WHEN the owner of Blair Athol, Kim Kelleher, stepped outside on Tuesday morning the sight of pine trees on fire in her paddock stopped her dead in her tracks and sent her racing back inside to call emergency services.
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“Thank God I was here to call triple 0,” Kim said.
The fire did threaten three houses, including Blair Athol, before it was brought under control by fire fighters.
Kim said the fire was the result of a chain reaction of events and not from any attempt by her to ‘smoke the bats out’, which has been a rumour doing the rounds.
“What everyone believes happened is a bat has pulled two of the wires together in the air, fried itself, dropped down and started the fire,” Kim said.
For the last nine weeks the trees surrounding Blair Athol have been home to a colony of grey headed flying foxes. It is the first time the fruit bats have been on the property and Kim said they are not those from along the Macintyre River a couple of months ago.
“I’m told they’ll go when the food runs out. We’ve been very concerned … I have been in contact with National Parks and Wildlife for two and a half months asking for advice, asking for help,” Kim said.
“One of their suggestions was that we climb up onto a tree and handsaw off the top branches, which was laughable. I have been told not to disturb their environment, etcetera, etcetera.
“The frustration is that I’ve got the experts one side telling me that I can’t do anything … there’s a fine involved and so on, then there’s other people telling me I’m not doing enough, shoot them and move them on; well I’m not allowed and that won’t work anyway. I’m in the middle of people with two extreme views of the same critter.
“On the morning of the fire, two representatives from National Parks and Wildlife visited here from Coffs Harbour and we walked around with the neighbours … and we looked at the situation.”
Kim said she clearly remembers discussing the many electrical shortages she had experienced with the representatives.
“We’re on three phase power and we keep losing various phases. Essential energy come out and fix it because it’s been tripped by a bat,” Kim said.
“A week and a half ago we had Essential Energy here and we said there was another branch on the lines and it was going to start a fire. We said the trees needed to be trimmed back.
“Essential Energy said ‘we believe we cannot do it because of the threatened species of the bat, we can’t go in there and disturb their environment’. I mentioned that to National Parks that morning and they contradicted it and said ‘Oh yes they can, they do have the right to make the place safer … that’s one category where they do have priority over the bats’.”
Kim said there was also way more fuel in the paddock than normal because she could not get in to clear it out for fear of disturbing the flying foxes.
“The branches have just been crashing down and the leaves. ‘The Grove’ is what we call it, has looked awful because it’s inaccessible while the flying foxes are there,”
It was only an hour after National Parks and Wildlife left Blair Athol that Kim discovered the pine trees ablaze.
“The irony is when Essential Energy came out after the fire they said they were just filling in the paperwork to get the trees cleared. The timing was mind-boggling.”
