Community overwhelmed as Perth Hills bushfire prompts flood of generosity

Melinda Samways was with her daughter Holly at the Swan Valley agistment where she keeps her horse, Yankee, when the sky turned crimson and smoke began blanketing the horizon.

“It was literally like Armageddon here,” she said of a bushfire that took hold in Perth’s north-east on Monday, burning almost 11,000 hectares and destroying 86 properties.

“The sky was all red and the winds and the ash were just falling and this guy here [Yankee], he was grey rather than black, brown.”

When she was certain the fire was not going to reach…