Vic: No autograph, but thanks for coming
By Mike Hedge23 Feb 2009 5:30 PM
WANDONG, Vic, Feb 23 AAP - Paul Hecker fled the fires that destroyed his home in Wandong with the two things that mean the most to him - his wife Marie and the diary he has kept for the past 70 years.
"This book's got my life in it," Mr Hecker said.
"Along with me wife and some photos, it's about all I have left.
"I've been writing in it almost every day since I met Marie."
Mr Hecker, 91, had his diary open and pen ready at the Wandong Community Hall on Monday as he and other fire victims were visited by Princess Anne.
The meeting went "absolutely wonderfully" - at least until he offered the princess his life's work and asked her to write her name in it.
"I'd have liked her to have signed me book," he said.
"But she said that she never signs anything.
"It was still very nice of her to come and see us though."
Princess Anne wrapped up her three-day visit to Victoria on Monday with a tour of the area in which the disastrous February 7 fire began.
She received first-hand accounts from firefighters and other emergency workers of how it had swept through the valleys and hills around Wandong and Kilmore before a wind change turned it into the deadly inferno that ravaged nearby Kinglake.
At the Wandong fire station she met the men and women who had fought to save the town and other volunteers who had supported them.
>From the Wandong fire brigade captain, Sandra O'Connor, she heard how the fire had arrived with barely a minute's notice.
"She wanted to know how we'd prepared and what we did," Ms O'Connor said.
"She really was concerned about our lives, our families, all that.
"After everything that's happened, it was really great to know that people like the royal family cared about what happened here."
It was a sentiment reflected wherever the Princess Royal went.
At the Wandong Primary School she met eight children whose homes had been destroyed.
One of them, sixth grader Ricky Santhos, displayed the sort of stoicism that has become so typical among those who have lost so much.
Asked what he had talked about with the princess, Ricky said: "Nothing, I just answered her questions".
"She asked me what happened. I told her.
"The house burned down and everything's gone."
At the local community centre where the scores of people who need help can get everything from a can of peaches to a toothbrush, financial advice and counselling, they were all pleased that Princess Anne had come to see them.
"We feel very honoured, humble that she's come to see us,' said Lindy Leddin.
"We're just normal human beings who've suffered a bit of hardship.
"It makes us feel important, I guess."
Ms Leddin and her husband Pat escaped from the flames with little more than what they were wearing.
"We got the dogs into the back of my son's ute - the chooks and ferrets and sheep and horses had to stay," she said.
Amazingly, the horses survived, something that greatly impressed a princess who rode for Britain at the 1972 Olympic Games.
Jo-anne Fryer and her husband Jeff had a similar story of survival.
They lost their home and almost everything they owned, but a small mob of cattle displayed a rare instinct for survival.
"They ran into the dam and stood there, 30 of them," Ms Fryer said.
"The fire was burning all around and they just stood in the water."
The Fryers had four minutes to leave their home and got away with little more than their dog and their lives.
Their meeting on Monday with Princess Anne isn't going to help bring back anything they lost.
But it may well help in their recovery.
"Just knowing that people like that care enough about us to come and see how we're going means a tremendous amount," Ms Fryer said.
"It doesn't matter what you think of royalty or any of that, it's a good thing to do and it's brightened our day."
