This Wednesday, 18 March at 3:00 pm, marks 135 years since the first official meeting of the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works (MMBW) in 1891.

The idea of the MMBW was inspired by a similar body established in London 35 years earlier.

Water-borne diseases were killers in all major cities throughout the nineteenth century. There was shocking news about the outbreak of cholera in Britain in the late 1840s.

Such diseases were caused by a lack of clean drinking water, together with unhygienic wastewater and sewage disposal.

From its early establishment in 1836, Melbourne drew its water supply direct from the Yarra River. The Melbourne Town Council, which was established in 1842, took formal responsibility for water supply and sewerage.

But Melbourne grew rapidly after the 1851 gold rush and soon its water supplies became hazardous to public health.

The lack of sewerage was the most urgent need, but water supply was the pressing function due to Melbourne’s high per capital water usage.

All the night soil, trade waste, as well as waste from kitchens and homes was just thrown into open channels in the street and it simply flowed wherever gravity took it… mostly back into the Yarra. The problem got so bad that some British journalists unkindly described the City as “Smellbourne”.

In 1853 the colonial government established the Commissioners of Sewers & Water Supply to take control of water supply functions. The Commissioners built the Yan Yean water supply but resisted building the more difficult and costly sewers.

On 12 December 1859, the Board of Commissioners of Sewerage and Water Supply was dissolved and its powers and property vested in the Board of Lands and Works. Operationally, this responsibility was exercised by a branch of the Public Works Department known as the Melbourne Sewerage and Water Supply Department.

The new department initiated the expansion of the Yan Yean system north of the Great Dividing Range in the 1880s, harnessing the waters of Wallaby Creek and Silver Creek. The department was also responsible for building the Watts River Scheme later to be known as the Maroondah System commissioned in 1891.

Meanwhile in the background from the mid-1860s, Edmund Gerald FitzGibbon, as the influential Town Clerk for the City of Melbourne, had been negotiating with governments and suburban councils to form a single body to build a sewerage scheme and control water supply. But the suburban councils resisted until he helped to obtain for them the most favourable terms possible.

In 1888 there was a Royal Commission into the Sanitary Health of Melbourne and one of its key recommendations of the was the formation the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works. Undoubtedly, FitzGibbon played a major and influential role in the Commission’s proceedings.

The subsequent 1890 legislation established a Board of 39 unpaid Commissioners, all drawn from Melbourne and Metropolitan Councils, and Fitzgibbon was elected the MMBW’s first full-time Chairman.

The MMBW took responsibility for the ownership of all Melbourne metropolitan waterworks, sewers, drains, property, land, buildings, plant, riverbeds and banks except for those vested in the Melbourne Harbour Trust Commissioners, Victorian Railways Commissioners and the City of Melbourne.

FitzGibbon remained in the role of Chairman for the next 14 years and raised the money to complete many major improvements to Melbourne’s sewage system and protection of its closed water catchments. There is an imposing statue in his honour in St Kilda Road near the Arts Centre.

It’s worth noting that over the following decades there were many professional disagreements between the MMBW and the Forests Commission over the management of forested water catchments, particularly the contentious matter of timber harvesting. But there always was, and still is, a very strong level of accord and cooperation at officer level on matters such as the protection of water, roads and tracks and fire protection.

Melbourne Water replaced the MMBW in a major restructure from 1991.

https://prov.vic.gov.au/archive/VA1007

https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/fitzgibbon-edmund-gerald-3530

Like lots of people, I enjoy the views from above – from an aeroplane, a helicopter, a hot air balloon, a bushfire lookout or the top of a tall building.

William Herbert Hansom was better known as “Airspy” and was a pioneering aerial photographer based in Melbourne during the period after WW1.

He was born in England in 1862 where his uncle, English architect Joseph Hansom, patented the now famous Hansom Cab in 1834.

William fled the monotony of wool-classing in Bradford and the stolid sanity of Victorian England at the age of 19 to sail on a return trip to Quebec in Canada, where he picked up the taste for adventure.

In the 1880s, after another voyage to Quebec, he left England again for Australia where his ship was shot at by rebels in the Suez Canal. He and the crew went ashore and chased them off.

On arrival in Australia, William reluctantly returned to wool-classing. He also contributed sporting articles to country newspapers and founded one of the first press agencies in Victoria. But his spare time was devoted to the newly evolving hobby of photography.

He took up aerial photography at the end of the war, in about 1919, when there was availability of ex-military pilots such as Harry Shaw, Hamilton Hervey and Allan Cobham who owned war-surplus aeroplanes and were looking for charter work. This possibly marked the beginning of commercial aerial photography in Victoria. Hansom later remarked –

Returned Air Force pilots were ideal for my work, because fighting had taught them to be very quick in their turns to keep the enemy off the tails of their machines. They were always able to approach my subject from exactly the right angle. Many club-trained pilots have attained remarkable skill too, and I frequently fly with them.

William Hamsom never learned to fly himself, but instead, focused on the intricacies of oblique photography[1] from the aircraft. His images were remarkably sharp and clear. He said in 1932 –

The secret of aerial photography is the study of light. I never take an aerial photograph unless I first go over the ground on foot so that I may study the light. For instance, I recently obtained a fine picture of the building of the Temperance and General Mutual Life Assurance Society building in Collin Street. For three weeks I took observations on foot and found that a satisfactory picture of the building could be obtained from the air only between 20 minutes to 12 o’clock and noon at that time of the year owing to the shadows cast by the spires of Scots Church and of the Independent Church.

There were a few accidents and close calls in the flimsy biplanes of the era.  

William Hansom as his nom de plume, Airspy, was one of the main contributors to the 1935 souvenir album – “Views of Marvellous Melbourne”, to mark the city’s centenary.

http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-3410010489

Meanwhile, Owen Jones was a 32-year-old graduate English forester trained at Oxford with practical experience in Ceylon. He also served as a pilot during WW1 with the Royal Flying Corp. He was appointed the inaugural Chairman of the Forests Commission in 1919 and would have no doubt been very aware of Hansom’s aerial photography work. It’s reported that William Hansom was retained by the State Government for aerial survey work, but it’s uncertain if the Forests Commission ever directly engaged Airspy.

Charles Daniel Pratt was born in May 1891 at Gnaio, a suburb of Wellington in New Zealand, and started his working life as a grocer.

He enlisted in the army at the beginning of WW1 and served in the Gallipoli campaign where he was wounded. He was promoted to rank of corporal and served as a motorcycle despatch rider in Egypt and Palestine. He later volunteered for the Royal Flying Corps in 1917 at Ismailia in Egypt with the 113 Squadron RAF. He was a natural pilot and was soon promoted to Lieutenant and began teaching others.

The Palestine campaign also marked the beginning of aerial photographic reconnaissance to map military movement and remote terrain. Pratt was an accomplished photographer and took many images of his time in the Middle East.

https://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/308567

At the end of the war, and with a small family inheritance from his father who had recently passed away, Pratt purchased four crated aeroplanes at the Army disposals at Heliopolis, including two De Havilland DH6s, an Avro 504K and a Sopwith Pup.

Charles then boarded the Steamer “Cooee” in Cairo for the voyage back to New Zealand with intentions of establishing an aviation business. However, a six-month dock strike saw him stranded in Melbourne in December 1919.

On Boxing Day 1919, there was  much public excitement for an aerial pageant run by the newly formed company, Larkin Sopwith Aviation, that operated an aerodrome at Glenhuntly. No doubt frustrated at being stuck on the ship, Charles Pratt persuaded the skipper to unload one of the boxes containing a DH6.

Charlie then assembled the plane with help of the ship’s crew and with much derring-do flew the flimsy aircraft straight off the end of Victoria Dock to land at the private Carey airfield at nearby Fishermen’s Bend.

He then took any passengers brave enough to experience the thrill of flight and to see Melbourne from the air.

The novelty of a newfangled aircraft on the beach was such a drawcard that Charles employed men on the weekends with whips to keep the crowd from swarming over the plane and keeping the runway clear. In the first month of flying, at the cut price of £1/1/ per flight, he made £600, which was sufficient to pay shipping freight and flying time.

But apparently, customs were not amused that the ship’s captain had unloaded one of the planes without permission and impounded the other three crates of aircraft, and Charlie had some difficulty later retrieving them from Garden Island in Sydney.

During his enforced stay in Melbourne, Pratt also flew around Port Phillip Bay.

