Name: Jack Robinson

Age: 85
Occupation during 1939: Woodcutter working with his father in Barongarook when a fire swept over their house and took the lives of Jack’s four siblings.
Age at time of fire: 17
Location of interview: Colac

"When the fire started to get really fast, you couldn’t breathe. You had to lay down to get breath"

There was a fire burning well back for about a week, you could see the smoke going up. We never took no notice of it. About a week burning before it started. Around us the whole bush was alight. When the fire started to get really fast, you couldn’t breathe. You had to lay down to get breath. We never even thought the fire would come through like it did because the smoke and fires had been around for so long.

But boy, on the day of the fires when the smoke started, she really went up. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was like being in hell, the fire was that hot. Blood red, the sun was blood red. As the fire got nearer to the house, my father, John Robinson, told us all to get inside because we were being hit by burning bark that was flying through the air.

"It was like being in hell, the fire was that hot. Blood red, the sun was blood red. I’ve never seen anything like it."

Then the house caught fire and he told us to get outside and lie down on this patch of grass and we covered ourselves with old potato bags. As you lay still, to breathe, the fire went over you and after about 10 minutes the whole blast was over. The house and all went; we just had a patch of ground like that carpet there to lay on. We had no chance of getting out.

"The house caught fire and we covered ourselves with old potato bags. As you lay still, to breathe, the fire went over you."

The ones that were lost, that died were Mary and Teresa and Paul and Vera. Gloria was a baby of seven months at the time and Tom and Jimmy and Mother and Father and me, that’s all that survived.

But the other kids that got lost, that died, they ran. My mother said to the kids, “Run for your lives” and ‘til her dying day she worried about saying that. She always felt bad about that, that she said, “Run for your lives”. If they’d all stayed together, they might have survived, she always felt. My mother put her body over Gloria, who was a baby at the time, and the baby went unconscious from the heat.

The four of them just bolted. There was one lot just outside the gate, and the other two were further up. They got a fair way up, too. I suppose they took fright with the fire and thought they should run. Fear, that’s the thing in life. Fear overcomes you.

"The other kids that got lost, that died - they ran. My mother said to the kids, “Run for your lives” and ‘til her dying day she worried about saying that."

We found them on the walk. We had to walk out of the place to get help from somewhere else, but we all found them, mother and father and I was with them. Yeah, a hard moment for the parents, but I had a good mother, she was a strong mother.

After the fire we went down the back of the house to a creek to get water. We got water there and then we walked six miles to this other place. The place belonged to people called Neales. Well, we lived there for a while.

We had to leave the young ones there because we couldn’t carry them out. Our feet were all burned from the fire and we could barely walk. They just lay there until early in the morning, then we went up there on a truck and picked them up to take them in to the morgue. I didn’t go. Father went with these people called Neales, who we were staying with.

"We had to leave the young ones there because we couldn’t carry them out. Our feet were all burned from the fire and we could barely walk."

The next thing we did was go to the cemetery to bury them. The school the kids had been going to got some money together and paid for their coffins and the gravestone. And people in Barongarook got us this house to rent until we could build another one.

We got some money off the government to build the new house. Father just got ahead and started to build that house, a brick house – made all the bricks himself. We only had a corrugated-iron house before, but the new house was a cement and brick house. And mother got him to put four windows in the front of the house for the kids - one for each of them.

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Read more about the Robinson family tragedy in the Newspaper section