Here she writes of her fiery introduction to life on the land at Timbarra, back in 1968, for a US writing competition. The ‘Jack’ she refers to is Jack Gardiner, late husband of Val.

She also provided some memories from her photo albums...

Chris and Alice were newlyweds that year.  He was the tall lean Australian, a third-generation grazier beginning his contest with the land and fickle, ever-changing natural elements.  She was the adventuresome American, enchanted from childhood by the call of Australia so far away from her Alabama beginnings.

During the bitterly cold months of July and August, together they cleaned out three rooms of the long-abandoned "Timbarra" homestead.  After stripping away years of accumulated dust and grime, the couple hung and nailed foil-backed tar paper against the interior of the thick, rough hand-hewn vertical slabs of timber forming the outer walls of the structure.  They painted the tar paper and inside partitions a soft hint of apple green.  The old gold buyer's cottage once again became a home.

Electricity and running water were nonexistent.  Water came from a small galvanized iron rainwater tank above the kitchen roof.  The spigot was only a few inches above floor level.  A large wooden country table served as breakfast room and counter space, holding the deep metal pan used for dish washing.  The refrigerator, powered by kerosene, had a narrow vent pipe projecting upward from its back.

Alice's one great joy was a gleaming white propane stove, a wedding gift from her Cornish-born mother-in-law, who had also come alone to this harsh land so long ago.  The luxury of having the cook stove made up for many of the inconveniences of living in this stoic setting.

In the living room stood the fireplace, the only source of heat for the house that sat so near the top of the Great Divide.  Winters were cold because of the Westerlies blowing up and across the earth from the frozen Antarctica.

Wintertime slowly and steadily disappeared.  Spring brightened the land.  Grass greened in the paddocks.  Hereford breeder cows and their sturdy cross-bred Santa Gertrudis offspring grazed the pastures at the beginning of summer that November.

For two days, Chris monitored a troublesome fire beyond his eastern fences up on the edge of the standing timber.  Two weeks earlier, a neighbor had burned last season's grass and the multiplying blackberry bushes in his adjacent paddocks.  Thinking the flames were smothered, he believed all was right.  Instead the fire merely retreated under the dry ground and found sustaining fuel in the oily roots of a large eucalyptus tree.

Fingers of flame eventually surfaced and jumped the flowing, gurgling brook to come in around open pasture land through the dividing fence.  Chris had not been the only person watching to see what course the blaze would take.  The Baker brothers noticed it while they cut and hauled timber from the wooded area.  Other neighboring cattlemen saw the smoke as they worked.  Livelihoods depended on the grasses that fed and fattened the cattle for a vealers' market.

The struggle began.  Men left their own chores and brought tools and machinery to "Alpine-Timbarra" land.  They fought the flames as if their own properties were being devoured, for the next time they could well be.

Alice's work at home was to cook everything on hand.  The men had to eat if they were to sustain their strength for the battle.  At prearranged intervals, young Chris Baker came to the house on his small motorbike and whisked away the food for the hungry warriors.

Well after dark, the grubby firefighters appeared at the homestead in staggered shifts for showers from a watering can.  In the middle of the night, the wind dropped and so did the men.  Lying on the verandah at "Timbarra," they rested and dozed.  Near dawn, the wind began to rise again.  Weary bodies lifted themselves to go and meet the foe once more.

The new day was an easier one.  The fire was contained.  Danger, it seemed, had passed.  Overhead the sun hung in the sky, a glowing red ball beyond the smoky haze.  In the evening, once more the men showered by watering can and slept on the verandah facing the scorched earth.

On the third day, the exhausted crew monitored the controlled situation.  The men lowered their guards and relaxed, talked, and reminisced about fires from other times and other places.

Alice was also weary.  This had been her first bush fire experience.  Though she still had meals to prepare, she was peacefully at home.  Calmness prevailed.

Sounds of a fast approaching vehicle on the Timbarra Road disturbed the quiet.  A utility truck pulled into the driveway.  It was Jack, who had returned to his own land that morning to continue his interrupted fencing job.

"Alice, collect some burlap bags and come quickly.  The fire has flared up across the ridge.  Both our properties are threatened," he shouted out. 

"The men are still down in the woods watching the smoldering brush.  Let's go get them," Alice called back.