The Geelong Aero and Gliding Club, which was first formed in 1914, was based at Belmont Common and is believed to be the oldest Aero club in Australia. Charles decided it was a good place to offer joy flights and flying lessons and leased the site in 1920 along with a residence.

Charles erected a large hangar and workshops and suggested to his three brothers that they join him where he taught Percy and Len to fly, while the third brother, Alf, operated a motorcycle courier business.

William Hansom from Airspy and Charles Pratt were a natural fit and soon teamed up together to capture and sell unique bird’s eye images. Their photos are mainly of Melbourne and rural Victoria, but also of the early building of Canberra and south to Tasmania. They did their own film processing and enlarging.

Some of Airspy’s images were also used by the popular Rose Postcards company.

But from 1927 to 1929, Charles and his brother, Len, flew in New Guinea transporting cargo for the Bulolo goldfields aeroplane service along with another famous aviator, Ray Parar. It’s uncertain who piloted William Hansom on his Airspy flights during this period.

In 1929, Len Pratt contracted malaria, so both he and Charles returned to the more moderate climate of Victoria.

Another company, Adastra Airways, which began in 1930 as a flying school at Mascot, focused on aerial photographic survey work in NSW.

Charles then moved his business to Essendon in 1938 and took over the operations of Matthews Aviation.

William Hansom died in November 1939, aged 77, leaving his widow and three children. But his company, Airspy, continued to survive long after, presumably with its ownership transferring to Charles Pratt. It’s possible that Charlie Pratt’s brother, Len, accompanied him in the aircraft to take the images and that cameras had become simpler to operate.

Flight Lieutenant John (Jack) Harrison was also associated with Airspy during this period. He became the RAAF’s first public relations photographer.

At the outbreak of WW2, Charles Pratt offered his services to the RAAF as a flying instructor, and he was given a six-month contract. But at the end of the agreement, he was notified that his machines and hangar were to be commandeered by the RAAF and offered only £1300 in compensation.

He was then aged about 50 and the Air Force showed little interest despite his impressive record as an instructor.

Charles was given a job by a private company to supervise maintenance of planes taken over by the Air Force, but that job also finished when the RAAF moved from Essendon to Benalla.

Short of money, Pratt then took a position as pilot with A.N.A. in 1942 and flew DC2s and DC3s through to his retirement as a commercial pilot in 1947.

Postwar, Charles continued with Airspy aerial photography as well as charter and joy flights from Essendon before moving to Moorabbin in 1955.

Charles Pratt was married but the couple had no children. He died in January 1968, aged 77, and his estate donated a large collection of magnificent photos to the State Library of Victoria.

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[1] Oblique aerial photography, as the name implies, involves taking landscape photos looking sideways from the aircraft, rather than vertical photos which are used for mapping purposes.

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https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/4495906

http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/147402/20150720-1015/March+2013.pdf

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/59472511

The 1980s will be remembered as the beginning of the heady era of “big money”. An era of conspicuous consumption perhaps best characterised by flamboyant and freewheeling entrepreneurs like Christopher Skase and Alan Bond, celebrities in private jets and luxury tax-dodgem cars, newfangled mobile phones, expensive consultants in sharp Zegna suits, and power dressing with big hair and shoulder pads.

Opportunity seemed to be everywhere for those with a “zeal to deal”. The uber-rich rubbed shoulders with politicians, lobbyists and fellow moguls at fancy restaurants, where million-dollar transactions were brokered over extravagant and boozy business lunches.

Then using loopholes in the tax system, the proceeds of these questionable mega-deals were often squirreled away in offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands. And in other corrupt “bottom of the harbour” scams, dodgy promoters stripped assets from companies to avoid any tax liabilities and then sold them through a complex web of shelf companies, which rendered them “sunk” and untraceable.

The flimsy justification for this blatant theft; of the total lack of social conscious; of the ruthless take-no-prisoners approach; of profligate bankers recklessly splashing money around; and of rampant insider-trading by some unscrupulous stockbrokers; dishonest tax dodging by accountants; hostile takeovers and overleveraged financial markets, was perhaps best articulated in the famous “Greed is Good” speech by Academy Award winning actor, Michael Douglas, as the fictional corporate villain, Gordon Gekko, in the 1987 film “Wall Street”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVxYOQS6ggk

Ironically, the release of the film coincided with a major global share market collapse, high unemployment with home loan interest rates hitting 17% and finally the “recession we had to have”.

Admittedly, the stupidly high interest rates were off a lower mortgage base, and house prices had been hovering around six times the average annual male earnings for yonks but then went “off-the-scale” when the Keating deregulated the banks in the mid-1980s.

It was sometimes said in the 1980s…

You can’t make your first million legally or morally…

Meanwhile, ABBA and the 1970s “Decade of Disco” was pushed to one side as loud Aussie pub-rock anthems from Midnight Oil, Aussie Crawl and Cold Chisel took centre stage on Mollie Meldrum’s iconic “Countdown”, screened each Sunday evening on ABC-TV.

Australia II, skippered by John Bertrand, ended 132 years of American dominance by winning the final of the America’s Cup yacht race in 1983 – prompting Prime Minister Bob Hawke to famously say –

Any boss who sacks anyone for not turning up today is a bum…

Ozi blockbuster movie classics such as Crocodile Dundee, Mad Max, Gallipoli and The Man from Snowy River premiered on the silver screen.

A vigorous and successful “No Dams” campaign in Tasmania reflected the growing shift in public opinion about the conservation of forests. It also led to the consolidation of the small and disparate green movement across Australia which arguably reached the zenith of its influence and power during the 1980s.

The 1980s… you get the picture…

So it was against this backdrop, and riding the new wave of economic, cultural and social change, that Labor governments swept to power in Victoria under John Cain (1982), and Canberra under Bob Hawke (1983). Both were keen to see their bold reform agendas quickly implemented after years in opposition.

The 1980s also heralded the “decade of deregulation”, with an unquestioning reverence for “small government”, “free markets”, along with the “globalisation of trade”, and the unbridled pursuit of “economic rationalism” in all its forms.

Economic rationalists argued very persuasively that almost every government enterprise, assets or service could be corporatised, outsourced, or sold, and better run on private sector lines. Profitability, cost savings and efficiency seemed to override any traditional notions of a “public service”. But the real owners of these valuable community assets and essential services – the public – didn’t get much of a say in the fire sale.

The blind faith placed in the new ideology by politicians and economists of all flavours represented a seismic shift. They certainly provided many benefits, like cheap imported clothing and home appliances, but also led to many unforeseen, and possibly unintended, long-term social and economic consequences.

But the disruptive and turbulent period of the 1980s will also be remembered as the beginning of massive public service restructures, downsizing, razor gangs, budget cutbacks, outsourcing, redundancy packages, uncertainty, employment contracts, new generic job classifications and pay bands, loss of automatic pay increments, flawed performance schemes, meaningless management jargon and snappy buzzwords.

It was an unstoppable and pervasive global crusade which took hold, I believe, in Margaret Thatcher’s England during the early 1980s, where amid the carnage, privatisation and cutbacks, the usually conservative British Civil Service slavishly adopted the principles developed for the corporate world of factories and production lines.

As public servants we were expected to cheer along fervently with them too, particularly if you wanted to keep your job and maybe climb the greasy pole a little bit higher. If you didn’t, that alone made you a subject of suspicion. There was the kind of moral grandstanding that even scientologists hadn’t yet mastered.

Many of the traditional values, customs and history of the Victorian Public Service were then swiftly trashed and hastily brushed aside in what appeared as an unseemly rush towards “corporatisation” and “managerialism”.

There wasn’t much public sympathy for the changes either. A common perception of a typical public servant was of a bloated, clock-watching and overpaid fat-cat, who had somehow faded to a boring shade of beige, sitting behind a big wooden desk in a cozy office full of dusty old files tied up with red tape, wearing a brown cardigan with leather elbow patches and textured buttons, possibly puffing on a smelly pipe, drinking endless cups of tea and doing the crossword puzzle, while shuffling paper and dreaming up new forms and processes to infuriate a long suffering public. It was sometimes unkindly suggested…

Sleep with a public servant… they need the exercise…

All departmental funding was centralised under new Labor Treasurer, Rob Jolly. The Forestry Fund, which had operated successfully since 1919, was taken away in the purge. The fund had enabled the Forests Commission to retain half its revenue from the sale of forest produce to invest back into things like roads or silviculture. It also enabled better long-term planning and a degree of independence from the fickle annual budget cycles.

