Remembering the Ash Wednesday fires 40 years on

Four decades ago yesterday, Australia confronted what was its deadliest bushfire disaster to date, claiming 75 lives, injuring scores more and destroying almost 3000 homes.

On the morning of February 16, 1983, Heather Smith noticed a strange cloud looming above her Deans Marsh property in Victoria’s south-west.

She was doing her usual tasks, preparing cattle for market and looking after her young son Heath – but something felt wrong.

A woman stands amid farmland.
As the Ash Wednesday bushfire ripped through their Deans Marsh property, Heather Smith sheltered with her three-year-old son in the dam. (ABC News: Rachel Clayton)

“It was stinking hot and very windy,” the mother-of-four recalls.

“There was a really strange cloud formation from the north, it was just like a big fan of cloud, I’ve never seen it before.”

But it wasn’t until 2.50pm that things started to go wrong.

The fire siren began to blare. Then the phone rang. 

A bushfire was headed right for Heather’s farm.

She tried to call her husband, Max, who was working on a cattle property nearby, but she couldn’t reach him.

With the fire raging up the road, she grabbed her three-year-old son, and headed for the dam. 

The sun behind smoke.
Before the fire ripped across Heather Smith’s property, an unusual cloud appeared in the sky above her house. (Supplied: Peter Savage)
A family playing backyard cricket.
After trying to call her husband, Heather – pictured here on her farm with her family – grabbed her three-year-old and took refuge in the dam. (Supplied: Heather Smith)
An overhead view of farmland.
An overhead shot of Heather’s farm in the aftermath of the crisis shows blackened fields. (Supplied: Heather Smith)
One of the Ash Wednesday bushfires at a beach.
After ripping through Deans Marsh, the fire moved towards the coast, reaching Spout Creek. (Supplied: K Cecil / Anglesea & District Historical Society)
The ruins of a building at the small town of Aireys Inlet.
Despite the devastation, wry humour persisted in Aireys Inlet, as the community confronted the herculean task of rebuilding.(Supplied: K Cecil / Anglesea & District Historical Society)

While low after 10 months of drought and heat, it would provide the safe haven for Heather and her son as fire swept over their property.

“We … played games in the water while watching the fire roar up,” she recalls.

“I was frightened, but … we just sort of made a game of it and watched – that’s all we could do.”

For the next two hours, Heather tried to keep her son entertained in the muddy water, while the fire burned just 100 metres away.

It then moved past her farm and into nearby forest, where it would go on to burn all the way through the Otway Ranges to the coast.

“I saw it hit the bush and it just exploded and I thought, ‘There’s no hope now’,” she says.

But Heather’s is a story of survival amongst the carnage of Ash Wednesday.

The first fire began in South Australia’s Clare Valley, followed by fires in the Adelaide Hills, and the state’s south-east. 

By the evening, farmland and forests in Victoria were alight and firefighters were battling 14 major fires across both states.

Over a 24-hour period, more than 180 fires were burning, tearing through 400,000 hectares of land, an area four times the size of metropolitan Melbourne.

‘The tone of the fire changed’

In the north-eastern Adelaide suburb of Tea Tree Gully, Rob Sandford was home for lunch when the fire siren went off.

The 19-year-old volunteer, who had only joined the Country Fire Service (CFS) the previous year, soon found himself in the nearby Anstey Hill Recreation Park, fighting what he thought was the main fire front.

A man in CFS uniform inspects firefighting equipment.
Rob Sandford, pictured here inspecting fire hoses at the Tea Tree Gully CFS brigade, was only 19 when he confronted the Ash Wednesday flames. (ABC News: Eric Tlozek)

“It was quite surreal,” Rob says.

“We were actually fighting the fire and thought we were doing a really good job, but our crew leader said, ‘We need to go right now’.

“The fire had actually come around behind us … so we had to [hop] back onto the truck and … we actually had to drive through the fire to get out.

“That was my first experience of driving through fire. 

“It’s as scary as people say it is.”

