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Stubborn survival

It has been five years since deadly bushfires tore through the Adelaide Hills

Five years have passed since the deadly bushfires tore through the Adelaide Hills on a hot and windy day, claiming one life, destroying 85 homes and scorching 23,000ha of earth.

It’s also five years since horse racing identity John Glatz was left fighting for his life after suffering horrendous burns to his body as his property was razed to the ground.

Things have changed a little for the former Oakbank Racing Club chairman since that day of destruction. John and his wife, Merri, now live in their new custom-built house and most of the skin on his body bears the scars of either burns or skin grafts. But some things never change – John’s stubbornness for one.

Asked where he found the strength to overcome his injuries and whether his dogged, no fuss attitude played a part, he simply says, “there was no alternative”.

The same staunch resilience got John through 12 long and painful months of rehabilitation and numerous operations and excruciating skin grafts after suffering burns to 60% of his body.

The nightmare began on Friday, December 20, 2019, when hot and dry weather conditions combined with strong winds made it a catastrophic fire day for the Mt Lofty Ranges. Temperatures soared and wind gusts reached up to 80km/h, fanning flames and rapidly spreading the fire front that began at Cudlee Creek.

Merri Glatz remembers one of her husband’s dominant traits – stubbornness – rearing its head when he decided to stay to protect the family home.

“John said he wouldn’t leave (the property),” she says.

“I said, come on, it’s time to go, but he wouldn’t come.

“So I grabbed a shopping bag, put a few things in and grabbed the dog.

“The fire was everywhere.”

Determined to save his Woodside property, John jumped on the tractor and doused spot fires and burning debris until a sudden gust of wind dangerously escalated the situation.

The fight for his property and the family home turned into a fight for his life, after he passed out, badly burnt on the tractor.

“I had no idea whatsoever that I’d been burnt, I passed out,” John says. “Luckily my friend Adam Stone (who lives nearby) came and found me unconscious on the tractor.”

John owes his life to two men that day; Adam as well as Sergeant Joe McDonald, an officer from Mt Barker Police Station, who also lives near John and Merri. With ambulances unable to make it through the firefront, the men had no choice but to lift John into Joe’s police car and rush him to the Mt Barker hospital.

By that night, Merri and their children had heard about John who had been transported to the intensive care unit (ICU) at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. John was resuscitated twice and 40% of his burns were deep, eventually requiring painful skin grafts and excruciating dressing changes.

John was very nearly the second fatality that tragic day, with Charleston man Ron Selth, 69, losing his life.

Only two things survived the blaze:
John’s Oakbank Racing Club
membership committee badge …
and a little old blue wooden boat.

The Cudlee Creek bushfire hit many towns including Lobethal, Woodside, Brukunga, Harrogate and Mt Torrens. The fire was finally declared safe two weeks later, but the recovery of those affected had only just begun.

John spent a fortnight in the ICU before waking and realising what had happened.

“I came out of the ICU full of drugs, I didn’t know where I was, but after probably a day I’d realised I’d been burnt,” he says. “I ended up having many operations.

“The trouble with skin grafts is that they take skin from other parts of the body so whatever wasn’t burnt was a wound from a big strip of skin being taken off.”

After more than three months at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, John was able to be transferred closer to home to the Strathalbyn hospital, which was ideal mostly because “the food was great”.

“The best time to visit John was at lunchtime because he wasn’t doing physio or something like that, so I’d sit there with my cheese and biscuits and a bit of fruit from home and there John was eating a beautiful roast pork,” Merri says.

The time came when John had to learn to walk again, eventually moving back to Woodside in a rental property while the couple’s home was rebuilt. Community nurses would visit every two days to change his dressings and it took a full 12 months for his skin to completely heal. Then came the wearing of compression garments – tight elastic dressings designed to help reduce scarring and manage swelling.

Although many people in John’s position would suffer mental anguish or even post traumatic stress disorder from a similar ordeal, John handled this chapter of his life with his typical hard-nosed tenacity. He only recalls once during his recovery where it almost became too much.

“There was one occasion that got to me and I didn’t know if I could go on,” he says. “It was a Sunday morning and one of the nurses came into the room and said she could smell pseudomonas, which is a really nasty infection. She said, ‘we’re going to have to change your dressings, but our pain relief isn’t organised because it’s Sunday’.

“So for three hours, I screamed at the top of my head. The nurses were all crying, anyway they did it, and I thought, that’s it. I can’t put up with this anymore.”

In addition to his physical recovery, John and Merri have also rebuilt their lives. Except for the small bag of possessions Merri managed to scramble together before fleeing the fire, the pair were left with nothing. Only two things survived the blaze: John’s Oakbank Racing Club membership committee badge made of pure gold and a little old blue wooden boat nicknamed ‘Queen Mary’.

Despite being next to a shed that melted to the ground, the boat was somehow untouched.

John and Merri were astounded by the hard work and generosity of friends and family, including their daughter and son-in-law who helped clean up the property during his lengthy hospital stay.

John – who served as Oakbank Racing Club’s chairman for 25 years – now dedicates his time to giving back to the hospital system.

As a lived experience consumer representative for the Central Adelaide Local Health Network, he conducts patient experience surveys at the Royal Adelaide Hospital as well as participating on recruitment panels and committees.

“I’ll interview 12 to 15 patients in a day. I sort of knew what it would be like because I used to hate people coming in and asking questions when I was there,” John says.

“But I try to establish a relationship with the patient and if I leave and they don’t say, ‘gee, John, that was good, thanks for that’, I don’t think I’ve done the job properly. “They open up and tell me all sorts of things.”

The only scars he bears from that terrible day five years ago in December are the physical ones on his body. He says he suffers no mental trauma from the experience, nor do the sounds of sirens or smell of smoke bring him right back to the horror of that Friday. However, there’s one thing that reminds him daily of how lucky he is to have survived. The old little blue wooden boat, Queen Mary, lays under a big gum tree in the paddock, making a picture perfect view from the living room window.

“Absolutely everything else was burnt, except that bloody thing,” he says.

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