Debi Bannerman standing by the Kambah Firestorm Story Tree. Photo: Pip Marks
Kambah became internationally famous following the 2003 bushfires thanks to the daring work of one local resident.
As the destructive flames tore over the top of Mount Arawang towards the Kambah fire station on the fateful January day, Tom Bates was standing a safe distance away on the edge of the Kambah Playing Fields, video camera in hand.
A minute into the footage, the landscape ahead of the front suddenly bursts into flame – 120 hectares in less than half a second – before what caused the flashover comes into view: an actual fire tornado, a quarter of a kilometre wide and with wind speeds around 250 km/h.
It was the first time such a phenomenon has been caught on video anywhere in the world.
Four lives were lost, many people were injured and more than 500 homes were destroyed that day, including in Kambah.
As a memorial, the local Mount Taylor Estate community chose the burnt-out remains of a large gum tree between Ammon and Bolden Places, off Sulwood Drive, and established it as a ‘Firestorm Story Tree’.
Artist Bryan Carrick carved its trunk with five layers, starting with scenes from Indigenous times near its base, through the European settlement and pastoral era, the founding of the suburb itself in 1974, and then the fire.
At the top of the tree, upraised hands and a wedge-tailed eagle were meant to represent the “community’s spirit and resilience”.
A time capsule was also placed inside, meant to be opened on the 20th anniversary of the fires in 2023. However, that day came and went, and locals decided to instead to save it for the 50th anniversary of the suburb.
Well, last Saturday (7 September), that day arrived. Among a series of events planned by local community leaders for the anniversary, Glenn Schwinghamer organised three for Kambah Heritage Day.
Glenn crossed the north-south divide and moved to Kambah in 1989 from Belconnen, so while far from the earliest resident, he knows it well.
“The whole purpose of the day was to inform and engage the community,” he says.
“Kambah, being such a large suburb, even if you live here, it’s very easy to not be aware of a lot of interesting things about it.”
The Firestorm Story Tree was restored in 2012. Photo: ArtsACT.
The first event, held in the morning, focused on the suburb’s pastoral heritage.
The name of the suburb is derived from the Kambah Station, owned by the Bennet family. Three generations of the family attended Glenn’s tour over the weekend, which took a group of around 40 people through what remains of the sheep station’s sites and buildings.
From 11 am, he led another tour of the suburb’s design and planning because that’s among the first questions that come up about Kambah: ‘Why is it so big?’
Up to the early 1970s, Canberra’s suburbs had followed the same basic pattern – the local school, community facilities, and shops in the middle, arterial roads on the border, and residential streets in between.
Kambah’s famous metal sheep – a nod to the suburb’s pastoral heritage. Photo: ACT Health.
Glenn says three former town planners with the National Capital Development Commission (NCDC) were present on Saturday to explain how Kambah broke from this “neighbourhood-unit” design in favour of the “territorial unit”.
“They designed almost an experimental super suburb,” he says.
The local waterway, Village Creek, was largely put underground and its course populated with schools, community facilities, playgrounds, and green spaces to form a “central parkland spine”, running parallel with Drakeford Drive.
“The designers didn’t like the idea of houses fronting onto busy roads, or indeed back fences, so if you drive down Drakeford Drive today, you’ll see a lot of green spaces around you.”
Glenn saved the best for last, however – the cracking open of the time capsule at the Firestorm Story Tree.
A number of local retired and current politicians attended, including Rebecca Vassorotti and Gary Humphries, as well as two people who had lost their homes during the fire.
One, Debi Bannerman, is actually depicted on the tree holding her chainsaw, dubbed ‘Cherry’, which she used in the aftermath to help people chop up fallen trees that were blocking roads or driveways.
Debi Bannerman was among two Kambah residents who shared their memories of 18 January 2003. Photo: Pip Marks.
The Story Tree did fall into disrepair following its unveiling in 2005, but it was restored and fenced in a government-funded project in 2012 (despite brief talks of relocating it that ended with residents effectively saying, ‘over our dead bodies’).
“It’s a hollow tree, so when we extracted the time capsule, there was, of course, some sawdust-type stuff that came cascading out,” Glenn says.
“Inside, there were newspaper pages from the time of the bushfire, newsletters from the Mount Taylor Estate Residents’ Association, a lot of photographs from around that time, a melted golf ball and melted clothes peg.”
Firestorm Tree time capsule. Photo: Glenn Schwinghamer.
Glenn hopes the time capsule will be returned to the tree, with a few additions, for others to open in “maybe another 20, 30, or 50 years”.
“Maybe this time we could put in something about the 2019/2020 bushfire, which might not have destroyed anything in Canberra, but you don’t need me to tell you we all had to endure a lot of smoke and all the problems of that.”
Visit the Kambah Turns 50 website for the full list of events.
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