'I would also like to ask their parents how it became acceptable for their children to act in this totally irresponsible and uncaring way.'

The Canberra bush fires...a long time go. Do you remember them by any chance? It was petrifying. I just felt we'd all be fried. I stood on our balcony talking to my family, because I just wasn't sure I'dever see them again.

At 3pm it was as dark as night...no sleep for any of us. Such a helpless feeling.

Anyway, in the early hours of Sunday morning we were given the assurance that things were under control.

The next morning we went for a walk, and on our return, couldn't get into our street. Our home was half-way up the mountain that stood behind us. It was on fire.

Water bombing went on all day, and eventually it was deemed safe to return home.

On the Monday I walked up the pathway to the mountain to see how close it had come to our home. I met these two boys I'd once taught. They were by then, in high school. I asked them if they'd been worried about the large fire. They said no, but they were really worried about the small one on the mountain, after which they laughed uncontrollably.

I walked on thinking they had something to do with the fire and then I remembered. In my class store room at work, I had this huge box of matches that lived on the top shelf. The actual boxes I'd used for a science experiment, so the contents from the small went into the large box, an they were guarded by me...until that year, when the boys were in my class and the matches had suddenly disappeared.

The mountain fire had been deliberately lit, and I knew in that instant that they had done it. All I had was my knowledge of them and a huge suspicion. All circumstantial.

But when a city is burning, as we were, what kind of parent doesn't count their children and keep them close?

It worries me to this day that I didn't report it. Those boys would simply have been experimenting. They were not bad boys, but each was from a dysfunctional family, felt to roam....