Ash Wednesday 1983

[mk33]

With today weather at the very extreme just wondering how many remember Ash Wednesday Bushfires in 1983. We lived about 30 minutes away from it so were not threatned. I was only young then but I remember Dad fighting it and the black sky that nightat about 5pm from the fires on such a sunny day. Thought Nitro and Rosy may remember more being closer to the action.
Lets hope we never see another day like that or Sydney bushfires of 1994? or 2001. Maybe Crystal might remember these days. I know my brother flew up from here to fight them in 2001 on NYE.

 

[Crystal]

Very tragic times indeed. I was in LA during the Sydney '94 fires and remember seeing a picture of the Opera House in the newspaper with flames leaping around it! The Yanks sure know how to sell a good story.

I was just reading Rosy's other thread and hope that all is ok. :hearton

http://www.puntroadend.com/yabbse/index.php?topic=19212.0

 

[Jools]

I lived in the Yarra Valley then, remember it well, though I was in the city on the day. Had my wisdom teeth pulled out the next day.

Remember the dust storm about a week before? I was inside an office, and remember the light just fading away in the middle of the afternoon.

 

[Anduril]

Was teaching on the second floor, saw the dust storm coming and couldn't believe it
On Ash Weds could smell the smoke in Caulfield.

 

[Rosy]

Thought Nitro and Rosy may remember more being closer to the action.

I got married and moved up here in 1982 mk. Was Ash Wednesday when the area between Terang and Warrnambool was gutted? If so I must have gone home not long after it because I vividly remember the haunting black landscape and chimneys dotted over the landscape where farm houses once were.

Ash Wednesday here was horrible. The fires weren't really near here but the sky was so thick with smoke and ash that it was hard to believe it wasn't in the paddock next door.

I was painting the lounge of our new house but it was getting black marks on it so had to stop.

I remember it for medical reasons as well jools. I was really unwell, aching all over and despite the high 40's temp was shivering in a cold sweat.

Went to the doctor next day and jokingly told him I had mastitis, I thought only cows got it, but turns out I had it bad. Had to go into hospital and spend a couple of weeks on a drip. Ouch!

 

[mk33]

]

I got married and moved up here in 1982 mk.  Was Ash Wednesday when the area between Terang and Warrnambool was gutted?  If so I must have gone home not long after it because I vividly remember the haunting black landscape and  chimneys dotted over the landscape where farm houses once were.

Ash Wednesday here was horrible.  The fires weren't really near here but the sky was so thick with smoke and ash that it was hard to believe it wasn't in the paddock next door.

I was painting the lounge of our new house but it was getting black marks on it so had to stop.

I remember it for medical reasons as well jools.  I was really unwell, aching all over and despite the high 40's temp was shivering in a cold sweat.

Went to the doctor next day and jokingly told him I had mastitis, I thought only cows got it, but turns out I had it bad.  Had to go into hospital and spend a couple of weeks on a drip.  Ouch!

Yeah it was one fire started south of the highway, the other north and then they merged together and got very close to Terang and hit Garvoc. Plenty of houses and livestock lost with about 9 lives lost from that fire and about 70! lost all up. Macedon and Cockatoo were the worst.

 

[Bunnerz]

i was born on that day

 

[eight ace]

I lived in Portland at the time. A month later I joined the army and haven't lived in Victoria since then.

 

[Liverpool]

Remember Aireys Inlet got pretty much wiped-out! :'(

 

[tiger in the night]

I remember the Ash Wednesday bushfires and the dust/ash storm that preceded them very well.

I was on the beach at Ricketts Point on the day of the dust/ash storm and was looking at the Bay back towards Melbourne and all you could see from one side of the horizon to the other was a long round tumbling cloud of dust rising way up into the sky. It was like the front of one of those rollers that is used to flatten asphalt when roads are being made – only on a gargantuan scale. It was fast too. Between seeing this thing and getting off the beach and into the car I reckon it hit us in about 10 minutes.

