Jackie Lewis began as a Ranger in 1924 with the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works (MMBW) and worked in the remote Upper Yarra water catchments beyond Warburton and Woods Point.
The legendary “Iron Man” of the bush enjoyed the solitary nature of his work. As a champion long-distance runner Jackie was selected for the 1926 Australian Olympic team, and few could keep up with him anyway.
Foresters and bushmen often reported that he seemed to just appear, on foot, out of nowhere at their camps.
“As I proceeded through the ash forest and rounded a bend, I was startled by a person on the downside of the road crouching over a black-fellow’s fire in the vast cavity of a hollow log. This was Jackie Lewis – patrolman for the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works whose duties required him to inspect the catchments to ensure trespass did not occur. This log was Lewis’ first camp after a walk up from Marysville and he had similar bivouacs scattered throughout the watershed. He was a legend for the distances he could walk. The story was told of how one evening in Warburton he had a party with two tourists. The tourists drove off next day to Moe and up into the mountains to Walhalla. At the hotel in Walhalla, they met a man at the bar who bore a strong resemblance to their friend of the previous night – Lewis. When asked, he astounded them by proving he was the same man – having walked from Warburton up the Yarra Valley, over the Baw Baw Plateau and across the Thomson Valley to Walhalla to surprise (and astound) his friends of the night before.” – Jim McKinty, Forest Assessor, 1937-38.
Jackie fought his first bushfire in 1910 and lost an eye when a blazing tree fell near him during the 1939 fires.
Trapped with a group of fifty men in the 1942 bushfires, he threatened to use his axe on anyone who tried to dash through the flames in the hope of reaching safety. They stayed – and survived.
But it was Jackie’s intrepid, solo, five-week trek in April 1931 through some of Victoria’s densest forest in search of the missing aircraft Southern Cloud, that earned him hero status.
On the way back he fell down a 12-metre precipice and had no choice but put three stitches in a gaping leg wound himself. It’s said he stayed awake all night fending off howling dingoes before dragging himself for hours the next day to the road. But he was back at work in a matter of days.
Searching for people hopelessly lost in dense bush was all part of the MMBW’s service to the community and it’s said that Lewis rescued over 70.
Jackie wrote about his adventures in an article “My Job in the Big Bush” for the Melbourne Herald in January 1933.
Jackie never carried a compass himself and when once called upon to help find a party of tourists lost near Mt Donna Buang, he told police exactly where they would be even before they set out.
In his spare time during winter, Jackie coached the Warburton football team or went skiing.
But sadly, Jackie Lewis died of a heart attack in 1956, aged 62, before he could achieve his retirement ambition… a book based on his diaries in which he noted every trip, and especially the wildflowers of the area, on which he had become an authority.
Jackie, who was a naturalised Greek, died a few days after his brother, and was buried with him at Bundaberg in Queensland.
Later in 1963, the Warburton Advancement League erected memorial gates at the main entrance to the Camping Park at Warburton in his memory. He is also acknowledged on a set of murals next to the Warburton Water Wheel.
http://adb.anu.edu.au/essay/20
Photo from “Warburton Ways” by Earle Parkinson, 1984.
Victoria’s Forests & Bushfire Heritage 