark. She slid down in her seat so she wouldn’t be seen,” he said.
“We got away scot free.”
Picking up the pieces and finding a new normal wasn’t easy for Terry and Grace.
Terry was disappointed he and locals didn’t land work in the town’s reconstruction.
“I couldn’t get a job,” he said.
“That was the most stressful time for me, the aftermath.
“That was more stressful than the fire itself.
“We had a business and we lost our business. We got no assistance whatsoever.
“We had holiday houses, rental houses. The people in our rental houses got 15,000 to relocate.
“Us as owners got nothing other than our insurance.
“Most businesses in Marysville are the same.
“The Vibe Hotel is one positive that I like.
“The government put money into that to get it up and going.
“It brings work and people to the town.
“The other positive of the town is that wherever you stay now, you’re guaranteed brand new premises.
“You know you’re going to get top-class accommodation.”
The fire burnt the tyres from Terry’s Chevy.
“The metal got so hot that it’s very soft and it’s really not worth repairing,” he said.
“I’ve still got the wreck.
“Everybody lost something up there, I was lucky I only lost that and not my life.”
For a long time he had no interest in getting another car.
“After some years I got the urge back again,” he said.
“I went with a friend over to Strathewan one day.
“On this property was this car, a 1937 Ford just sitting in the paddock.”
On the same day that fire destroyed his Chevy, embers had burnt the Ford’s back seat.
“I thought ‘here’s a project’. After a few phone calls I was able to purchase it,” Terry said.
“I’ve stripped it all down and I’ve done the chassis and the running gear – the motor and the transmission and the diff.
“Now I’m doing the panels and rust on the body itself.”
He said it kept his mind occupied.
“I found an interest out of the fires that has helped me cope with everything,” he said.
He lost a lot of people, and many of those who survived are still dealing with the repercussions.
“Time heals a lot of wounds,” Terry said.
“You never forget about it but the gap of feeling really low and miserable about it all gets bigger.
“Instead of every day it blows out to every two days, every three days…
“Life pushes you on.
“It’ll never be the same.
“Even now I can’t sleep until midnight. My mind won’t turn off. I sleep six hours a night.”
Terry and Grace had lost their 34-year-old son almost a 12 months to the day before the fire.
He built the engine that Terry’s now putting in the Ford.
“It was an extra battle for us,” he said.
He said the looming 10th anniversary had brought back memories.
“But it’s just another year,” he said.