Rob’s older brother Jim, a volunteer firefighter with 16 years of experience, was with another crew.

A man in CFS uniform next to a fire truck.
Like his brother Rob, Jim Sandford was called to Anstey Hill. (ABC News: Eric Tlozek)

“We were there for probably half an hour and all of a sudden the tone of the fire changed,” he says.

“It went from a crackling to a roaring in an instant and we thought ‘we’d better get out of there really quick’, which is what we did.

“[Then] the fire literally exploded out of the park.

“It sounded like a freight train coming up and that lasted for about five minutes as we lay on the ground, on the gravel road and that was pretty much the only protection we had.”

Multiple fires raged throughout the Adelaide Hills, killing 14.

News reporter Murray Nicoll delivered a harrowing live cross on local radio, as he watched his house burn to the ground. 

“The air is white with heat and smoke and it’s red and there are women crying and there are children here and we are in trouble,” he said.

‘A day out of hell’

As the inferno in the Adelaide Hills intensified, a fire began on a farm near Greenways, in South Australia’s south-east.

Geoff Robinson was the fire control officer at Lucindale, the small farming centre nearby, and he could tell by the heat and wind it “was going to be a real bad day”.

A man wearing a CFS hat sits at the wheel of a car.
Geoff Robinson remembers the wind change that turned a farm fire into an inferno with a 15-kilometre front. (ABC News: Bec Whetham)

The then 32-year-old had dispatched crews to the fire before going out himself to inspect the flank of the blaze.

But then the wind changed.

“Instead of fighting a flank … it turned into a 15-kilometre front which came directly over the top of us,” he says.

A water channel surrounded by trees.
The bridge where Geoff battled the blaze near Greenways and Lucindale. (ABC News: Bec Whetham)

“I was luckily with another group of other people that were on the bridge and we had some protection when it went over.

“But it was that hot and that fierce that even the sheep manure was alight and just firing through like red-hot ashes.”

But three others fighting the fire weren’t so lucky, which was devastating for Geoff and his team.

Local deputy CFS supervisor Brian Nosworthy, CFS volunteer Andrew Lemke and truck driver P.J. O’Leary died fighting the flames.

The inferno in the south-east was every bit as lethal as what was happening in the Adelaide Hills, accounting for half the 28 deaths in South Australia.

An historic photo from the time of the Ash Wednesday bushfire crisis.
Among the most acutely harrowing tragedies was the death of a mother and her four children. (Supplied: Peter Savage)
An historic photo from the time of the Ash Wednesday bushfire crisis.
Ash Wednesday claimed 75 lives across two states including 28 in SA. Half of those were in the state’s south-east. (Supplied: Peter Savage)
A rural property on Ash Wednesday.
Many of those who lived through the day vividly recall the red and smoky sky. (Supplied: Peter Savage)
A newspaper headline from the time of the Ash Wednesday bushfires.
Newspapers from the time not only reflected the scale of the disaster, but also captured the mood of the aftermath. (ABC News)
A railyard during Ash Wednesday.
Like others who lived through Ash Wednesday, Geoff Robinson remembers the heat and wind as the first signs that something was wrong. (Supplied: Peter Savage)
A man stands on a rural road surrounded by trees.
Now aged 72, Geoff was the fire control officer at Lucindale on Ash Wednesday. (ABC News: Bec Whetham)
The aftermath of the Ash Wednesday bushfire that ripped through South Australia's south-east.
Sites like this one – a home that was totally destroyed – were all too common in the aftermath of the fires. (ABC News: Bec Whetham)

“If we had of been aware that the wind was changing … we could have got all the people out,” Geoff says.

“This day was just a day out of hell.”

About 100 kilometres away, in Mount Gambier, 10-year-old Talie Teakle first noticed there was something wrong when she was riding her bike home from school.

A woman gazes into the distance.
Talie Teakle was 10 years old at the time of the Ash Wednesday fire crisis. (ABC News: Bec Whetham)

“The sky itself wasn’t your typical, straight-out-of-school kind of sunshine,” she remembers.

