Life at Adair after the fires.
On Tuesday February 13 2024, 48 homes were destroyed by bushfires in Pomonal. Then, on Christmas Day 2024 - just 10 months later, bushfire flames licked at the township’s edge again. These twin tragedies have left a scar on the landscape that will take a few goods seasons to erase. However the difficulties that it has inflicted on the lives of many of our friends and neighbours will take much longer to overcome. Of the half dozen homes close to us, Adair is the only house left standing. We are an island of green, a magnet to the wildlife that are drawn to our lush lawns and plentiful water, and as one of the few places still able to accomodate visitors, a vital form of support for Pomonal’s local businesses.
As guests to the district in this post-fire period, you can anticipate a specially warm welcome from those small businesses who rely on the tourist economy for their survival, and we encourage you to visit as many as you can during your stay. We particularly urge you to patronise the Pomonal Store (the beating heart of the community), to visit James McMurtrie’s glass-blowing studio down Springwood Hill Rd, Pomonal Estates for lunch or a glass of wine, and to try Barney’s Bistro for dinner.
While the path of February’s fires was very much focussed on the area around our town, favourite attractions like Pomonal Estates, Barney’s Bistro, the Five Ducks Farm, Halls Gap Zoo and Fallen Giants Vineyard are all completely untouched. Further into the national park, Halls Gap itself and many of the popular walking tracks around it are also untouched by the fire. While the enormity of the damage the Christmas 2024 fire inflicted upon the National Park can not be understated (it burnt an estimated 135,000 hectares), it’s entirely possible to enjoy many of the Park’s walks and attractions without seeing any sign of the damage.
On a personal level, we are pleased our bushfire mitigation measures seemed to have played a significant role in Adair’s survival and the survival of some of the wildlife we share the countryside with. As the local landscape slowly heals, we are grateful to our guests who continue to stay with us. We can guarantee you the comfort and convenience Adair provides remains unchanged.
Although our marked walking trails into the park no longer exist, guests may still want to venture onto what was the fire ground. In the absence of some of the low-growing vegetation that kept the soil in place, we’d advise caution due to unstable footing on the loose ground. However it is possible to scramble to Rainbow and Echo rocks (which in line with the fire-damage to our sign we are considering calling “Ho Rock” and “Bow Rock” - see pic) and even to scramble up to the Mt Cassell summit if you take care to navigate a safe route in the absence of our marked trails. The fire tracks that extend north and south along the national park boundary have been re-graded and are once again a safe and easy stroll.
With the cooler weather and rains the bush is slowly coming back with fire-adaptive eucalypts pushing new foliage out from their trunks and branches in a process known as “epicormic sprouting”. The seeds they dropped into the barren ashy ground immediately post fire are beginning to germinate in an explosion of new trees, and the ash that covered the ground more generally is fertilising the soil to support lush new growth and with it, a plethora of kangaroos, emu, deer and the rest of the wildlife that are so much part of the Adair experience.
Below are a few images of the property, taken between December 2024 and June 2025.
