Like all our friends in the surrounding districts, we are hoping for rain to relieve the extreme anxiety that is the lot of everyone just now. Bush fires and drought go together.

Last Sunday was a dreadful day here, and but for the early burning in November, one does not like to contemplate what might have happened. Everyone in Walhalla realised the dreadful time their friends farther out in the bush were experiencing.

All hands went to the relief of the Chatfield family (Maidentown) on Sunday afternoon, and later had to go to the aid of the Fletcher family (on the opposite range), as the fires came up from the Thomson River side.

What an awe-inspiring site it was later? As far as one could see, the sky in all directions threw a glare similar to that of fire, and the sun was like a huge blood spot. That’s how it looked to us here. Perhaps it was the same elsewhere.

... Never in Walhalla’s history has Stringer’s Creek been so dry as now.

[NSA, 13/1/39]