The Ash Wednesday fires were something else. I was a student at the time and a group of us volunteered to undertake post fire evaluation surveys for the CFA. We were instructed to just record what we saw on each site. We worked the area at the back of Lorne.

What we saw is practically indescribable and I sincerely regret not keeping some of the rolls of photos we took along the way in those three days.

On the downward sea facing slopes at the back of Lorne we saw brick houses which had exploded in the heat - the bricks and the windows had melted and formed solid puddles of a mixture of clay and glass extending down the slopes. People say that the temperatures required to re-melt bricks or glass could not be reached in a bushfire but we saw what we saw.

It was not unusual in these circumstances to find that the next door property had not been the slightest bit damaged. In fact, I clearly remember an instance where there was such a scenario – where one house had been totally burnt to the ground and even the side fence had been destroyed and all that remained of it was a line of ash in the ground. Within a metre of the ex-fence a rose bush remained unharmed – with its cardboard identification tag on a string still intact.

It was also common to come across a streetscape that had several intact houses then several burnt ones, then an intact one and then everything else destroyed. When you stopped and looked across the street and up the hillside you could see these swathes of untouched bush and houses amidst the devastation - up and down the hill. There was no pattern to it – some of these areas had lots of very burnable vegetation on them and even timber houses. It looked as if the fire had its own mind about who or what to burn.

In another instance, we drove along behind the hills of Lorne and mile after mile every bush, shrub and tree had been burnt to a blackened stump and the ground plane was an even surface of light grey ash. Funny thing was – all the stumps had a lean on them of about 20 degrees off vertical in the direction in which the fire raged. There was hill after hill of these stumps – as far as the eye could see.

Along the same back road we came across a single intact farmhouse – an old one with verandahs on three sides and on the fourth side were the water tanks and outbuildings. We got out of the car looking at it as if it were a ghost house. In the middle of a landscape - which looked like it had been hit with an atom bomb - was this house. No apparent damage – it even sat in a small area of slightly scorched grass and garden beds.

But when we got closer to the house we could see that the plinth boards to the garden beds had been burnt to a line of ash and on the verandahs at the front and back doors – a rectangular hole burnt through the hardwood boards where the coir welcome mats had been placed. The ambient air temperature had reached a very high level – enough to burn some things but not quite enough for the whole house to catch fire.

It was a fascinating but depressing three days. When the CFA released its findings from the survey – which was done all over the state – we who had undertaken the survey could not believe that they would ever recommend for people to stay with a house and fight a bushfire. From what we saw – fighting a fire storm with domestic garden hoses and woollen blankets - could only be a death sentence, even with all the necessary precautions in place.

Again and again the generalisations and conclusions reached by the CFA could not be drawn from the evidence that we saw on the ground – at least at Lorne. Thank goodness the vast majority of people chose to abandon their houses and go to the refuge of the beach, otherwise the death toll could have been much higher.

When I see bushfires on TV my heart goes out to the victims – their fear and loss and grief. My esteem for those members of the CFA and Fire Brigade on the ground is huge – it is beyond my comprehension how can anyone stand there and fight those things.

 

[Gordietiger]

Indeed-I remember it very well-I was in my first year as a teacher and we took a group of Yr 12 students from Greenwood SC(now Bundoora SC) to Deans Marsh on a Year 12 orientation trip. On The Wednesday we took off to Lorne for the day -the fire started from a spark in a wood mill in Deans Marsh and roared up the coastline-we spent the day and the night huddled on the beach watching the smoke /flames etc from the sand.
Funny-I forget most things daily-but i can recall every minute of that day!

