As a 13 year old, Oakfield Farm was heaven. Wow! The memories are vibrantly clear, a lake full of frogs, miles of meadows filled with cows, horses and donkeys, trees that gave up Syringa berry ammunition for our catapults, goats that would try eat your trouser leg, and Aunty Daph’s scones and whipped cream always in piles high enough to fill any starving clan of cousins. Sundays us city Bremners would head out for Oakfield. A big day ahead on the farm. So much to do. After being bruised from our attempts at rodeo cow riding, trying to catch the legendary huge barbell in the frog pond (surely Huck Finn had nothing on us), and chasing guinea fowl with our home-made bows and arrows, we would circle back to the farm house late in the afternoon for tea – a word that cannot do justice to the spread that Aunty Daph would provide. As I write this I realise that I do hope heaven is just a bit like Oakfield.

Anthony Holley, one of Aunty Daps and Uncle Dougs’ other nephews, and I were tight holiday cousins, meaning each long holiday we got together to conquer the outdoors be it somewhere out in Fourways or the Mondeor Koppies. One year Aunty Daph agreed to let us camp for a couple of days on her farm. I am not sure Uncle Doug was part of the decision making process, but one hot summer day saw us camping near the horse enclosure, content as we had ever been. Lunch was hot dogs, and soon we had the wiener sausages in boiling water in a pot on our campfire. We were 13, and naïve about the fickle nature of fires. I went into the tent while Anthony went to relieve himself in the great outdoors. I remember lying down for a minute in the tent, feeling free, and very happy, but I had to check on the hotdogs. As I climbed out of the tent I realised that we had a small problem – the campfire had started to creep out of the bounds of the rocks and was catching the surrounding grass on fire. I grabbed my backpack out the tent and started to attempt at stamping out the flames. The fire seemed so little to start with, so easy to put out, but I had missed the opportunity to beat it and soon the fire was real, and heading towards the tent. Anthony came around the corner as I started to yell. We dragged the tent out of the way, threw the wiener water aimlessly at the fire and realising there was now a real problem, Anthony went running toward the farmhouse. “Fire, Fire” he screamed.

Aunty Daph’s son and my older cousin Neil, who was on his way to a wedding had just left Oakfield in his car and was heading toward the city. The road past Oakfield, as you know is marked by rolling raises – a thrill for small kids in the car. I later learned that as Neil’s car made the top of a rise he noticed smoke in his rear-view mirror. He realised on the next rise that the smoke was real, and coming from the direction of Oakfield. He turned the car around and headed home.

The fire spread incredibly quickly, flames licking at the hanging gum-tree leaves and moving in the direction of the horse enclosure. I panicked but continued to beat at the flames with my backpack but knew I was making no impact. The wind whipped up the flames just as Neil drove the farm fire buggy up to the fire. Soon there were all sorts of farmhands, Aunts, Uncles and cousins beating at the flames. The wind gave us a break and we got the upper hand and got control. About half an hour after it started it was over. Anthony and I looked over the sweaty ash soiled faces around us. Uncle Doug was speechless. Aunty Daph was sweet and sympathetic and told us that no harm had been done. “Did you boys get any lunch?” she asked noticing the hotdogs lying charred and pathetic in the ashes around the fireplace. “We’re not hungry”, we answered truthfully. Everyone went back to what they were doing, and Anthony and I started to organise our tent again. We sat back, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

However, the fire had not completed its damaging task. A new gust of wind breathed new life into some embers and flames once again leapt into the grass. A depression maybe 50 meters across with long dry veld grass and karkiebos welcomed the fire. The wind picked up and now we had a wragtig veld-fire. Anthony headed back to the farmhouse while I, armed this time with a far more effective branch of Eucalyptus leaves, beat once more at the fire monster. The fire buggy was outof water and the wind too great and soon we realised that other measures to limit the damage were going to be necessary. “The trucks!!” I heard Neil shout. I looked over to see that the fire was headed toward the parked Mercedes trucks in a field not far from our campsite. I had seen too many movies not to know what a truck looks like when it explodes into flames. “Go Neil” I yelled as he ran over to move the trucks out of the way. Uncle Doug let the horses and the lone donkey out of the paddock just before the fire leaped over to consume all the grass where the horses had been grazing moments before.

It took a long time to stop the flames this time, and when it was all done perhaps 10 acres had been burnt. My memory may be exaggerating but it seemed to me at the time that half my world was blackened. We could not meet Uncle Doug or Neil’s eye. Without so much as a word, they headed back to the farmhouse. We were crestfallen, without words even for each other. We had witnessed the horror and overwhelming destruction of fire as it destroyed a great part of our favourite place in the world. Were the horses OK?

We turned back toward our tent, and there she was again our Aunty Daph coming toward us in her usual determined gait with a great smile on her face bearing a large bowl of strawberries and cream. “I hope this makes up for your lost hot-dogs” she chimed. “You know you probably saved us a lot of time. We would have had to burn down that grass in the paddock to get a new sprout in the Spring.”

There was no arguing with Aunty Daph and the great moments we kids had on that farm – before then and after. The fire will never be forgotten by Anthony or me. I think our camp the following year was completely fireless – “Survival Camp” we called it, and we ate only Marie biscuits. We won’t forget either the trying time we had capturing the stubborn and biting donkey the next day, bringing it back to another paddock.

But more than the fire and donkey, I remember Aunty Daph. Her goodness is really the soul of Oakfield. An angel in our piece of heaven.

ROSS BREMNER

Anthony Holley, Ross’ cousin, is now an Intensive Care Specialist in the Australian Navy and living in Brisbane with his wife Birgit and two boys Myles and Robert.

Ross Bremner is a Cardio-thoracic surgeon working at St. Josephs Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona where his main interest is Lung transplants. He lives there with his wife Kathy and two daughters Kensey and Ashley.