When the time comes to flee, what do you grab?
With flames licking the tips of towering pine trees and galloping across tinder-dry paddocks, the things you hold dearest become starkly clear. Your loved ones, of course,
and then what? There's only so much you can fit in the boot of your car, or in the canopy of the trailer hitched behind the ute.
Pets: cats, dogs, turtles, the jittery little guys are tucked in the back, along with some spare clothes — a few days' worth? — some linen, muesli bars, a few apples, loo rolls, and faded family albums.
It was late on Tuesday night — after the fire began up picturesque Pigeon Valley, 30km south of Nelson — when David Vanstone and Fiona Thompson (pictured left) started thinking they should evacuate their 40ha Malling Rd farm.
The first plumes of smoke "looked like an atomic bomb going off", Thompson said. "It was like a big mushroom. It was quite spectacular, from a distance."
