Bowen, Australia

We were anchored in a beautiful bay on Hook Island, the northernmost of Australia’s famed Whitsunday Isles.

Expensive charter yachts bustled all around us, speeding in and out of anchorages in order to make the most of their brief interlude in paradise. As the only long distance cruiser around, we felt a little out of place when we heard them on the radio busily making restaurant reservations, ordering their groceries to be delivered by speedboat, and booking time at an exclusive resort island that permitted them the privilege of anchoring during daylight hours only for the modest fee of $75, plus lunch.

We had planned to stay only a day on our long trek up the east coast of Australia, but a strong wind warning came into effect and rather than subject ourselves to another rough passage, we decided to wait for the system to pass. In the meantime, we explored the beach and snorkeled in the coral-studded bay.

Our favourite discovery was the giant blue-lipped clams. The clams attach themselves to a rock-like lump of coral, and have to keep growing at a pace at least as fast as the coral around them. Over time, the coral completely surrounds them, so that only their garish bright blue lips are protruding. These hard-to-miss fleshy lips offer an invitation to pucker right up and kiss them, but the minute you come too close, they tersely retract their proposition, making their lips and indeed their entire selves almost invisible. Some rocks housed three or four small clams, and it was fun to run our hands near them, making those gaudy blue lips pop in and out of sight. Some of the dead clam shells we saw looked large enough to eat a small child.

The strong wind warning continued. Although we had a secure mooring, the high mountainous bay funneled the wind right down through the harbour in shrieking bullets that buffeted us and spun us around every few minutes. With no speedboats at our beck and call, we ran out of fresh milk and bread and were getting anxious to leave, but the wind and rain refused to let up.

By Thursday, our fourth day at Hook Island, we finally decided to set off regardless, bracing ourselves for a rough day’s sail to the town of Bowen, where at least we could buy fresh food while waiting out the bad weather.

Our rough passage was all that we had expected, or feared - with our self steering still not performing, my stomach rebelling, winds of 35 knots driving us hard, and rain falling most of the day. By the time we arrived in Bowen in late afternoon we were nervous wrecks from piloting through a narrow channel with confusing markers in high winds. Just as we were trying to make up our minds which side of a yellow buoy to pass, a bullet of wind screamed through, making Northern Magic pick up her skirts and sprint through at top speed while Herbert and I frantically tried to make our best guesses about how to successfully get around the invisible shoals of our watery obstacle course.

At Bowen we were met by a dinghy containing the harbour master, who directed us into a very crowded harbour stuffed with fishing trawlers who, like us, were waiting out the bad weather. We were more interested in using a little lagoon off to one side, which was better protected and not as full. However, a large sign warned of high voltage power lines across the entrance of the lagoon, with a clearance of only 21 metres. I knew our mast was about 60 feet high, but my brain couldn’t convert this measurement into an exact metric equivalent quickly enough.

"Will we make it?" I asked to Herbert at the wheel, as he steered us towards 11,000 volts of electrical line dangling overhead.

"Sure, it’s no problem," he stated confidently.

"Are you really sure you’ll make it through?" the harbour master yelled, looking skeptical.

"We’ve got lots to spare."

But it didn’t look as if we would, and the harbour master continued to try to persuade us to go to the other side of the harbour. When it became clear we were going to persist, he scooted well ahead, out of the way of any fireworks.

Just in case, I got the kids to sit quietly in the salon, away from anything metal, and I let go of the stainless steel shroud I was holding, while anxiously trying to judge whether we really would clear.

We went under the power lines with the harbour master and me holding our breaths, Herbert grinning with an amused look on his face, and at least two metres to spare. Within minutes we were safely moored and making friends with a local sailor, who adopted us as if we were stray cats and brought us home to meet his wife and children. Brian, whose tattoos, shaved head and long, bushy mustache gave him a vaguely piratical air, was certainly the friendliest buccaneer we have ever met. He offered us showers, dinner, and a trip to the grocery store, and continued to see to all our needs for the rest of our stay in Bowen.

At 8:30 the next evening, with 35 knot winds still 'blowing like stink', as they had so aptly phrased it on the news, Herbert noticed sounds like distant gunfire. The rest of us pushed out of the main hatch behind him to see what was going on, and our attention was immediately drawn to a bright glow illuminating the other side of the harbour.

There was a fire, and not a small one, breaking out on one of the boats. From our vantage point about 200 metres away, we could see flames licking upwards and casting an awful glow. Clearly silhouetted against it were the dark shapes of other nearby masts. Even in the few seconds it took to dodge back inside and pick up the video camera, the fire doubled or tripled in size. Herbert turned on our marine radio, hoping to notify someone. No one answered.

As Michael climbed our mast, Jon watched through the binoculars and I stood up on the cabin top, there was a huge bang and a giant orange fireball exploded high into the dark night sky, scattering a shower of sparks that streamed downwind along with a billowing cloud of black smoke. A gas tank had exploded, and now the flames were higher than ever.