“It looked like night-time, and it was kind of early afternoon.”

By the time she got home, the heavens had turned black from smoke and the nearby farming town of Tarpeena – where Talie’s grandmother lived – was under threat.

“When we got to Nanna’s house, the thing I remember most … was everyone wetting towels and lining the doorframes and the windows,” she says.

An old photo of a sister, brother and grandmother.
Talie pictured here with her brother and grandmother. (Supplied: Talie Teakle)
A woman stands in front of a house.
On Ash Wednesday, Talie headed to the home of her grandmother, who was refusing to leave. (ABC News: Bec Whetham)

Four decades on, the embers of memory continue to smoulder.

The experience of Ash Wednesday and its aftermath – which included helping farmers deal with charred animal carcasses – left Talie traumatised.

An historic photo from the time of the Ash Wednesday bushfire crisis.
One of Talie’s enduring memories from the time of the fire is the awful impact it had on livestock. (Supplied: Peter Savage)

“Memories are all full of smells, and I’ll never forget the smells of those burning, you know, rotten bodies,” Talie says.

Her grandmother’s home withstood the conflagration that ripped through Tarpeena and its pine plantation, but 21 other local properties were reduced to ash and rubble.

‘Sheer panic’

For Graham Simpson, who had only been made captain of the Cockatoo Country Fire Authority (CFA) brigade in Victoria’s Dandenong Ranges three months earlier, Ash Wednesday was a literal trial by fire.

The fire in his community, which would claim six lives, began about 7.30pm, the last major blaze to start on Ash Wednesday.

A man holds a firefighting helmet.
Graham was the captain of the Cockatoo CFA brigade at the time of the Ash Wednesday fire in the Dandenong Ranges. (ABC News: Peter Drought)

Graham went out to assess this new blaze while residents rushed to escape.

“On the night, people just didn’t know what to do. It was sheer panic,” he says.

Many people, including Graham’s wife and two children, were going to the local kindergarten to shelter.

The building is now an Ash Wednesday museum and bushfire education centre.

“They came in and sheltered in here along with a couple of hundred other people with their dogs and cats and goats, pets,” he recalls.

A man inspects a tribute to the Ash Wednesday bushfire victims.
Forty years on, Graham inspects a memorial to the victims of the various Ash Wednesday fires. (ABC News: Peter Drought)
The Ash Wednesday Bushfire Education Centre at Cockatoo.
The town’s former kindergarten is now an Ash Wednesday museum and bushfire education centre. (ABC News: Peter Drought)
A twisted, melted metal cross.
This melted, twisted metal cross inside the centre is a reminder of the horrific impact of the fires. (ABC News: Peter Drought)
Princess Diana meets Country Fire Authority firefighters.
Princess Diana visited Cockatoo during a royal tour of Australia in 1983, meeting with local CFA firefighters who had defended the town. (ABC News: Peter Drought)
Emerald Road in Victoria amid the Ash Wednesday fire crisis.
This photo of a street amid the crisis reflects the panic and chaos of February 16, 1983. (Supplied: Country Fire Authority)
Burnt out cars and other debris in the Dandenongs in the aftermath of the Ash Wednesday fire.
The fires left total destruction in their wake, ripping through buildings and vehicles. (Supplied: Country Fire Authority)
A heat-damaged road sign at a roundabout in Cockatoo in Victoria.
A damaged road sign at Cockatoo reflects the intensity of the heat. (Supplied: Country Fire Authority)

The other crews from the district, including six men on Cockatoo’s tanker, were already fighting a raging fire at Upper Beaconsfield, a blaze that claimed 21 of the 47 lives lost in Victoria – the worst toll of Ash Wednesday.

It meant the remaining volunteers at Cockatoo fought the fire alone with just their small truck, the brigade’s pleas for help on the radio going unanswered.

“No-one could get in – [there was only] one channel – no-one could talk,” Graham says.