Ongoing budget and staff cuts of 1.5% were inflicted each year by Treasury. The cuts were outlined by the Minister for Conservation, Forests and Lands (CFL), Joan Kirner, in the Department’s 1986 Corporate Strategy which euphemistically disguised them as “productivity gains”. In the same blurb one of the key objectives was –

a commitment to safe and satisfying work experiences and career structure…

But in the scramble for economic prosperity the State Government then flirted with Tricontinental, a wholly owned merchant bank subsidiary of the State Bank of Victoria, which subsequently collapsed in 1990, with losses over $1.5 billion.

Disturbingly, everything needed a “metric”… something that could be counted and measured, with native forests becoming “habitat hectares”. It was often stated that if it couldn’t be measured it couldn’t be managed… and that if it couldn’t be measured… it wouldn’t be funded.

The over-used lexicon of corporate gobbledygook seemed to rise and fall from favour quickly. Confusing, interchangeable and poorly defined terms like –  visions and missions, goals and objectives, outcomes and outputs, triple-bottom-line, strategies and tactics, all came to dominate the way we communicated amongst ourselves and between Head Office and the field.

We focused on widgets, SMART objectives, timelines, KPIs, business planning cycles and traffic light reporting, as well as ticking the box and reporting endlessly against these manufactured and sometimes artificial new measures.

I often grumbled to myself, that it was like reducing a magnificent and complex musical symphony to some trashy advertising jingle.

Meanwhile, the tempo of change accelerated, leaving little time or space to read, research, recover, reflect or renovate.

I was busier than a one-legged man in an arse kicking competition….

And while salaries were never very high, the traditional Public Service once offered “permanency” and a generous “defined-benefit” superannuation scheme. There was also government housing available to rent in most remote country locations to help attract and retain staff along with their families. But these also disappeared during the late 1980s and early 1990s, encouraging high staff turnover.

Opportunities for career progression were reduced in country locations with the staff cutbacks. Why would young people stay in rural Victoria ??

Meanwhile, the newly formed Department of Conservation, Forests and Lands coincided with an internal lack of unity about how State forests should best be managed.

The era of the “specialist” was replaced by one favouring the “generalist”. There was a widespread belief that anybody, even with little or no knowledge or experience of the subject matter, could be appointed as “managers”.

Senior management is supposed to be a tree full of wise owls hooting when the organisation heads into the wrong part of the forest…

But I was unconvinced that some of the owls even knew where the forest was…

We were no longer foresters or rangers working to protect the bush but became “custodians” and “stewards” of “complex forest ecosystems” and “managers of business units”. In fact, the word forester almost disappeared from use altogether.

More infuriating still, was that people and communities became “stakeholders”, “customers” and “clients”. We were instructed to manage up and not out.

While talking to someone and having a friendly chat out in the bush was replaced by “messaging”, “engagement”, “collaboration”, “achieving shared goals and experiences”, “knowledge mobilisation” and “conducting a narrative”. And short term results were more important than building long-term relationships in rural communities.

Spin-doctors and media advisers ran focus groups with sticky labels on white boards and took control of “managing the message” with their bland “talking points”. Although when I think about it a bit more deeply, it’s more likely that Human Resources (HR) was really running the show. And I won’t comment on the push for political correctness…

I accept that every profession has its own language, but corporate jargon and slick sounding buzzwords, rather than simple plain English, began to infiltrate the traditionally conservative Public Service from the 1980s.

The new management vocabulary was typically made up of long, complicated, and obscure words, or abbreviations, catchphrases, euphemisms, and acronyms.

These overblown “word salads” were mostly vacuous, ambiguous and meaningless. And there were hundreds of them too. Weasel words like KPI’s, paradigm, leverage, symbiotic, holistic, operational cadence, proactive, deliverable, empower, synergy, alignment, core-competencies, touch-base, risk-based approach, blue-sky thinking, value-add, and my personal favourite, think outside the envelope, just to name a few.

More tortuous still were the facilitated workshops indoctrinating us into becoming a “values-based” organisation… whatever that was? More meaningless waffle pulled out of the hat included random gibberish such as Integrity, Respect, Innovation, Inclusive, Equity, Collaboration, Accountable, Excellence, Quality, Client Focused, Transparency, Employer-of-Choice and World’s-Best-Practice. It’s a pity that the rhetoric and the reality of these noble goals didn’t ring quite true sometimes.

It was though the organisation had swallowed a thesaurus.

And the long-suffering public or “stakeholders” had no idea what we were talking about either.

I also observed with dismay most of the surviving senior and experienced forest managers being put on limited-tenure and unsecured executive employment contracts, so one of the core principles of the Public Service to remain apolitical and provide frank and fearless advice to government was significantly undermined in my view.

The noticeable rise of political advisers inside the Minister’s office had a big influence on how the department and the traditional Public Service ran. Often a clever, young bossy-boots, straight out of uni, and hoping for a career in politics, they seemed to know more about partisanship than policy and were more inclined to listen to vocal lobbyists and party insiders than experienced land and forest managers.

Advisors often appeared to operate in the shadows on the fringe, had enormous egos and took little accountability for their actions, and the ones I encountered were often doing messy quick–fix deals.

This worrying trend coincided with a progressive reduction in the numbers and seniority of forestry and parks staff, particularly those living in regional areas, together with a centralisation of services, resources, power and decision-making.

The State Government then mandated Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT), which saw most organisations and local councils lose the bulk of their experienced works crews. Many took redundancy packages to leave on Friday and do exactly the same work as contractors on Monday. This experience was good for some and difficult for others.

And as someone with a long interest in forest history, I believed most of the corporate memory, and timeless wisdom, was lost in the purge:

If you want a new idea, read an old book…

The loss of experienced and confident senior staff with local knowledge and community connections became very apparent. There was a noticeable increase in the level of procrastination, which was accompanied with a strong aversion to risk and concerns about legal challenges, which progressively replaced the previous Forests Commission’s “get-stuff-done” culture.

Being forced to look silly in staff meetings and wear one of Edward De Bono’s six thinking hats became the substitute for experience and decisiveness. You know the ones – White Hat: focuses on data, facts, and information. Yellow Hat: represents optimism, benefits, and positive outcomes. Black Hat: highlights caution, risks, and potential downsides. Red Hat: involves emotions, feelings, and intuition. Green Hat: sparks creativity, new ideas, and alternatives.

And it seemed to me that the Black Hat, with the fear of something going wrong and, more importantly, who was going to get the blame, exercised power of veto over many good ideas compared to the previous “how do we make this work” culture.

The Forests Commission wasn’t perfect but seemed to have a healthy appetite for risk which allowed new ideas to develop. It enabled (or maybe tolerated) “creative thinkers”, “square pegs in round holes”, or simply those who “coloured outside the lines” to flourish – think bushfire and aviation innovations over the decades.

Part of the response to risk avoidance was to add more processes, check-boxes, data collection, micromanaging, analysis paralysis, and time-wasting procedures to forest planning, without any significant or apparent gain in quality. I often said –

Be decisive…. right or wrong…. make a decision….

The road of life is paved with flat squirrels that couldn’t make a decision…

Consequently, forest management became increasingly complex, politicised, costly and time-consuming, while providing considerable opportunity for individuals and external interest groups to delay or block proposed actions.

The term “process gridlock” came into use.

Many forest and park employees, who had previously worked in the bush each day, were shifted into offices and behind computer screens to conduct environmental checks, attend tedious meetings and perform other administrative tasks.

Meetings are where minutes are kept and hours are wasted…

This led to an increase in the number of staff in offices at the expense of district field staff. It also extended the time needed to arrive at final management decisions.

The advent of desktop computers from the mid-1980s meant more desks were required as field staff became more sedentary and office-bound responding to emails.

For example, the tiny Beechworth District Forest Office had one desk that was shared between all the overseers (about 5 I’m told) who came in from the bush once a week to complete their paperwork and log dockets. With the progressive changes they all needed a desk in a much larger office.

And who knows what the future may hold for the function and integrity of the long-suffering public service with the unregulated adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Sorry… it’s a long post… it’s a bit tongue-in-cheek… and it’s a bit of a grizzle… although I’ve had some fun writing this too… and I hope some of it resonates with you…

In an Australian first, Bushfire Prevention Week was initiated by the Forests Commission in the wake of the disastrous 1926 bushfires.

