Many of you will know Jack Egan who used to live in Gundaroo and shear sheep locally, and was also a Maths teacher in Canberra Girls Grammar. More recently Jack moved to Katherine in NT with his partner Cath Bowdler . Then a couple of years ago they moved permanently back into Cath’s beach home at Rosedale. Jack works in the Aged care facility in Broulee nearby. Last year they completed a wonderful upstairs extension to the home.On New Year’s Eve their house burned to the ground, being 8 of the homes in their street of 12 that did not survive. They are now renting in South Durras. Their story is a powerful one, where both Cath and Jack stayed to defend the home, but were overrun and Cath fled to the beach while Jack stayed on. During the chaos they lost sight of each other and afterwards could not find each other. For 3 hours they both thought they had perished in the fire… until they found each other. This couple are a wonderful pair of humans and while traumatised by the recent event they are stoically rebuilding their lives and living it as normal as possible. To that end they are coming back to Gundaroo next week to help present a talk at the Gundaroo Colonial Inn in a talk about a walk in a WA park, which Jack did with myself in 2018. The details are in the latest gazette – Feb 29 at 4pm – its free. (Ironically its called a “Fireside chat” – and hey -they are laughing about that). Following the NYE fire Jack has been in the media quite a bit. See this video which fills you in on his approach -he does not bash pollies or blame anyone but he does want Climate Action Now. https://www.facebook.com/350.orgAustralia/videos/210568260092576/?v=210568260092576Jack is also now involved in a ‘paint it yellow’ campaign to get the message out. This was a grass roots initiative and its now being assisted with support of ACF. See this linkhttps://www.acf.org.au/show_our_colours