"No time.  We'll lose the lot.  Hopefully, they'll see the smoke.  Come along with me now.  It's you and I who will have to save this day."

Jack and Alice quickly threw empty feed sacks into the truck bed and drove down the road and into the paddocks.  Jack's pair of blue cattle dogs followed in close pursuit.  Alice jumped out of the cab at several stops to open, then close, paddock gates along the jarring track through the pastures.

"We can't take the ute any further than this.  Too dangerous," Jack explained, braking the truck to a final stop.  The two neighbors leapt from the vehicle, grabbed the bags, and struck out on foot across the open land.  Crossing the meandering creek, they paused only long enough to wet their load of burlap in the flowing water.

At the edge of the fire, the twosome began to beat the flames with their feed sacks.  Over and over, again and again, they raised and lowered the bags in attempts to halt the threat before them.

Frantic rabbits, the scourge of Australia, ran out of the waves of flames.  They squealed in pain and terror, their furry bodies burning.

"Quickly," screamed Jack.  "Contain them.  They're spreading the fire."

Outback Jack and his city-bred companion beat the rabbits with their bags or stomped them to death.  Alice brushed aside all squeamishness in her effort to save the land.

Tired muscles turned to mush, and still the two repeatedly slapped the flames in an effort to extinguish them.  The burlap bags themselves caught fire.  Quickly discarded, the reserves went into action.

What next, thought Alice.  What do we do when these bags are gone, too?

From over the hill roared a gigantic timber jack, its large blade pushing mounds of dirt to smother the fire.  It was Young Chris, the youngest of the Baker brothers, looking for the world like an Australian Hoss Cartwright on a mechanical steed.  He broke into a broad smile as he saluted thumbs up to the sweaty, soot-covered pair heaving cloth sacks against the blazing enemy.

Though fatigued, Jack and Alice returned the welcomed greeting.

"G'day, mate," hollered Jack in his best Australian form.

"Where you been so long?" Alice inquired in her distinctly Southern accent.

"Saw the smoke.  Thought you could do with some help," he replied, an impish grin spreading across his face.

Another engine sound came from atop the ridge.  Chris on his much smaller Massey-Ferguson tractor followed the path of the timber jack and widened it as a precaution.  The rugged Australian looked toward his American bride with great pride lighting up his hazel eyes. 

Alice and Jack's ordeal was over.  Modern machinery could finish what the two of them had started.  Retreating down the hill, they collapsed face forward to sip the cool water from the little stream.  Jack's dogs, that had kept themselves at a safe distance from the fire, plopped happily into the creek a few feet upstream from the relieved firefighters. 

Jack lifted his head slightly.  "What the ---," he observed dryly and lowered his head to continue drinking.  Alice concurred with his observation.

                                                                          # # #

The fourth Thursday of November was warm.  A stale, smoky smell lingered in the air.  It was an ordinary work day in New South Wales, Australia, while half a world away Americans anticipated the holiday unique unto themselves.

Neighbors gathered at "Timbarra" by invitation that evening.  Alice prepared the traditional American feast to thank her Australian friends.  The turkey had been ordered from the City, two hundred miles away.  Dressing was concocted from a coarse, dry, yellow corn meal bought at a Seventh Day Adventist health food store at the coast.  Small pecans, picked up from under trees planted as ornamental oddities in a nearby town, were used in the pie with an Australian product called Glucose substituting for light corn syrup.

By the flickering candlelight, the Australians assembled around the table to share the dinner and heritage of their American-born hostess.

They bowed their heads, and Chris prayed:

            For what we are about to receive,

            May we be truly thankful.

                                                                Amen.

Thus began the First Thanksgiving.

When Alice was visiting Tenterfield from the US in 1991, Val Gardiner mentioned that a local David Johnston was studying at the University of Georgia. Turned out he was living only about a 45-minute drive from where the Hughes lived at the time.

Alice caught up with David’s stepmother while she was in Tenterfield. (His dad had been someone the Hughes knew casually from the late 1960s.) 

On returning to the US, Alice called David, surprising him by saying she’d had morning tea at his parents’ home a couple of days earlier.

Alice took a photo of David and the Hughes’ daughter Vyvyan, in October 1991, when he came over for dinner at their place.