As the car makes its way up the road, blackened paddocks on either side, a wedge-tailed eagle glides far above, hungrily searching for anything that might have survived the inferno that swept across this landscape ten days earlier.
Jim Billings is returning to Upton Hill, east of Avenel in Victoria, for the first time since a bushfire destroyed his home.
The landscape leaves you in no doubt: this was an intense fire. In some places the ground appears to be not merely burnt, but baked.
It's grape country. Harvest time would have started in a month. Yet the lush vines haven't slowed the fire at all. We drive past row after row of charred grapevines.
"This is my bedroom here. And a heater there. And my wardrobe was here and I had a window here, looking out here through the trees and the vines."
The metal frames of outdoor furniture are still set up facing the west.
"There used to be a sort of a sunroom there and I pulled it down and built a deck. And it was a great place for family gatherings, meals and stuff."
This fire must have been so hot… Look at how twisted it all is…”
Jim turned 80 last year and hosted a party for about 100 guests. Family and friends stayed overnight in the house and in tents.
"There on the deck the grandchildren put on a concert and people gathered around here in the audience. And it was a fabulous concert… I've got beautiful memories up here. Absolutely beautiful memories."
Jim's daughter and sons are here supporting him.
"Dad sent this email to me a couple of months ago and he said, look, I've got a bad feeling about this summer," daughter Joanna recalls.
"He said if things do go bad, can I come and stay with you? Can I hitch the caravan up? And I said, Dad, absolutely. And I said, you won't stay in your caravan, you'll stay in our house."
That's where Jim has been living since the fires.
He explains why he decided to leave early.
"I said to myself, once catastrophic is mentioned, I can't stay here. I'm a fossil," he smiles, "an 80-year-old fossil. I can't defend this place if it's forecast catastrophic.
"And I came out on the deck on Wednesday afternoon and over on the horizon I could see billows of smoke. And I said, I've got to go, because I'll get trapped up here if I don't go. And if I stay, I'll die. That was what I said to myself. So, I just grabbed a couple of irreplaceable photos. The beautiful one of Simon, Jo and Jess, which I treasure enormously, and a photo of my sister and I when we were little kids, which is also irreplaceable."
Jim tries to put into words what he will miss most about the house.
"What it meant to me in terms of the people I love and sharing it, that's what I'm going to miss. This was the vehicle by which I could have them here and look after them and give hospitality to them and watch them love it and enjoy it. And that's gone. That's taken away. It kills me. It kills me because it's gone. It's irretrievably, completely and utterly destroyed.
"My mother used to say, you know, they're just things, Jimmy. Don't worry about it. They're just things. People are more important. But, you know, there were some beautiful things. The paintings and books that I treasured, my father's rolltop desk. And my great grand-aunt's beautiful grandfather clock. She left it to me because when I was a little boy, I used to sit by it and listen to the chimes ring. She left it to me in her will, for heaven's sake.
"So those things are very hard to accept. I can't have my family up here anymore. I can't have my friends up here anymore. I can't do all that anymore.”
Son Seamus says Jim is "forever a giver".
For years he worked with "kids that everyone else had given up on" in Victoria and the Northern Territory.
In 2022 Jim was awarded Strathbogie Shire's 'citizen of the year' for his part in setting up a community bus program. Once a week Jim drove the bus around Avenel, picking up people who didn't have a car or had mobility challenges, and took them to the regional centre of Seymour for shopping, medical appointments and meetings with friends.
In 2023 he tried to educate people in the Avenel area about how a yes vote in the Voice to Parliament referendum would start to heal the wounds between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
He has been a key player in Renewable Avenel Energy, a local non-profit community group that has provided interest free loans for solar panels and batteries to be installed on 13 properties in the town.
Standing in the ruins of his house, Jim desperately wants people to join the dots.
"When you have fires this bloody hot, there's something not right. And they're coming with more frequency and more intensity. And we need to say, why is this happening? Soon country towns won't survive. Marysville got flattened years ago. Avenel was very lucky the wind didn't go that way.
"What's so hard to understand? Mother nature's telling us. The science is irrefutable. The planet's had its three hottest years the last three years.
"No humidity, extreme heat and wind are the trifecta for fires. Forget about the fuel loads. You can mow your lawn and water as much as you like and never stop a fire. So, stop talking to me about fuel loads and start thinking about climate change.
"Oil, gas, coal. Fossil fuels. There's no argument. That's what's doing it to the planet. You can't argue about that.”
Jim wants to stay in the area and is grateful and humbled that he's been offered a bungalow in Avenel to live in.
"I've lost my house, I don't want to lose my community," he says.
A magpie that escaped the blaze starts carolling.