Moving Forward

Peter Bourke and his wife Trish survived the Kinglake bush fires and are doing their best to keep moving forward.

Peter explained "Like a lot of people up here we lost our house, cars, tractors and pretty much everything we owned. And getting out of the fires was very traumatic. The fire just roared through totally sideways. Imagine the strongest wind you have been in and multiply it by one hundred - it was unbelievable. The radiant heat was so intense just getting from the house to car made me red like sunburn for two months.

Many of our neighbours were less fortunate and lost their lives. This kind of loss takes its toll and I have had a stint in hospital with stress. But time does help heal and we are steadily working on rebuilding the property and our lives.

I am a chippie and built the original house and will be doing the building again. We are currently living with friends but now I want to spend more time on the property so I can concentrate on building. So I have just put up a shed that we will live in now that the weather isn't so cold.

The first thing I bought with the insurance money was a new tractor. Trish thought I would be more concerned with replacing my favourite old "Sandman" panel van or my ute rather than my old David Brown tractor. But I figured that the tractor would be the best thing we could buy to help start rebuilding our lives.

I cut the pad for the shed and the rainwater tank with the tractor. I have also used it to clean up the driveway as it was buried under ash. I have been very pleased with what I can do with this East Wind tractor and I really do love it. It is a 30 HP model with a 4 in 1 bucket. The bucket is so useful because you can open it up to expose a cutting edge for scraping soil. It also has a backhoe fitted which is great for digging. I have never used a backhoe before and was a little concerned at how I would go but I got the hang of it pretty quickly and the controls are easy to use.

My next job is to cut the site for our new house. There are machines more suited to the task but I know I can do it. I will save the cost of getting a contractor in and I will have a great tractor at the end of it that I can use for lots of jobs around the place."