Melbourne, Thursday 2 February 1939

[Mr. Gowans]: Is it only since 1920 that this policy of leaving the forest in its natural state has been in vogue?
Yes.

In your view you think it would be desirable for the Forestry Officers to exercise a more stringent control over millers?
Yes, but the condition the forests are now getting into, it does not matter what they do. When riding into the forest before the fire we rode through debris as high as the stirrups.

That is the natural debris?
I have heard the bark of a big tree will throw about half a hundredweight a year, and then there are ferns and other natural debris. If a fire got through that you could not get within a quarter of a mile of it.

Have you ever been facing a fire yourself?
Yes.

You have had the experience of having to get out of it?
Yes.

I understand you have some views as to the best way to get out of a fire?
I do not think any man should be burnt in a forest.

Tell the Commission something about your views?
In 1920, two of us were trapped and there was absolutely no escape for us. Years before I had heard an old man say that if you lit a fire about 30 yards across in front of you...

That is if the wind is coming from behind you?
I lit about 30 yards diagonally across, then dropped back 15 or 20 yards and lit another. I did that about 8 times. These fires could not get any heat and when the big fire came we rode in and saved our lives. I think any man in the bush can do this same thing. Our shirts caught on fire and it was hot, but we got out alive.

[The Commissioner]: You may not have succeeded on that Friday?
You could have.

It would depend on what start you had on the fire?
You would want about a quarter of an hour. We heard this fire roaring.

There is only one thing. We cannot understand why it is that when the Forests Commission found they could not keep fires out of the bush from year to year, they allowed our lives to be endangered, and did not seek to protect their own forests. During the fire there were 50 men at my house as near to death as they were to living.