Name: Basil Barnard

Age: 86
Occupation during 1939: Mill-worker at Feiglin’s No. 2 Mill in the Acheron Way.
Age at time of fire: 22
Location of interview: Warburton

“There was a roar, like a high wind in the distance, and Snowy Vennell said "There’s a bloody big fire over there”, and anyhow, we just worked on."

I was 22 in 1939 and I was living at Feiglin’s No. 2 mill on the Acheron Way which looked over the Black Spur. I was working on top of the mountain ridge near the Poley Range. The ’39 fires started at Toolangi, and on the Sunday there were two forest commission workers, Barling and Demby who were burned to death. On the Tuesday morning, the fire got going again and this huge fire front came toward us from Healesville - and that was the day we were burned out.

It came through the Acheron Way on Tuesday morning and we were still camped in our mill huts after a long day’s work the day before - we worked a 44 hour week back then - and we didn’t know it was coming you see, we were 13 mile out.

On that morning the mill whistle blew at about six, and we got up and we had our breakfast and all the workers met up. We had to start up the boiler to operate the mill and then walk about a mile and a half up a steep incline through the bush to the lowering-down gear.

When we got up there we could see big pools of smoke everywhere, columns of smoke with the sun shining redly through them. And we just kept walking up and started work. That was about a quarter past seven and then, about an hour later, we started being showered with burned leaves and twigs, and we heard a roar in the distance, out over Healesville way. There was a roar, like a high wind in the distance, and Snowy Vennell said “There’s a bloody big fire over there,” and anyhow, we just worked on.

"... and it looked like three big, you know the twisters in USA? It looked like three of them coming at us."

Well, Snowy and I worked right up ’til knock-off time which was five minutes past five, then we set to and we loaded these palings, they were in what we called books, stacked them on a special truck, fixed them down and then we lowered them down, and then I set off to go.

I was camped down at the mill. Snowy was camped up the top and as I set off down to the mill there’d been very nearly a shower which cleared the air a bit, and I’d just got down to the mill and the air cleared up, and it looked like three big, you know the twisters in the USA? It looked like three of them coming at us.

They were coming from the Narbethong end of the Acheron. That would have been east. They were coming from the east. Those twisters, you know those twisters? They looked like them, spiralling smoke all gathered into a big whirlwind, and they were coming towards the mill and there was a ridge that we called Kennedy’s Ridge, between us and the fire, and everyone panicked.

The engine driver said, “So and so this, I’m getting out”, and hopped on his motorbike and roared off, and a fellow in the mill, Allan Spencer, he had a big Buick six and he hopped into that and went and I was left there.

I started putting my blankets and stuff in the dug-out, and the dug-out at the mill had tufts all built in front of it, it had just been built actually.

"Well they had a hot time, the sparks were falling in through the top of the dug-out..."

Now there was a chap there called Bill Bromley, who was a digger from the First World War. He’d been in France at the age of 15 and was a very good man in the bush, a typical old digger.

We also had an old paling splitter there, a man called George Unger - it’s a funny story about him too. He used to own a pub, but he never drank. His wife ran off with somebody, and then he took to the whisky, and he used to go on a bender every now and again. He was about 70 and he said, “There ain’t going to be any fire”, and he wasn’t going to leave.

There was a car waiting for Bill Bromley, but he decided not to go so he could stay and look after George Unger. This meant I had a chance of getting out in the car so I said to Bill, “Oh, what will you do?” And he said, “Oh, I’d like to get out, I don’t trust that bloody dug-out but that silly old bastard (George Unger), he’s a stubborn man, I’d better stay and look after him”.

And that’s what he did, and I went out in the car. So we raced out of there in the car and came out the Warburton way, instead of going to Narbethong. We would have been doomed if we’d gone the other way.

So Unger, Bromley and Snowy, stayed at the mill. Jim Videll was the tractor driver, Paddy Healy, the sawyer; they all stayed in the dug-out. About seven of them I think.


"Bill Bromley told me he was running toward the dug-out and the fire was scorching his arms as he ran ..."

Well they had a hot time, the sparks were falling in through the top of the dug-out and they had to keep throwing water on the blankets covering the mouth of the dug-out as they kept catching alight. They also tried to save the mill.

They had a hose and water and were flinging it around, but all of a sudden the fire came up the gully, and Bill Bromley told me he was running toward the dug-out and the fire was scorching his arms as he ran and he had to rub his arms with his hands to put out the flames. They got into the dug-out, but only just. There were three huts at the mouth of the dug-out that burned to the ground as the flames roared up the traverse that led into the dug-out, and they had a very hot time – but they survived.

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Read more about tornadoes created by bushfires in the Aftermath Section

Read more about eucalyptus gas explosions as a result of bushfires in the Aftermath Section