“I was asking for help.

“But no-one could hear me because someone else would come in and talk over the top of me.”

‘Our ancestors knew where to burn’

Peek Whurrong elder Rob Lowe faced a nervous wait as fires burned east of Warnambool, with his teenage daughter returning from Ballarat on a bus.

Indigenous elder Uncle Rob Lowe.
Indigenous elder Uncle Rob Lowe and his wife were waiting at the shop in the small town of Purnim on Ash Wednesday. (ABC News: Kyra Gillespie)

“There was plenty of smoke around and we knew there was a big fire in the distance,” he says.

He and his wife were waiting at the shop in the small town of Purnim, near the Framlingham Aboriginal Mission where he had grown up.

While the bus was diverted as fires burnt along the banks of the nearby Hopkins River, it eventually made it through.

“It was a big relief. We couldn’t get out of the car quick enough to give her a big hug,” Uncle Rob says.

A sign bearing the words 'Framlingham Aboriginal Trust'.
Rob grew up at the Framlingham Aboriginal Mission near Purnip. (ABC News: Kyra Gillespie)
A man walks through thick grass.
A recent visit to surrounding country brought forth memories of Ash Wednesday. (ABC News: Kyra Gillespie)
Luxuriant vegetation in western Victoria.
Vegetation in the area has well and truly recovered over the past 40 years. (ABC News: Kyra Gillespie)

He remembers his parents and relatives employing Indigenous controlled burning around the mission, using wet hessian bags to stop the fire getting out of control.

Uncle Rob fears the historic area is at risk of being lost to another fire, because the traditional burning practices his family used have not been implemented in the area for many years.

A man kneels in grassland.
Rob Lowe inspects grassland 40 years on from the Ash Wednesday fire. (ABC News: Kyra Gillespie)

“There’s always a time and a season to do it,” Uncle Rob says.

“We were told to do it when all the plants are dormant. Our ancestors knew when to burn.

A man's hand as he leans over to inspect grassland.
Rob says there’s “a time and a season” for traditional fire practices. (ABC News: Kyra Gillespie)

“It’s sad to know it’s not still happening because I think we as Indigenous people lost control.

“We’re losing a part of our culture that’s been taught to us by our elders.”

Indigenous cultural fire management is increasingly being recognised and supported by governments around Australia, and is being reintroduced in some areas.

Some experts want to see an increase in controlled, or prescribed, burning to prevent a repeat of Ash Wednesday.

“The one area we are still lacking in is the prevention on the broad scale in the bush across Victoria, [and] a third of Victoria is bush,” says fire management consultant Ewan Waller, who was the Chief Fire Officer for the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment during the Black Saturday fires in 2009.

“That means we have to then manage that bush, actively manage it, and that means controlling the fuel build-up [with controlled burns].”

Fire management expert Ewan Waller standing in open country.
Fire management expert Ewan Waller was the chief fire officer for the Victoria’s environment department during the Black Saturday fires. (ABC News: Natasha Schapova)
A commemorative brick in tribute to the victims of the Ash Wednesday fires.
Commemorative bricks at Cockatoo serve both as a reminder of the fire and as a tribute to the survivors and victims. (ABC News: Peter Drought)
A commemorative brick in tribute to those who fought the Ash Wednesday bushfires.
While the fires themselves wreaked deadly havoc, communities banded together to rebuild. (ABC News: Peter Drought)

The practice remains contentious because of fears that fires may get out of control, emit damaging smoke or harm ecosystems.

Victorian authorities, for example, have responded to calls for more burning with a targeted approach that includes other forms of fuel reduction, such as mechanical slashing and clearing.

But Ewan fears another disaster is only a matter of time.

“It’s right on the cards as we go into El Niño, for example, into a dry period,” he says.

“There’s no reason why we won’t go into another bad summer and have large scale fires again – there’s nothing preventing it, really.

“We are very, very vulnerable to another Ash Wednesday, Black Saturday fire.”

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