A Friday the 13th, 80 years ago was declared Victoria's "Black Friday" for the horrendous bushfires the state endured - so, what do we learn from our historic battles with nature?
At first light on Friday, the flames rear.
After weeks where rain's been little more than an unfulfilled promise, the surrounding bush for which the area's so known is parched. Grass that crackles underfoot; the boughs of non-native trees, withered and crisp. As temperatures push past 40C, the danger approaches westside. Aggravated by a “strong nor-west gale”.
It's January 25th, 1952: recorded as Queanbeyan's “Black Friday”, when the NSW country town was “nearly destroyed” by fire.
A time of timber buildings as the norm, few sealed roads and a patchy water supply – in spite of a river through its heart.
With one blaze put down, another springing up on the eastern side of the watercourse. Centrally too, behind the main street itself. Nine separate instances in all over a period of eight hours.
Smoke intensifying, closing places of work and leisure. Kids sent home from school; pets and livestock rounded up.
Local fire-fighting units bolstered by business and home-owners, personnel from down the road at HMAS Harman and military cadets out at Duntroon.
The nerve-centre of operations, the manual telephone exchange, fielding “nearly five thousand urgent calls”.
On top of it all, hot, bothered and exhausted residents having to deal with the pubs running dry, too.
[https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/104707231?searchTerm=queanbeyan%20bushfire&searchLimits=.]
Canberra isn't exempt; conflagrations swelling along its verges. Two of its most “exclusive suburbs” under threat.
The Mount Stromlo Observatory, first building constructed inside the declared 1911 borders of the capital Territory, encroached upon; its machine shop lost.
Near Narrabundah Road, a young farmhand making for the dam is overcome. His body won't be found for three weeks.
"Never had Canberra been in greater danger", pontificated the Minister for Home Affairs.
Over ensuing days, back south-east of Queanbeyan, a roaring front five miles wide. Yet another racing towards the forest-encrusted hamlet of Captains Flat. More than 200 of the trained and untrained eventually quelling the threat.
Four days on, it's the turn of the similarly rural Burra.
Houses, five railway bridges, machinery and vehicles, sheds and outbuildings, as many as 7,000 sheep and thousands of hectares, all bearing the brunt.
Old-timers recalling the event of eight years before. A wildfire taking hold at Woolcara Station, also in the direction of the Flat. An employee from nearby Carwoola, killed in an overturned fire truck.
Further afield, Victoria facing a million pounds of insurance claims for those afflicted by another natural peril of the same time. Only a handful of years since 71 died in that state in fires caused by the “extreme heat wave” of 1939 – a very black Friday the 13th of January.
Days after that, over 500 Canberra citizens rallied to deal with another fire that descended on them from the west (and watched on by author of War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells, in town to deliver a lecture on “violence in world affairs”).
As the summer of 1952 ends, it's declared “the worst bushfire season most people could remember”.
Of course, it wasn't the last.
In early 1979, Canberra's beset by a number of fires; “influenced by abnormally high fuel levels”, admits the Department of Territories and Local Government.
Some had been lit by children; at least four the work of arson. Black Mountain and Tuggeranong Homestead among the areas of heightened concern. If any were to “get away”, a burnt-out Queanbeyan the likelihood.
The "extremely vulnerable" Gundaroo and Sutton are heavily impacted. Two years later, the Sutton Fire Brigade produces a how-to manual - suitably bound in a red cover - for the edification of its many new city-centric residents.
The beginning of the 1984-'85 season looks dire. It turns out to be worse still.
Captains Flat again, one of the primary worries. Some 13,000 surrounding hectares destroyed. The high winds (>70kph) encourage the media to make comparisons to the strongest gust for the region, recorded a decade earlier on January 9 – at 121kph.
Come early March of '85, the addition of Canberra outbreaks. People stranded on Mount Majura, near the airport. Parting on two fronts – one towards Sutton, the other, south of Queanbeyan.
A state of emergency declared by councils ringing the Territory.
Huge swathes of the multi-million dollar Majura and Kowen pine plantations left smouldering. Numerous properties and stock lost. Even the naval base of Harman in the path as it sweeps closer to Googong Dam.
A 650-ha property out there, Wellsvale, threatened in 1952 with 1,000 sheep lost, on this occasion, destroyed.
Volunteer, Malcolm Allen of Burra, loses his life combating a fire near the Dam.
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The inherent natural dangers were long a known quantity, though attendance to it was a haphazard affair. It had taken almost 60 years for Queanbeyan to have anything resembling an actual Fire Brigade – and only after a conspicuous major blaze, right in the middle of the borough, in 1885.
Five years on, a “Bucket and Salvage Brigade” was added. Accepted volunteers totalled 37 (not all got to join the club), decked out in uniforms, with a tin shed for a Station - its purpose emblazoned upon its red door.
By 1892, they'd boast two fire engines: “Nil Desperandum” (“don't despair”) and “The Nugent” (named for Superintendent, James Nugent).
Fortunately, town fires weren't overly regular and so engines that would occasionally work and a faulty fire bell (it was inclined to fall on the ringer's head), added more to the inconvenience than the danger. It also accounted for why there was time to form a Brigade band (1902).
Following a 1903 outbreak in the area that would be given over for the national capital, the Limestone Plains Bush-fire Brigade was established at a Christmas Eve meeting. The first of its kind in the wider district, it was largely geared to self-preservation - although boundaries were defined, whoever arrived first or had property the nearest, was in charge.
It was 1926 before they were really tested. In the same year, Queanbeyan's “professional” firies faced their greatest challenge when the top floor of the Royal Hotel of 1850 caught alight. Notwithstanding the fact a new Fire Station had opened just down the way on Crawford Street in 1925, the damage was enough that a rebuild was required.
(A similar fate befell the Queanbeyan Leagues Club in 1972. It reappeared in its riverbank position in record time, having gone about its business for the duration over the road under a specially erected marquee.)
The next large-scale fire was just a year later. With the subsequent happenings thereafter, conferences aimed at prevention became increasingly regular. The ACT established a Bushfire Council and in 1977, the Queanbeyan City Bushfire Brigade was added to local firefighting resources.
After almost five decades with the only intervening event that of the mid-80's, it'd be the beginning of a new century before the area was subject to another.
Then came the Canberra firestorm of 2003.
Four deaths, 490 injuries, 470 homes damaged or destroyed. Close to 70% of its pastures, pine plantations, and nature parks severely impacted. This time, Mount Stromlo wouldn't make it.
The extent of the disaster deemed a result of lack of adequate preparedness for the “risk that exists as a consequence of the siting of the city in a bushland setting”.
Fourteen years later, February, 2017: an errant spark, again out in the area so prone to this problem, 3500ha at Carwoola burnt out and eight homes lost.
Now, with a horrendous beginning to the 2019-'20 season in terms of sheer scale, we watch, wait, remain on alert – and hope history doesn't repeat itself. SOURCES:
Withycombe, Town in Transition, 1985.
Scarlett, Queanbeyan – District & People, 1965.
Brown, A History of Canberra. 2014.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/98749227?searchTerm=queanbeyan%20bushfire&searchLimits= https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/13752120
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