Victoria’s State Governor, Lord Somers, the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, Sir Harold Luxton and the newly appointed Minister for Forests, William Beckett launched the innovative campaign with great flourish to 250 invited guests at Melbourne’s opulent Town Hall on Monday 13 January 1930.

Special church sermons had been held on the previous Sunday.

The packed program of gala events included lavish luncheon talks at posh city clubs, scholarly lectures broadcast on the wireless, together with daily articles in the Melbourne and country press about the need for fire prevention.

The Shell Petrol Company of Australia supplied 15,000 windshield stickers, the British Australasian Tobacco Company donated a large supply of stamp stickers, while many other companies drew attention to the campaign in their newspaper advertisements.

The Victorian Railways and many city firms displayed special fire posters, while Bryant and May posted messages on their limited-edition matchbox covers which are now highly prized by phillumenists (i.e., matchbox collectors).

The Postmaster General’s Department (PMG) franked postage stamps and letters with special bushfire slogans.

Canvas and enamel fire prevention signs were erected on most roads leading to State forest areas. While plainclothes police were secretly deployed to the bush to arrest potential arsonists.

Significantly, Australia’s very first aerial bushfire reconnaissance flight using RAAF Wapitis took off from Point Cook a few weeks later on 18 February 1930.

Letters to the Editor later appeared in many city and country newspapers extolling the virtues of Bushfire Prevention Week and urging for its continuation.

The Forests Commission in its 1929/30 Annual Report, under the title of “Propaganda”, noted with some triumph…

“One of the most gratifying features of the ”Week” was its low cost to the Government, the major part of the publicity material being donated by private firms.”

And so for the next 30 years until the 1960s, Bushfire Prevention Week continued unabated with the Forests Commission producing a series of coloured “Magic Lantern” slides which were manufactured by Alex Gunn and Sons in Collins Street Melbourne for screening by Val Morgan advertising at cinemas.

The slides famously introduced the menacing character, Willy Wildfire, warning motorists to be careful with matches.

Now known as Fire Action Week, it remains a key event in the annual calendar and is still going strong…

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/203104634

Uncontrolled bushfires had been burning from early October 1925 in many places such as Olinda and Sassafras in the Dandenong Ranges and at Healesville in the Yarra Valley.

The forests at Powelltown, Noojee, Toorongo Plateau and the Baw Baw Ranges were then swept by fire on 14 and 15 February 1926, killing stands of mature mountain ash and creating extensive areas of young regrowth.

The mountain forests of Eucalyptus regnans, E. delegatensis and E. nitens are very fire sensitive and were readily killed.

These tree species are also “obligate seeders” meaning they only regenerate from seed and not coppice or lignotubers. They take about 10-15 years to set seed again so are therefore very vulnerable to being killed by more bushfires in that period.

Significant bushfires again in 1932 and 1939 killed some of the young 1926 eucalypt regrowth before it was old enough to produce enough seed and the area was replaced by wattle, scrubland and bracken to create a long-term reforestation problem.

But other stands of 1926 regrowth miraculously survived both the 1932 and 1939 blazes.

The silvicultural knowledge of Victorian foresters was then put to the test. Considerable effort went into reforestation at Powelltown and the Toorongo Plateau near Noojee during the 1940s and 1950s.

A FCV nursery near Noojee in the Loch Valley, which had been growing pines, then switched to eucalypts.

It proved a costly exercise to reforest these areas. After site preparation they were hand sown at the rate of 4 oz of mountain ash seed per acre. Some 600 acres were broadcast sown in this manner in 1932. More than 200 lb of seed were collected that year from ash trees, growing in the same general locality, for future sowing.

New surveys of unproductive forest sites were carried out in 1969 to determine the extent of loss of productive sites. It was found that some 32,000 ha of prime mountain ash forest sites were unproductive, mainly as the result of repeated bushfires over the previous eighty years.

These were all within 150 km of Melbourne and a cost/ benefit analysis showed that reforestation investment was justified. Reforestation plans were submitted to the Australian Forestry Council.

Major reforestation works at Powelltown required the construction of an airstrip at Sumner Spur in 1970.

Reforestation was achieved by clearing the scrub using heavy machines, then burning the slash and either broadcast seeding, or planting with seedlings.

The program lapsed but was renewed in the late 1980s and early 1990s with funding from the Timber Industry Strategy.

Main Photo: E. delegatensis, Dowey Spur, Powelltown, Clear felled followed by aerial seeding. Frank May 1970, Colourised.

In the early part of last century, there was limited road access to the extensive mountain forests, particularly in the remote and uninhabited eastern ranges, so there was strong enthusiasm amongst Victorian foresters for aerial reconnaissance.

The first Chairman of the Forests Commission, Owen Jones, had been one of Britain’s pioneering aviators in the Royal Flying Corp during World War One. He fully understood that aircraft had three main advantages: speed, access and observation.

Experience has consistently shown that early detection and aggressive first attack are the keys to keeping bushfires small and gives the best chance for control.

Discussions took place with the Air Board as early as 1926 following the bushfires, and then over a period of years prior to 1929-30, with the view to commencing regular fire patrols using RAAF aircraft, but a lack of safe landing areas over the remote forest proved the main obstacle.

The first fire spotting aircraft in Australia was deployed on 18 February 1930 when a Westland Wapiti from RAAF No. 1 Squadron at Point Cook flew over the nearby Dandenong Ranges.

Communications were sent in Morse Code back to the RAAF base who then quickly passed information on to FCV fire controllers.

But poor communication systems with the ground hampered their effectiveness. It was not until the summer of 1939-40 that an aircraft was able to directly communicate by radio with the FCV District Office at Powelltown.

The use of RAAF aircraft was expanded after the Stretton Royal Commission into the 1939 bushfires.

By the summer of 1945-46, 114 flights were made with up to eight RAAF aircraft in the air on bad fire days. They operated from bases at Point Cook, Ballarat, East Sale and Bairnsdale, and reported 438 outbreaks.

The following year, RAAF Consolidated B-24 Liberators and Avro Lincoln Bombers were made available, supplemented by Avro Anson’s and DC-3 Dakotas.

A major risk to all air fire operations is reduced visibility due to dust, smoke, fog and even low cloud. It was reported on 22 March 1945, that visibility was reduced to zero and all RAAF reconnaissance aircraft were grounded with the result that a fire near Toolangi reached a considerable size before being detected.

However, by 1959-60 the use of chartered cheaper flights from private operators in light aircraft became more common and the last RAAF patrol took place in 1963-64.

By the 1982-83, fire season aerial reconnaissance flights were routine. Most fixed wing aircraft were hired by forest districts from local aero clubs using FCV observers and radio operators.

As the 1925/26 summer approached, the Government meteorologist, Mr Hunt, warned that temperatures over the ensuing weeks were expected to be higher than the previous year and much of the country to the north was already parched.

The Commission became keenly interested in the practical application of meteorology and believed that relative humidity was a prime factor affecting fire frequency and behaviour.

As a result, the Government Meteorological Bureau installed instruments to accurately record temperature, relative humidity and wind speed on several fire lookouts, commencing from Mount Drummer in far east Gippsland and extending west and north on other peaks across the mountains.

The Commission hoped to not only make better preparations for its firefighting staff but also to be able to broadcast public information about dangerous fire weather.

But it wasn’t until Alan McArthur’s groundbreaking work at Canberra in the late 1950s and the development of his fire models that some scientific understanding of bushfire behaviour was available to practicing foresters.

Considered in terms of loss of property and life, the Black Friday bushfires on 13 January 1939 were one of the worst disasters to have occurred in Australia, and certainly the worst bushfires up to that time.

The 1939 bushfires killed 71 people and burnt 2 million hectares, 69 sawmills, and obliterated several towns.

They eclipsed the earlier 1926 bushfires causing their memory to fade from view.

The subsequent 1939 Royal Commission conducted by Judge Leonard Stretton has been described as one of the most significant inquiries in the history of Victorian public administration. He also drew from the 1926 experience.

One of Stretton’s key recommendations was to create a single fire service for country Victoria.

The war years then intervened from September 1939, and arguably the legislative reforms recommended by Judge Stretton moved to the back burner.

Then later in the summer of 1943/44 there were more deadly bushfires where 51 people were killed, 700 injured, and 650 buildings were destroyed.

