A Sanctuary - Surrounded by Fire Traditional Cache
A Sanctuary - Surrounded by Fire
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(regular)
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A roadside cache at the back fence of Healesville Sanctuary. Careful of traffic.
Healesville Sanctuary is a wildlife zoo proud of its ability to display animals that while still caged represent very closely their natural surroundings. It also a very extensive endangered species breeding program.
When the weather forecasts started coming in and the loss of animals in a bushfire at Tidbinbilla zoo in Canberra still fresh in the memory. The decision was made to start moving animals to Melbourne Zoo. The endangered species had already been moved when some of the earlier fire reports started to the north, so a decision was made to try and move all the animals.
Then mid afternoon on Black Saturday the nightmare really hit home. A fire was reported just to west of here at the base of the hill. At this stage the 000 system had collapsed and I took to ringing individual brigades to go and attend this fire.
Thankfully this fire never got moving. On any other day this would have been considered a major fire. It burnt close to the edge of the road that this cache was on but the fire was generally kept to the west side of the Yarra River. It was a phenomonal effort by the fire fighters and private land holders that controlled this fire and saved the Sanctuary and Healesville. Yet barely anybody knows that it happened.
In the final wash up it was "A Sanctuary - Surrounded by Fire". The view to the south is the only area where fire did not reach the edge of Healesville town Some area west also remained unburnt but this was patchy. From this road to the base of the hills to the east remained unaffected. The eastern hills where burnt in the Mt Riddle fire started by smoke induced lightning. This joined up to the north with the Murrundindi (Marysville) fire and the Kilmore (kinglake) fire. To the west was the Steeles Creek and Coldstream fires.
The sanctuary was empty by Sunday morning.
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