CLASS

Please enjoy another great piece of writing in our series of Heywire competition stories. For those who missed the introduction to this series, these stories have been prepared by students as an English assessment and are being shared with you as they were submitted for assessment. (So, yes, there are some grammatical errors and spelling mistakes). 

As many are deeply personal, students have chosen to have them published anonymously. We encourage you to enjoy them as they are meant to be: the amazing personal stories of our teenage students. 

Dr Margaret Henderson

Heywire Autobiographical writing

It all started when I got that call to say ‘don’t go onto the bus’. As I wondered why, and why my sister and I had to go to my nan’s shed instead, there was just this small niggling feeling that something wasn’t right. Not sure what. We were just around the corner, and we smelt smoke, and could see a big cloud in the sky; ‘I wonder where that is’ I commented. We got to my Nan’s and she said, ‘you couldn’t go home, the roads are blocked’. I tried to ring my  dad, but it just went to voice mail. Then mum: ‘dad’s down the back with the fire unit’. 

Mum said to stay at Nan’s. As it was coming our way. 

She said we couldn’t get in or out. I tossed and turned all night, before finally falling asleep. The next morning, Mum rang and gave us an update: she would pick me up and bring me out to the farm. I got ready for school not knowing if I would go or not. 

I felt a bit of relief, as I knew I was going home to help dad protect the farm. We were about 4km away from home and everything was gone. The fire had left its mark. It just looked like a wasteland. Fire truck after fire truck driving past, I felt like we were going to lose everything. We drove down the driveway to Dad filling up the fire unit. I had never seen anything ever like this, the flames appeared to burn above the trees. The smoke covering the sky was extremely thick. 

We drove down the back of the farm with the fire unit. As we moved through the paddock, we heard on the radio that the fire had jump through the fence. We rushed to get there so it wouldn’t spread. As we rushed to the corner we couldn’t see any flames. They ended up saying that it didn’t reach any of the property, but it was at another place. 

It got dark quick. All I could hear was the bulldozer working all night. I could hear trees falling and trucks driving back and forth. I woke up, and the power was off so mum went into town to get breakfast. As she left, we went back out to the back paddock to make sure it doesn’t come in. As we waited, we heard the roar of an engine screaming out of the smoke, A huge water bomber appeared, flying through the sky dropping fire retardant.

Flying through the clouds, releasing red dust into the air it looked awesome. It caused the fire to slow down and begin to go out. The fire personnel informed us as we were leaving that everything was under control, and they would only be keeping an eye on it.