In particular, the loss of 13 lives at Yallourn on February 14, 1944, and the impact on the State’s electricity supplies when the critical brown coal fields caught alight, brought these bushfires into sharp focus.

There was justifiable public outcry at the lack of government action after similar events five years earlier in 1939.

The Premier, Sir Albert Dunstan, and Minister for Forests, Sir Albert Lind, who had both delayed legislative changes in Parliament, decided there was no alternative but to ask Judge Stretton to chair a second Royal Commission.

Stretton’s report returned to his earlier themes and once again highlighted the lack of cohesive firefighting ability outside the Melbourne area.

After nearly 6 months of debate and argy-bargy in State Parliament, legislation to establish the Country Fire Authority (CFA) was finally passed in two stages on 22 November and 6 December 1944.

On 19 December, the State Premier, Albert Dunstan, announced that Mr Alexander Mercer King of Ballarat was to be appointed Chairman of the CFA Board for the first year, along with 12 members. The Board of the new authority met for the first time shortly after on 3 January 1945.

On 2 April 1945, the Country Fire Authority Act came into effect, and all previous entities ceased to legally exist.

The Forests Commission held two seats on the new CFA Board with Herbert Duncan Galbraith (the man behind Stringers Knob firetower at Orbost) together with Joseph Firth. The FCV Chief Fire Officer, Alf Lawrence, was appointed later in 1946.

The Board then divided Victoria into 24 Regions and appointed 17 Regional Officers, but the organisation had very rocky first beginnings.

All the existing urban and rural brigades were invited to join the new CFA… most did… some reluctantly… but nobody seemed particularly happy with the new arrangements.

Some of the rural brigades were so incensed they proposed an alliance with the Forests Commission rather than ceding autonomy to the newly formed CFA.

Maybe to appease the rival factions, the new CFA Board initially appointed two Chief Officers, with Alexander McPherson representing the urban brigades and Charles Alfred Daw heading up the batting for the rural brigades.

McPherson retired at the end of June 1950, leaving Daw as the sole Chief Officer of the CFA.

In its 1944/45 Annual Report, which was at the time of the formation of the CFA, the Forests Commission noted- 

“The Commission is satisfied with its efforts in building up a virile organization of 768 brigades with approximately 35,000 members and over £100,000 worth of equipment, and it desires to record its great appreciation of the valuable services that have been given voluntarily, year after year, by the bush fire brigades in the preservation of the State forests. It is, therefore, with regret that our official connexion with this excellent organization has been concluded.”

The CFA then took responsibility for fire suppression on “Country Victoria” leaving the Forests Commission to focus on the public land estate such as State forest and National Parks which amounted to the remaining one third of the State.

The legislation also required that each country municipality appoint a ”Proper Officer” empowered to permit lighting of fires during the proclaimed summer period and to order removal of fire hazards.

So, in the end, Stretton’s 1939 grand vision was finally realised…

A major revision of both the Forests Act and Country Fire Authority Act in 1958 clearly enshrined the role of the two agencies and the Chief Fire Officers into complementary legislation.

More importantly, these events shaped and cemented Victoria’s deep-seated approaches towards bushfires outside Melbourne. Both the Forests Commission and the CFA adopted clear policies to detect and suppress all bushfires and became very focused and skilled at doing it.

Robert Murray and Kate White (1995). State of fire: a history of volunteer firefighting and the Country Fire Authority in Victoria. Hargreen Fitzroy, Vic.

The Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) was established under the Fire Brigades Act (1890) from fractious beginnings when Melbourne’s 56 existing fire brigades were forcibly disbanded and reformed under a single umbrella.

The Country Fire Brigades Board (CFBB) was founded by legislation at the same time as the MFB and was given power and responsibility over all fire brigades based more than 10 miles from Melbourne.

The CFBB already had a well-established command structure under Superintendent Lieutenant-Colonel Theophilus Smith Marshall, but the organisation was split into two very deeply divided and disparate camps – Urban Brigades and Rural Bushfire Brigades.

Urban Brigades were largely found in cities and larger towns with access to mains water like Ballarat, Geelong and Bendigo. They mostly trained for and responded to structural fires and had a strong emphasis on discipline, uniforms, polished brass, drills and marching… and don’t get me wrong… that’s a good thing…

These urban brigades mostly consisted of volunteers but there were a few full-time career firefighters at bigger locations.

But for the remainder of rural Victoria, local landowners formed Rural Bushfire Brigades, received little or no financial assistance from the CFBB or the State Government, and tended to operate spasmodically and independently from their urban counterparts. They were mostly self-funded through voluntary contributions, chook raffles, donations, levies and membership fees.

The first known Victorian rural fire brigade was formed after a public meeting at Kangaroo Ground in 1892. Other small settlements on the fringe of Melbourne like Warrandyte, Upwey and Belgrave formed fire brigades in response to fires in 1918 and 1923.

The principle of self-help that came to characterise volunteer fire fighting across Victoria was forged.

A loose association of rural Bush Fire Brigades began to emerge in about 1914 to represent the clusters of ruggedly independent rural landowners and neighbours who formed make-shift brigades that responded quickly to grass and scrub fires in their local farming communities.

Bush Fire Brigades had a very different culture, and also had little formal structure, training or equipment compared to urban brigades. However, these firefighters came together quickly when needed, were passionate, committed and effective volunteers.

And needless to say, there was rivalry and, in some cases, open hostility between these town and country outfits… but the rancour often came down to clashes of egos and differences of personalities.

In July 1926, following the summer bushfires, the Minister for Forests, Horace Richardson, who had experienced the bushfires firsthand at the Haunted Hills near Moe, chaired a conference to encourage rural fire brigades and the Forests Commission was charged with providing basic support, equipment and funds.

The Forests Commission then sought the co-operation of the CFBB as well as the Lands and Police Departments to encourage the formation and coordination of rural fire-fighting units.

An “Association of Bush Fire Brigades” was also formalised in 1926 with executive and administrative support provided by Morris Carver from the Forests Commission. There was already a separate Urban Fire Brigades Association.

Visits to all country districts were arranged and within a few years the number of volunteer brigades increased significantly. By 1928, more than 50 were in existence, by 1931, some 220 bush brigades had been organised, the number climbing to 320 by 1937 with around 13,000 volunteers. By the time of the formation of the CFA in 1945 there were 768 brigades with approximately 35,000 members and over £100,000 worth of equipment.

At the time, bush fire brigades had no legal status, no funding, no central organisation, and little equipment or training.

There was no substantial financial assistance to bush fire brigades from either the State Government or CFBB, but for those close to State forest, National Parks and Crown Land, the Forests Commission donated some equipment. Fire-beaters, rakes, slashers, axes, wire cutters and similar tools were standard items. A spirit of mutual self-help was engendered.

But the formation of rural bushfire brigades wasn’t universally welcomed. The Commission noted later in 1928 – 

It is unfortunate that in a few instances the formation of brigades was strongly opposed, grazing interests being strong and not in favour of any movement likely to interfere with their annual burn-off.

Late in 1933, the Bush Fire Brigades Act was passed which provided statutory powers and authority to approved officials of registered brigades. This was a major step forward and conferred considerable powers to the brigade captain along with statutory indemnity for brigade members in the event of damage due to the exercising of such powers in good faith.

Prior to the 1933 legislation, all rural Bush Fire Brigades operated without legal authority or protection. If private property were entered and back fires lit, or water taken for the purpose of extinguishing fires, members were potentially open to charges of trespass and damages.

This legislation helped to cement autonomy and gave security for small independent rural brigades. But until an insurance scheme was introduced in 1937 there was no compensation for members injured or killed in the course of their duties.

The 1933 Act also authorised the appointment of a  Bush Fire Brigades Committee of seven members, three nominated by the Forests Commission, one by the Country Fire Brigades Board, and the remaining three by local Bush Fire Brigades.

The Committee then registered brigades and determined the suitability of brigade captains and lieutenants to exercise new powers delegated to them under the Act.

The brigade captain was selected for qualities of leadership, knowledge of firefighting principles and tactics, and a thorough acquaintance with the district in which the brigade operated. The captain also needed to be available to attend fires whenever called upon.