As fire devoured that first boat, huge winds fanned the flames and drove them horizontally, deeper into the harbour where about 50 boats lay, trussed up and helpless. Within seconds new boats lit up with bangs and hisses, until there was no telling just how many of them were on fire. We couldn’t help but be thankful that we had disregarded instructions to tie up there and had braved the high voltage wire to come in our little lagoon instead.

The fire was about eight minutes old now, and the first fire truck arrived, its shape outlined against the bright flames that were maliciously feasting in the harbour beyond. A second truck had just arrived when another huge explosion rocked the harbour, and the sky lit up like fireworks as the enormous fireball was replaced with a torrent of sparks raining down on those unlucky boats that were now trapped behind a wall of flame. The air filled with the sound of hissing, the burning of refrigerant from the freezers of doomed deep sea fishing trawlers. Now the dark sky lit up with the red flashing lights of more fire trucks and we could see human shapes running along the shore.

I never put the camera down as we watched and wondered how many livelihoods - and perhaps lives - were being incinerated in front of our eyes. Christopher became afraid of watching the fire further, and retreated to the cabin while the rest of us stayed outside, shivering in the cool evening air as explosions from propane tanks continued. From time to time the sky lit up with ships’ red flares as they were ignited by the ever growing wall of flame. It looked as if half the harbour was ablaze.

An older local couple who lived in the boat behind us came by in their dinghy. After promising Herbert not to do anything foolhardy, I jumped in and the three of us ventured over to the other harbour to get a closer look. I hadn’t realized, when making that promise, that I was in the hands of Australia’s most fearless couple, and within minutes of turning into the main harbour I found that my vow had already been broken. No one stopped us from going anywhere we wanted; the dozen or so firemen who were now on the scene were much too busy with their own work to bother about us, and as I filmed, my partners took us right alongside the flaming boats.

It was hot. Whistling red flares exploded into the dense black smoke overhead. My hands never left the video camera, which recorded me saying nervously, "Don’t you think we’re just a little too close?"

But my intrepid partners knew no fear and continued motoring all the way down the blazing scene until we paused at the end of the fuel dock, directly downwind from the burning boats. Those earlier explosions were very much in my thinking and again I cautioned my friends to leave, since there may yet have been unexploded propane bottles.

"No worries," the implacable Aussie husband said, "They’d have all gone up by now."

He was wrong, though. The next morning an unexploded tank was found intact on one of the boats. Blackened propane bottles, propelled like giant bullets right through the hulls of some of the boats, were found on the beach 100 metres away.

I counted seven boats in flames. I couldn’t believe it was only seven, but a long fuel dock at the water’s edge was holding back the last three of the burning boats, which had drifted there when their dock lines had burnt away. If the wind had been a few degrees more to one side, the flaming boats would have been driven right into the heart of the harbour and every last vessel there could have been incinerated. And if the fuel dock itself went alight? That possibility was too terrible to ponder.

We motored back around and tied up the dinghy a short distance upwind of the blaze. I clambered onto land and continued filming as the firemen attempted to bring it under control. The fire had either started on a catamaran, Aristocat III, or a fishing trawler, Karen T, which had been rafted together, before spreading to the other five fishing vessels.

It was now almost two hours since the fire had broken out, and most of the boats were still burning fiercely, resisting any attempt of the firemen to put them out. Aristocrat and Karen T were only smouldering, however, and we were able to walk right onto the dock next to them and see Karen T’s brand new diesel motor, now a blackened mess inside the charred skeleton of its wooden crate, waiting on the dock for an installation day that now would never come. Just two metres away was a steel trawler that had miraculously escaped with only blistered paint. The owner of that boat stood protectively beside his vessel in an attitude of shock and relief.

Apart from the firemen, there was little activity on the dock, with only a handful of scruffy, red-eyed fishermen standing around talking in muted tones as their livelihoods went up in smoke. Since it was a Friday night, most of the fishermen had been in town visiting local bars and restaurants. A police roadblock was holding reporters and half the population of Bowen at bay, so there were few people there to witness the conflagration at close hand.

I spoke to the skipper of the catamaran on which the blaze may have originated. He was a tall, thin man with a moustache who chain smoked nervously. He was cold, all his clothes and possessions having just been burned up, but declined my offer to come to Northern Magic for a coffee. The police had told him to stay where he was.

It was almost midnight when I returned to Northern Magic. It was hard to fall asleep. Pictures of the inferno continued flashing through my brain, along with images of rough, red-eyed fishermen and troubling thoughts about how the fire started and whether anyone had died. There were so many unanswered questions, but they would have to wait for morning.

I also thought about the footage I had shot of the blaze, right from its explosive beginning until the firemen had brought it under control several hours later. I had been the only person on the scene with a camera, something which I suspected would make my spectacular footage of the blaze pretty valuable to some TV station.

Tomorrow was going to be a pretty interesting day.

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