We Went Back

The next day, a short video arrived. In the grainy footage, we could see a lone sheep huddled beneath that now-familiar fallen tree. And so, back we went. At first, our efforts felt futile. We searched the blackened land for what felt like an eternity, wondering if perhaps someone else had reached them first. But we kept walking. And walking. Ash filled our shoes as doubt crept into our hearts.

Then, against the scorched hills, we saw them.

Twenty-one woolly wonders, moving together across the distant rises.

The day was brutally hot and fences were down or gone entirely. There was little food and even less fresh water. In that moment, we knew what they did not.

We were their last chance.

But to them, we were just another threat. Another danger in a world that had already taken so much from farmed animals. Each step we took scattered them further, as if we were slowly picking their friends away one by one.

Later, we learned what had happened the day the fire hit. Some sheep had been shorn days earlier and were trapped in the most devastated paddock. Others, still heavy with fleece, had a little more protection and space. When the firestorm came, the fences failed and the sheep fled for their lives. Somehow, in the chaos, some of the shorn sheep found the unshorn group, forming a small, resilient band determined to survive.

What followed on this day were hours of pursuit over steep hills and through thick bracken. We dodged wombat holes, our legs burned, our lungs heaved as sweat stung our eyes. And along the way, we glimpsed life still moving through this wounded place. Kangaroos, a lone wombat and birds overhead.

Quiet witnesses to that same firestorm.

In the end, nine sheep were rescued. A task far harder to do than to describe.

But we left with more than nine sheep. We left with hope.

Hope in how these stoic beings survived the fire. Hope in how they endured the days that followed, navigating a scorched world together. Leaving food and water behind for the sheep still roaming free, we made a promise.

We will return. And we are continuing to do so.

Among the nine we brought home that day are Phoebe and Phrancis, from the recently shorn group, their burns thankfully minor. The others have been named for the places touched by fire: Terip Terip, Ghin Ghin, Highlands, Longwood, Caveat, Ruffy and Tarcombe.

Names rooted in place and reminders that life endures.

They are still frightened and still carrying the weight of what they have lived through. Yet we see the comfort they find in one another. They speak a language deeper than words. One of shared survival and of healing that begins simply by not being alone.

On the long trek home, through the almost lifeless blackened landscape, we see it again—a hastily made tribute giving thanks to the CFA. And we are reminded that resilience does not always roar. Sometimes it moves quietly across a burned hillside, waits beneath a fallen tree and looks like a sheep who refused to give up.