The Act also established a Central Council of the Association, which included representatives of the Forests Commission, Lands Department, Police Department, Railways Department, State Rivers and Water Supply Commission, Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works (controlling the Melbourne water catchment area), Meteorological Bureau, Country Fire Brigades Board, Melbourne Volunteer Bush Fire Brigade, Pastoralists Association, Boy Scouts Association and the League of Youth. Membership of the Bush Fire Brigades Association was also open to registered brigades on payment of an affiliation fee of 7s 6d.

In 1937, the Chairman of the FCV, A. V. Galbraith, published an article about the FCV’s involvement with these early Brigades, which was stimulated by the impacts of the 1926 bushfires.

So, it was the 1926 bushfires and the support of the Forests Commission which was the main catalyst for change for Victoria’s early volunteer bushfire brigades, rather than the 1939 or 1944 fires, which eventually prompted the establishment of the CFA in 1945 (but that’s another story).

Its no accident that many rural fire brigades celebrate their centenary from 2026.

A. V. Galbraith (1937) The bush fire brigades movement in Victoria, Australia, Empire Forestry Journal, Vol. 16, No. 1

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kFqHA4_F5vzYxSjQAIgQ2Tl4sM4Kw5dI/view

Enrolment of 1000 men at Belgrave, The Age, Wednesday 17 February 1926.

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/155794109

The 1926 fires don’t feature in great artworks like those of Black Thursday in 1851 and Red Tuesday 1898, nor were they memorialised in monuments, literature or history.

There was no formal inquiry either. The Premier, John Allan, Australia’s first Country Party Premier, resisted calls by the Labor Opposition for a joint parliamentary committee.

But coronial inquests were quickly held, and verdicts of accidental death were entered.

Community attitudes to bushfire were characteristically relaxed. Farmers and graziers, especially in remote areas, routinely used fire to clear scrub or encourage new grass for stock, even when this endangered the adjoining State forest.

Before the formation of fire services, families in rural areas needed to work together to defend themselves, their homes, livelihoods, farms and communities against the bushfire menace. They had no choice. There were inevitably failures, as well as successes. But they were resilient and rebuilt their lives with strong community support.

The fledgling Forests Commission, established in 1919, had few resources to battle the 1926 blazes in these remote areas.

The Minister for Forests, Horace Richardson and a couple of the FCV Commissioners, William James Code and Alfred Vernon Galbraith, were on tour in Gippsland during early February 1926. They were making their way to Bairnsdale by road when they were nearly all toasted at the Haunted Hills near Moe.

Charles Herschell, photographer, filmmaker and owner of Herschell’s Films, a famous Melbourne production company during the 1930s, was with the party at the time and later used the FCV footage to make a short silent film to promote fundraising for bushfire victims.

Generous donations were made to the fund organised by the Lord Mayor, Sir William Brunton, for the relief of the survivors. The people of Victoria readily responded to an appeal for funds to reinstate the homeless, and approximately £190,000 was subscribed. This fund was supplemented with a grant of £100,000 from the State Cabinet.

Mr Charles Claus Gale, as Secretary to the Cabinet relief committee, and the Secretary of the Lord Mayor’s fund committee, Mr T. Forristal, were responsible for the administration and disbursement of the fund

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/223845607

On St Valentines Day, 14 February 1926, the bushfires already burning in the State’s forests joined up, fanned by gusty winds up to 60 miles per hour. Places like Warburton, Powelltown, Gilderoy, Gembrook, Noojee and Erica bore the brunt of the inferno in what later became known as Black Sunday.

An accurate and consistent tally of those killed remains elusive. Assessments vary between 30 and 60, but the official figure given by the state government’s relief fund in November 1926 put the toll at 30, although 31 is also commonly quoted.

The greatest single tragedy occurred at Worlley’s Mill, deep in the headwaters of the Bunyip catchment, about two miles south of Gilderoy.

The mill had grown into a sizable settlement with a boarding house and storeroom, seven cottages, twelve small huts and horse stables.

The only access was along a steep and narrow timber tramline running through the bush along Saxton Creek in the Little Yarra Valley

Sunday morning dawned hot with a rising northerly wind and by midday the smell of smoke was strong, with scorched leaves falling around the mill.

The sawmill residents were unaware that a major fire, driven by the strong winds, was moving up Mount Beenak, while another fire advanced along McCrae Creek near Gembrook to the west. The two fires then merged and swept along the ridge towards them at about 2 pm.

A desperate fight was made to save the mill and settlement, but it soon became apparent that it was hopeless. They split into separate groups.

Rather than try to flee, Mr Arthur Rowe, a winch driver, and his wife, Lillian, along with their 16-year-old son, Clarence, stayed at the mill and tried to build a makeshift firebreak.

Together with Mrs Elizabeth Duncan, who had only been at the mill for about a week and was helping Mrs Rowe to run the boarding house, the group of four then managed to make their way to a small creek containing about a foot or two of water. Mr Rowe made them lie down and began splashing them with water.

Even though they sheltered in the shallow creek until dusk they were still badly burned, and Mr Rowe was temporarily blinded.

The fire at the mill was closing on three sides and in desperation, Harry King and Arthur (Joe) Walker used their coats to shield their faces and dashed through the fire front. Badly burned and with their hair and eyebrows singed, they managed to reach the same small creek about five or six chains away where they lay for about three hours.

The other group of mill workers and their families, led by Lindsay King, attempted to escape to Beards Farm back along the wooden tramway towards Gilderoy, but their path was soon blocked by fallen trees and cut-off by flames, so they were forced to retreat. But they had nowhere to go and eleven bodies were later found within a radius of just 20 feet.

In the confusion, Mrs Duncan had become separated from her son, Richard, aged two years and seven months, who had been taken by Lindsay King leading the party trying to escape back on the tramway to Gilderoy.  This was the last time she saw her son alive.

When the fire had finally passed, all six survivors were exhausted and slept for a few hours before making their way to the Saxton’s house at Gilderoy next morning to raise the alarm.

Fourteen people died that manic Sunday afternoon at Worlley’s Mill including one woman and three children. Most were later buried at Wesburn.

Ten other sawmills near Gilderoy were destroyed, along with numerous homes and many miles of timber tramway.

A dozen horses perished at Powelltown as the women and children sheltered on the bowling green with the sprinklers going. All the houses were destroyed but the mill itself was saved. Many more mills surrounding Powelltown in the bush were destroyed.

The small settlement at “The Bump” railway tunnel was razed.

Further east, Noojee, founded in 1902, had grown into a bustling railway terminal supporting outlying farms and bush sawmills with stores, a post office, hairdresser, hotel, motor garage, railway station, a hydroelectric station, and community hall. The school had opened in 1922 after much local agitation. But every building in the town, including 45 homes, apart from the Methodist Church, hotel and motor garage were destroyed in the bushfires. Parts of the vital connecting railway and bridges were also lost. Newspapers speculated that it was unlikely that the township of Noojee would ever be rebuilt.

It was estimated that another 30 mills in the Warburton and Erica districts were also destroyed.

A cool change arrived late on Sunday evening which brought a little rain.

John Schauble (2019). Victoria’s Forgotten 1926 bushfires, Victorian Historical Journal. Vol 90 (2), December 2019, pp 301-317. https://www.historyvictoria.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/VICTORIAN-HISTORICAL-JOURNAL-December-2019.pdf

Peter Evans. From Central Highlands RFA reports. Pers Comm.

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/3735307/445964

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/3739040

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/244055584

Bushfires have undoubtedly always been a feature of Australian summers, with many devastating and uncontrolled blazes sweeping the forests and rural farmlands across the Colony of Victoria during the 1800s. The most notable ones being in 1851 and again in 1898 with bushfires that engulfed much of South Gippsland.

While lightning was a common cause, the Forests Commission’s 1925/26 annual report attributed nearly half the bushfires on State forest to careless graziers, sportsmen, settlers, licensees, arson, campers and tourists.

A century ago, in late October 1925, unseasonal bushfires broke out at Olinda and Sassafras in the Dandenong Ranges and at Healesville in the Yarra Valley.

Over the remaining summer period, serious bushfires continued to burn from January through to early March 1926.

The bushfires swept across about one million acres from Melbourne to Mallacoota in far east Gippsland, the Central Highlands, the Yarra Valley, the Dandenong Ranges and Kinglake. There were other major fires in southern NSW. The open cut coal mine at Yallourn was also alight.

Sunday 14 February dawned hot with a rising north wind. By midday, the smell of burning bush was strong in the air and scorched leaves were falling. Fanned by hot gusty winds up to 60 miles per hour, the existing fire fronts joined up and killed at least 30 people, on what became known as Black Sunday.