 

[the golden]

With today weather at the very extreme just wondering how many remember Ash Wednesday Bushfires in 1983. We lived about 30 minutes away from it so were not threatned. I was only young then but I remember Dad fighting it and the black sky that nightat about 5pm from the fires on such a sunny day. Thought Nitro and Rosy may remember more being closer to the action.
Lets hope we never see another day like that or Sydney bushfires of 1994? or 2001. Maybe Crystal might remember these days. I know my brother flew up from here to fight them in 2001 on NYE.

i lived in launching place at the time it was terrible found out a week later that we were only about 15kms from the edge of the cockatoo fires which were still smoldering a week later .i was a terrified 13yr old at the time rip to all that lost their lives in thoses fires :'(

 

[Jools]

i lived in launching place at the time it was terrible found out a week later that we were only about 15kms from the edge of the cockatoo fires which were still smoldering a week later .i was a terrified 13yr old at the time rip to all that lost their lives in thoses fires :'(

I lived in Gladysdale at the time golden, but worked in the city. We were probably closer than you to some of the fires in the hills above Gilderoy and Powelltown.

 

[the golden]

i lived in launching place at the time it was terrible found out a week later that we were only about 15kms from the edge of the cockatoo fires which were still smoldering a week later .i was a terrified 13yr old at the time rip to all that lost their lives in thoses fires :'(

I lived in Gladysdale at the time golden, but worked in the city. We were probably closer than you to some of the fires in the hills above Gilderoy and Powelltown.

you sure were had friends that way i lived in school house rd but we went for a drive not far and could see little joe glowing

 

[major spike]

i was born on that day

My Grandmother died on that day. About half an hour after I left for school, she left for work on her moped and got hit basically leaving the driveway and spent the next 10 hours in a coma on life support before they turned the machines off.

Ive always found it interesting what that day means to other people, as I remember the fires. I remember the heat and I remember every strange thing about that day.

 

[TigerGoneNorth]

I was at a house down in Anglesea at that time and I remember jogging along the back beach watching a spot fire burning down towards Airey's Inlet. The place was aas dry as I've seen it and I remember wondering what it would take for a fire to take hold and where it would all stop if it did. Nothing happened that day and I went home to Melbourne then of course everything went up the following day. The house I'd been staying at narrowly missed getting burnt - fences were lost only although a few houses around got more damage.

I also remember driving up around Cockatoo a few weeks after the fires up there - some shocking scenes.

 

[TigerForce]

What an eerie day this was back in February 1983.

I was standing in the class room on a hot and humid day looking outside the 3rd floor window waiting for the teacher to arrive and just looked at the people walking, & cars driving up and down the noisy street. When the
teacher arrived we sat down to read through a boring book and as I was dozing off, I looked towards the window and noticed that a dead silence occurred. I pushed my chair back, got up, stuck my head outside the window and saw some people yelling out until.................BANG !

A huge amount of thick orange smoke spread all over the sky and ground as if a bomb exploded. Everybody started running around in chaos including the teacher. We were all caged inside the classroom for hours.

Everytime we have those woodburning smells in the air, it reminds me of this day.

 

[tiger in the night]

What amazing stories.

Tough one, Major - my condolences.

 

[Bill James]

On the night of the fires I drove a ute around our block behind Dad on a dozer so he could see to doze a firebreak by the headlights. All the houses on the other side of the road were evacuated. Just as the wind changed and the fire crowned, I remember feeling the radiant heat of the fire on my face. We were probably 2km miles from the fire, it made me think.   

 

[tigericho]

From my limited/faded memory, There was a series of Fires all at the same time. I think that Mt Macedon was burning, and Adelaide Hills were ablaze too.
I recall the story from the adelaide Journo Murray Nicoll who actually broadcast, live to air as his own home burnt. I have just researched that and came accross these links on the MSN site, unfortunately I cannot open the video link, Software issues.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/firewatch/videos/1983/

Here is the extract.

http://www.abc.net.au/dimensions/dimensions_in_time/Transcripts/s729955.htm

MURRAY NICOLL (RADIO ARCHIVE): At the moment, I'm watching my house burn down. I'm sitting out on the road in front of my own house where I've lived for 13 or 14 years and it's going down in front of me. And the flames are in the roof and -- Oh, God damn it. It's just beyond belief -- my own house. And everything around it is black. There are fires burning all around me. All around me.
And the front section of my house is blazing. The roof has fallen in. My water tanks are useless. There is absolutely nothing I can do about it.