Hobart is the city at the center of the Tasmanian bushfire episode: Dorrigo Evans arrives there for a professional luncheon just as the firestorm threatens Fern Tree, while Ella Evans sets out with their children on foot toward the city. Hobart serves as a destination and possible refuge, but the account does not confirm that either Dorrigo or Ella reaches safety there. Its significance lies in that gap between the city as a place on the map and safety as something the characters must still try to reach.

Setting and connection to Fern Tree

Fern Tree is described as a village just outside Hobart, in mountain forest, where Ella’s sister lives. This proximity makes the city the natural point of reference for both the family’s plans and the unfolding emergency: Dorrigo intends to travel from Hobart to Fern Tree, while Ella later tells the children they must walk in the opposite direction, toward Hobart. The distance is daunting but uncertain to her; she estimates seven or ten miles and does not know which is correct. The narrative thus places Hobart close enough to serve as a destination, yet far enough away to make reaching it a serious undertaking.

The episode also gives Hobart a civic and professional setting distinct from the threatened mountain village. Dorrigo has flown from Melbourne to Hobart, where the College of Surgeons is hosting a luncheon in his honour at a hotel. That formal occasion continues as news arrives that towns south of the city, including Fern Tree, are threatened by a firestorm. The sudden change in the luncheon’s context links the city’s public routine to the emergency without suggesting that Hobart itself is already engulfed.

Dorrigo’s arrival and departure

Dorrigo’s arrival is marked by difficult flying conditions. Violent winds and smoke from fires in the island’s south buffet the plane during its descent, and the passengers disembark into ash and gusting heat. At Hobart, old Freddy Seymour, who leads the Tasmanian chapter of the College of Surgeons, welcomes him. Seymour’s old green 1948 Ford Mercury is kept in immaculate condition, a detail that becomes consequential when Dorrigo needs transport beyond the city.

Before leaving for Fern Tree, Dorrigo telephones Ella from the airport’s public phone. Her sister is away with the car until mid-afternoon, and Ella says the children are staying put in the shade of the eucalypts. The conversation establishes both the family’s location outside Hobart and the practical constraint that separates them: Ella does not have the car, while Dorrigo is still in the city. The fire news changes his plans. When he tries calling the sister’s home from the hotel, the connection is down; the operator reports that almost all lines to homes on the mountain are also unavailable. Dorrigo then asks Seymour to lend him the Ford, and Seymour agrees. The city’s phone service can no longer reliably connect him to his family, so he turns to a car to cross the distance himself.

Hobart as a destination under threat

For Ella, Hobart becomes the direction of escape after a nearby house has burst into flame. She gathers Jess, Mary and little Stewie and tells them they are going to walk there. The decision is made without certainty about the distance, and the children’s questions expose how little the route can be reduced to a reassuring plan. Later, as fire and wind surround them, Ella repeats the need to get to Hobart and instructs the children to stay behind her, hold one another’s hands and not let go. Mary’s blistered feet make the cost of continuing immediate; Ella promises they will be dealt with when they reach the city.

The account presents Hobart as a hoped-for endpoint rather than a confirmed rescue. The family’s linked progress through smoke and flame gives their destination urgency, but the evidence here stops before their arrival. Dorrigo, meanwhile, drives from the city toward Fern Tree after the phone lines fail, while Ella and the children move toward the city from the threatened outskirts. Their journeys point in opposite directions across the same geography, each shaped by the effort to close a dangerous separation.

Narrative significance

Hobart is more than a backdrop to the bushfire: it organizes the episode’s competing movements. The city first appears as a place of arrival, professional recognition and a scheduled luncheon; as the fire worsens, those ordinary arrangements become secondary to locating family and finding a route through the emergency. A public telephone, a borrowed car and the remembered estimate of the miles to Hobart give the crisis concrete dimensions. The city stands for a possible place of safety, but not a guarantee of it, and the unresolved destination preserves the uncertainty of the family’s flight.