Hi, BTN. My name's Rose Thompson and this is where I live.
So, Cobargo is kind of over those big green hills.
The fire came from down this black ridge
where it kind of looks like lace on the edge.
And it came down that hill.
It's kind of green now, so it's hard to tell.
But it came down that hill and came on this place here
and then went to our home.
Hello, BTN. My name is Raemi
and I live on Kangaroo Island in South Australia.
Half of the island basically got burnt
and the other side of the island hasn't.
But most of the island has got burnt and a lot of the West End got burnt.
This holiday at Mallacoota
it was a fun but scary holiday this time.
(SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY)
..was right near the wharf, which was the evacuation point
When the sirens went, our mum got us out of the van the van
and rushed us to the boat.
So, the first fire, we were at our house,
and it was black all over the house,
and it was really scary.
And I'm like, to Mum, "Can we please go out? This looks really scary.
"We might not be able to see."
ROSE: Because I had never evacuated before, it was really scary,
And, like, me and Mum were really worrying about us.
It was very scary.
Like, it was really, really scary.
Like, I was really anxious
and it was very hard for me to be...to cope with that.
It was really smoky.
Like, the smoke was, like, orange, like because of the sun.
It was really bright orange
and it was really hard to breathe - we had to keep wearing masks.
Our mum put our swimming goggles on so the smoke wouldn't hurt our eyes,
and put out masks on.
We had to wear our masks all day
and was at the wharf, watching the fires burn.
It was near us.
And listened to the gas bottles explode.
So, this is our... My home burnt down.
And we think one of our cats, Millie, is in there,
which is really sad.
I also had a lot of special things.
So I just got given, like, a whole lot of Christmas presents
and some of them were in there.
This was my favourite tree to climb on, and as you can see,
the ground hasn't got much grass, like on the hills
and it's very...just ashy.
But there are a lot of burnt trees
and some of them have been falling over
and, like, all the leaves have come off them.
And it's really, really upsetting.
'Cause this was, like, once a green, lush forest
with animals and birds and everything all over it.
But these was my climbing tree and I loved it,
and now it's kind of been a bit burnt.
When we came back after the first fire,
it didn't get to our house,
but it got just to our boundary of our other fence next to the house,
about 200 meters away from the house.
And it got through the whole back of the farm.
It got 85% of the farm, it ended up getting,
and that was really scary.
So we lost 400 stock, and we didn't lose any of our cows,
none of our chooks or horses, luckily.
I took my horse up to the shed
because the fire got really close and we thought it might get close.
So we took him up to the shed just for safety
where it's all clear of trees.
And yeah, because my horse was really scared at the moment
and she's a bit... she's still...
She a bit calmer now, but at the moment she wasn't very...really calm.
We got evacuated by a big helicopter,
and it was so loud we put earplugs in our ears
and earmuffs over the top
and it still was loud.
I liked the helicopter
because the back door was open most of the time
and I was siting right behind the window.
I could see hundreds of acres or burnt trees and forest.
Luckily, we had a local team who helped all the farmers
that had trouble with their farm and their stock.
They all helped each other bury their stock in some pits
and so they didn't have any injured stock just in pain.
And luckily, we got all that done by the first day.
It's really sad that I lost my home,
but I think you've just got to, like, deal with it
and you've got to go, "OK, well, just because my home's burned down
"doesn't mean I can't be happy and I can't have fun still."
I can still read books, I can still colour in,
I can still do all these things that I did before my home burnt down.
And I think I've just got to be strong.