Evacuating while pregnant: Matilda's story (interview transcript)

[F]or December, we decided to take a small car trip, a holiday. So it was just as the smoke was getting bad. I had my RFS app and we took off to Western New South Wales where we managed to escape some of the smoke, and it was wonderful. And then we drove back into [village] for two nights to stay … it was terrible. The smoke was thick, the place was filled with smoke, and my partner has asthma. We had a small child, and I was pregnant. And so collectively, we were an at-risk family, each of us individually and then as a group, we were all at risk due to our bodies, various, you know, things going on.

What we noticed was that there were basically roadblocks, and we decided to leave the accommodation early, and all that was coming towards us down the road were bulldozers and fire engines, and utes with firefighting equipment strapped on the back. As we drove out, the visibility was really poor, and that was quite scary. Not to mention the health effects of that level of smoke, and they were closing the facility and they had to get everyone out within two days.

[W]e had friends down the South Coast … who said to us “What a horrible holiday. Just as you’re pregnant, just as you’re able to get out of bed and not be so sick. Why don't you come down, stay with us for a few nights, we’ll put you up in our ground-floor apartment?” … So we had two nights there, which were really nice, and then on New Year's Eve, my son woke up … I thought it was like 2 am, because it was pitch black, and it wasn’t, it was … I was putting him back to bed, I said, “Go back to bed, it's the middle of the night”, and he ended up wetting the bed because he was getting up, because his body clock was saying it was morning, and he wanted to go to the toilet, and I said, “No, no, just go back to bed.” Anyway, all these sirens and cars were driving past the house, which was unusual and then I heard the people upstairs running around and I thought, something's going on.