Life at Adair after the fires.
On Tuesday February 13, 48 homes were destroyed by bushfires in Pomonal. Then, on Christmas Day 2024 - just 10 months later, bushfire flames licked at the township’s edge again. These twin tragedies have left a scar on the landscape that will take a few goods seasons to erase. However the difficulties that it has inflicted on the lives of many of our friends and neighbours will take much longer to overcome. Of the half dozen homes close to us, Adair is the only house left standing. We are an island of green, a magnet to the wildlife that are drawn to our lush lawns and plentiful water, and as one of the few places still able to accomodate visitors, a vital form of support for Pomonal’s local businesses.
As guests to the district in this post-fire period, you can anticipate a specially warm welcome from those small businesses who rely on the tourist economy for their survival, and we encourage you to visit as many as you can during your stay. We particularly urge you to patronise the Pomonal Store (the beating heart of the community), to visit James McMurtrie’s glass-blowing studio down Springwood Hill Rd, Pomonal Estates for lunch or a glass of wine, and to try Barney’s Bistro for dinner.
Further afield guests will find nothing has changed. The path of the fires was very much focussed on the area around our town and from the adjacent national park to the Ararat/Halls Gap Road, leaving favourite attractions like the Five Ducks Farm, Halls Gap Zoo and Fallen Giants Vineyard completely untouched. Further into the national park, Halls Gap itself and most of the popular walking tracks and tourists routes remain untouched by the fire.
We are pleased our bushfire mitigation measures seemed to have played a significant role in Adair’s survival and the survival of some of the wildlife we share the countryside with. As our blackened landscape slowly heals, we are also grateful to our guests who continue to stay with us. We can guarantee you the comfort and convenience Adair provides remains unchanged, but beyond the green lawns and lush trees that surround the house, the landscape is more challenging.
Although our marked walking trails into the park no longer exist, guests may still want to venture onto what was the fire ground. We’d advise caution due to burnt and unstable vegetation and unsteady ground underfoot, however it is possible to scramble to Rainbow and Echo rocks (which in line with the fire-damage to our sign we are considering calling “Ho Rock” and “Bow Rock” - see pic) and even to scramble up to the Mt Cassell summit if you don’t mind being totally smeared with black ash by the time you return. The fire tracks that extend north and south along the national park boundary have been re-graded and are once again a safe and easy stroll.
With the cooler weather and rains over autumn and winter, the bush will explode back into life as the fire-adaptive eucalypts push new foliage out from their trunks and branches in a process known as “epicormic sprouting”. The seeds they dropped into the barren ashy ground immediately post fire will start germinating in an explosion of new trees, and the ash that covers the ground more generally will fertilise the soil bringing lush new growth, and with it, a plethora of kangaroos, emu, deer and the rest of the wildlife that are so much part of the Adair experience.