A generous public contributed nearly £200,000 to the Lord Mayor’s relief fund to support bushfire victims.

There were many tales of heroism, and, in some towns, they spoke of miracles.

Sadly, the deadly bushfires of 1926, and the tragic losses, are now largely forgotten. They were probably eclipsed by other calamitous and deadly bushfires in 1939, just 13 years later.

But these 1926 fires were to have very significant and long-lasting consequences.

They shaped rural firefighting in Victoria, with many rural fire brigades celebrating their centenary this year.

The 1926 bushfires also initiated several technological advances.  The Forests Commission commenced discussions with the Air Board which led to Australia’s first bushfire reconnaissance flights by the RAAF in 1930. They were also the precursor to annual bushfire awareness programs and better fire weather forecasting.

In combination with later bushfires in 1932 and 1939 they were also to leave a lasting impact on the wet mountain forests of the Central Highlands.

Over the next week or so I will explore a number of these forgotten stories of 1925/25 bushfire season.

Sumner Spur is located in the headwaters of Big Pats Creek rising up to the Britannia Range, generally south of Warburton, in the former Powelltown Forest District. 

This area had been heavily utilised to supply wood for the Britannia Creek distillation works from 1907 and had almost exclusively regenerated to dense stands of silver wattle (Acacia dealbata) rather than the original stands of mountain ash.

There were other large areas of wattle, particularly in the Bunyip catchment, which were the result of repeated bushfires in 1926, 1932 and 1939.

By the early 1970s, silvicultural knowledge had grown after the pioneering work of foresters like Jack Gillespie, and the methods of regeneration by clearing of overstorey, burning of  slash and seeding or planting were well known, but the problem of reforesting sites in dense growth of wattle remained.

Frank May was posted to Powelltown as the District Forester in 1963 after a stint in East Gippsland, and being a little innovative saw the potential to return the area to its former eucalypt condition.  Herb Beetham was Divisional Forester at Healesville while Con Wood the Aviation Officer in Fire Protection Branch

Fixed-wing aircraft were used to spray chemical herbicide mixture of 2-4-5-T and diesel to kill the wattle, two bulldozers dragged heavy chains to bring down the dead stems, which was followed by a spectacular slash burn to prepare the site. Aircraft then spread coated eucalypt seed.

But this work required the construction of an airstrip.

Commission staff and crew from both Powelltown and East Warburton sub-district were employed on these tasks over several years. 

The airstrip was also used to spray Phasmatids.

These images of construction and operations were made by local forester, Gregor Wallace, and cover dates from December 1969 to January 1972. They record only a little of the operations conducted from Sumner Spur.

The airstrip was replanted after the 1983 bushfires and is not visible today.

The Balt Camp near Bullarto South in the Wombat State Forest was used for displaced refugees after World War 2, including those from the Baltic States.

It’s unclear if a camp existed at the site before the War but one may have been part of the susso unemployment scheme in the 1930s.

The first group of 843 refugees arrived in 1947 into Australia from the Baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

One of the conditions of entry was to work for two years in a government-directed job. Some of the immigrants worked for the Forests Commission cutting firewood, thinning, road making and fire protection.

By June 1949, 180 European immigrants were engaged in FCV work, and by the end of the next year the number had grown to 361.

Balt camps were established at Broadford – Mt Disappointment (84 men), Beaufort (48 men), Castlemaine (19 men), Cohuna (30 men), Daylesford (45 men), Brisbane Ranges (42 men), Graytown (31 men), Scarsdale (20 men), Beech Forest – Aire Valley, Noojee (ex-Boys Camps), Snake Valley, and Mirboo East and Bullengarook (42 men). An additional camp was planned during the year for Holcombe. There may have been others too.

Wherever possible, Stanley Huts and ex-Army buildings were used. In all camps of a permanent nature, amenities such as electric lighting, hot water and septic tank systems were installed.

The State forests near Bullarto were thinned by hand and the logs hauled by horse and dray to a saw bench to be cut into blocks for firewood to be sold by the Forests Commission into the Melbourne market. (See: Wartime Emergency Firewood Project  – Vol 1)

The large immigrant labour force at work in 1950 resulted in a dramatic increase in firewood production: 156,369 tons were cut, compared to the 66,568 tons the previous year. To assist in maintaining a reasonable distribution of wood from the Commission’s metropolitan depots, local men were employed as road hauliers, transporting the firewood direct from production centres in the forests.

By 1952, the scheme was winding down as the men completed their two-year contracts.

The Balts were not prisoners, so they were allowed out on weekends, and either walked to Bullarto to catch the train or just walked through the forest to Daylesford. Eventually they saved enough money to buy motorbikes.

The camp was later used by Leon Pederick’s assessment crew in the early 1950s.

In about 1957 the camp was leased to the YMCA from Ballarat.

All that remains today are the two stone chimneys from the cookhouse and some other concrete foundations.

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/46809683

It was during the war that the nation relied on timber more than ever before.  Some of the longest spans and most diverse timber structures were built in Australian history during this period.

As the first American forces arrived in Australia in 1942 the Federal Government began to recognise that timber was an essential war material. The “Office of the Controller of Timber” was established, and all the timber resources of the nation were placed under its direct control.

Steel was redirected to other defence needs and timber became the focus for both large and small buildings.

To coordinate the massive war construction program, the Government established the Allied Works Council (AWC) and, from 26 February 1942, it assumed control for all defence projects for the Allied Armies. It was based in Melbourne.

Australian timber was used to hurriedly build a number of large aircraft hangers. The structural layout of these buildings was probably derived from a 1941 US Army Air Corps design for a steel hangar spanning 122 foot  This was adapted as a segmented curved roof built from unseasoned hardwood trusses instead of steel.

Six 130-foot hangars and two 96-foot hangars were built at Tocumwal in NSW. A further 130-foot hangar and four 96-foot hangars were constructed at Charleville in QLD while two 96-foot hangars were built at Garbutt Airport at Townsville. Another 96-foot hangar was erected at Maylands in WA and one with a 130-foot span.

At the Werribee Satellite Aerodrome, four hangers were built with 96-foot spans and one at 130-foot. Two of the five original aircraft hangars at Werribee remain. One is currently used for the B-24 Liberator restoration, and the other is being relocated.

Gregory Nolan (1994). The forgotten long span timber structures of Australia. Master of Architecture Thesis. University of Tasmania.

https://figshare.utas.edu.au/articles/thesis/The_forgotten_long_span_timber_structures_of_Australia_/23206388

Photos: NAA

The Stretton Royal Commission into the 1939 bushfires considered in detail the use of bushfire dugouts. The report noted –

After the 1926 fires, the question of insisting upon the installation of dugouts at mills for protection of the millworkers was raised by the Forests Commission. The Commission was  divided in opinion and the matter lapsed. Again, after the 1932 fires, the question was revived. In May 1932, an engineer’s report upon the desirability of dugouts and on their construction was submitted to the Commission. Further consideration was given the matter and, on the 14^th November 1932, the following minute was placed on the file:—

“Commission Decision – All sawmillers to construct effective dugouts in the close vicinity of all sawmills, particulars of such to be forwarded to the Commission”.

The Judge harshly criticised the Commission when he noted:-

Having made its considered decision, the Commission at no time thereafter took any steps to compel the observance of the condition. Instead, for several years, it wrote to millers “strongly advising” and “urging” the dugouts be instituted. In many cases the advice was ignored, and no dugout was constructed. In no case was even a threat of coercion made against the recalcitrant miller.

Many of the sawmillers objected strongly at the Stretton hearings to the compulsory installation of dugouts because of the expense. They objected even more strongly to constructing dugouts at steam winch sites because of their temporary nature.

The Forests Commission explained at the Stretton hearings that it had believed in dugouts as safeguards; that, in the words of the Chairman, A. V. Galbraith, their “belief had been intense”; that it continued to believe in them; but that it had feared it might be liable if people were asphyxiated in them; that it had sought advice of the Crown Solicitor on this point and had been advised that it would not be liable; that it had continued to “urge” the millers to install dugouts; that its fear of causing asphyxiation had remained until the 1939 fires proved it to be groundless.

But well-constructed dugouts had saved the lives of many sawmill workers and their families during the 1939 bushfires. In some locations, they had proved fatal.

Ironically at Yelland’s mill near Matlock, 26 people were saved because they did not use the dugout, which was roughly constructed above ground of corrugated iron and which stood among standing timber. They instead sheltered in a brick house which was near another wooden building, which soon caught fire, as did a truck outside along with 24 drums of fuel and oil which exploded.

The brick building then also caught alight and the ceiling began to cave in, so the people inside climbed through a window and ran past the burning truck to an area missed by the fire. The sawmill chef, Mrs Vera Maynard, was caught by the flames and burned to death in the house.

Whereas at the nearby Fitzpatrick’s mill, 16 people burned to death because there was no dugout available. Scrub came right up to the borders of mill. Some men tried to find shelter behind the brickwork of the boiler house, but they were driven out by the flames.  Others ran to the sawdust heap, thinking it would protect them from the searing heat, but their bodies were later found where they had tried to burrow into it.

The eight mill horses, still harnessed, were caught by the flames and died in their stalls.

One man jumped into an elevated water tank and is often said to have boiled. Other bodies were found in the bush about three-quarters of a mile away as they tried to run. Only George Sellars survived by wrapping himself in a wet blanket.

The two mills were not considered by their owners to be particularly vulnerable, and no worthwhile precautions had been undertaken for the safety of those who worked there.

It’s even reported that Forests Commission Officers, Finton Gerraty and  Roly Parke, didn’t think the Matlock forests would burn as they did, and besides, there was a quarry nearby which offered some  protection for the mill workers. They also had reservations about their legal power to insist on the owners’ building dugouts.

Questions of design of dugouts were debated at the hearings including ventilation, air purification, location, design (for example whether tunnel, or tunnel with cross chamber, or in flat country, shaft and drive), baffles for both for air and smoke, storage of water inside dugouts, supply of medicaments (for example for prevention or relief of temporary blindness and inflammation of the eyes), water sprays and restoratives; the direction in which the entrance to the dugout should face; the question of exposed timbers and sheet iron; and the various other suggestions which appear in the transcript of evidence.

The final recommendations of the Stretton Royal Commission included –

• The construction of dugouts at all mill settlements, and at winches during the fire danger season, should be compulsory.
• The design of the dugout, despite the test to which dugouts were subjected by the fires of January 1939, is a matter for the most careful consideration, of which only technicians are capable.
• It should be mandatory that an area of six chains in diameter, having as its centre the entrance to the dugout, should be kept clear of all trees and scrub, buildings, and material of whatsoever kind. Stores of petrol and oil, stacks of firewood and all other stores of inflammable material should be kept at such considerable distance from the dugout entrance as the State Fire Authority may decide.

And so it came to pass, the Forests Act was amended in December 1939 and dugouts became mandatory for those few sawmills that remained in forest after the 1939 fires. Many remote logging coupes and FCV roading camps also had dugouts installed.

Penalties applied for non-compliance, and the local District Forester was required to make annual pre-season inspections of all dugouts on State forests and those within the Fire Protected Area (FPA). Some were built privately on private land.

Most were primitive construction with a log or corrugated iron roof covered with earth. A hessian bag often hung at the entrance to keep the heat and smoke out. But they were dark and damp with snakes and other creepy crawlies often lurking inside.

By 1940-41, there were 19 new dugouts constructed by the Commission and a further 128 by forest licensees. Ten years later there were 8 new Commission dugouts and 21 new ones built by other interests. By 1960-61 the rate of new builds was declining but the Commission still managed 103 dugouts, while 127 were looked after by others. 

However, as the forest road network improved and gave all-weather access to modern two-wheel-drive vehicles, the reliance on dugouts receded.

In 1970, the Commission built a reinforced precast concrete dugout near Powelltown to house 30 people. But the number of dugouts maintained by the Commission had fallen to 61 with another 73 by others.

According to the Forests Commission’s final annual report from 1983/84, one additional dugout was built, bringing the total number under maintenance and use to 30, along with another 14 maintained by other parties.

The use of dugouts came back into sharp focus once again after the 2009 Black Saturday Bushfires.

There are still a few remaining in the bush, but I can’t find any current official figures.

Click to access Leonard_Stretton-1939_Bush_Fires_Royal_Commission_Report.pdf

Today marks two years since commercial timber harvesting on Victorian State forests ceased. And it’s been a difficult transition for many.

One of the major consequences has been the loss of experienced machine operators and logging contractors to assist with forest firefighting.

Sawmill workers and logging contractors have always been an integral part of Victoria’s firefighting effort. In fact, of the 71 deaths during the 1939 bushfires, over half were timber workers.

And while they were employed as contractors, they were always considered part of the Forests Commission’s firefighting fraternity.

In addition to the current department’s fleet of tankers, trucks, graders and bulldozers, the firefighting effort is supported by over 400 contractors from across the civil and forestry industries.

If it has tracks or wheels, over 4000 machines are now registered on the DEECA’s “Panel Contracts”.

The Panel Contracts system was developed in Gippsland by logistics wizard, Max Stewart, and being registered on the panel before the fire season ensured contractors were available when needed, prices were agreed, machines met all the safety and insurance requirements, as well as technical standards. But more importantly, they came with the highly skilled people needed to operate them.

Dry firefighting with rakehoes, chainsaws and axes, by its very nature, is hard physical work but an essential skill in these far-flung places with limited access to water. It’s something that had been developed and honed over many decades by the Forests Commission.

I always found that 15-20 metres per-person-per-hour was a good “rule of thumb” for the sustained rate to build and hold a fireline using only hand tools in moderate fuels, but there are lots of things that can speed this up… or slow this down…

A small D4 bulldozer in the hands of a skilled operator could construct about 350 m/hr of control line in moderate fuels provided there wasn’t too much side slope, while a bigger D6 could double that figure.

But a new D6 bulldozer can cost in the vicinity of $750,000, and about $450/hour to operate, so having ready access to such expensive and powerful machines over the summer months was, in effect, “subsidised” because the owners had work in the “off season”.

Tough, ruggedly independent and self-reliant, logging contractors were familiar with working for long periods, both day and night, in remote bush, in steep terrain, in dust, often with only snakes and flies for company.

They also built and maintained many of the roads needed to access the bush. Logging machines were often conveniently located in the bush nearby and could be quickly moved and deployed to the fire edge.

It’s one thing to be able to pull levers and push dirt, but experienced bush contractors were able to safely cut a fireline down a precipitously steep ridge where crews could barely stand upright. They could push over dangerous burning trees which were a threat and then follow up during the recovery period by dextrously clearing roads and rehabilitating control lines with an excavator to minimise soil erosion.

The Caledonia bushfire in 1999 saw the introduction of a new role of Plant Operations Manager (POM) to better support the independent contractors. An initiative of local forester, Geoff Pike, with the support of Peter Broome, Denny Johnson and Mack Berry from Briagolong, they identified and numbered each machine and its crew in the bush and made sure they were looked after with time sheets, fuel, food, support and safety information.

Over the last few years, many logging contractors have sold their machines and businesses and moved on. But many others have wisely diversified into trucking, earth moving, road building, vegetation management such as slashing, mulching and tree lopping.

As time progressed, the cohort of traditional logging contractors across regional Victoria matured and shifted from burley blokes in bluey singlets, with Mack trucks and covered in dust, to professionally run family businesses.

Victoria’s contractor fleet now allows for both a massive surge capacity but also allows for a widening diversity of machines than would not otherwise be available within the Department. 

Increasingly, excavators and large harvesters are being used because they can be deployed into areas with a high safety risk due the dead stags or dry limbs left behind by previous fires. 

Roads, tracks and fire perimeters cannot be fully accessed by ground crews until the tree hazard has been removed.  Many of these machines have come directly from commercial timber harvesting operations.

At the other end of the scale, bobcats or positracks with mulching attachments can nimbly reduce the fire risk posed by the shrub layer – creating a “park-like” break alongside populated areas and roads, as an alternative to, or to complement the treeless slashed breaks. 

The tracked positracks minimises soil disturbance and can operate across much boggier or sandy terrain.  Whilst these machines might not have been used in commercial timber harvesting, increasingly contractors have diversified their fleet, which provides another opportunity to engage their skilled forest operators.

During the transition period of the closure of the timber industry, FFMVic retained many of the displaced logging contractors for firefighting and preparation works, but it’s uncertain what the long-term future may hold.

Either way, these wonderful folks have always been, and will always remain, a vital part of Victoria’s forest firefighting family.