Bushfires

Not far at the rear of G’s tent the bush fire is raging. Many tents are being rapidly taken down, while some have already been caught by the flames. It is a grand but terrifying spectacle, hundreds of trees with the flames rushing up their trunks, the foliage being consumed like fireworks, and the huge giants crashing to the ground on all sides, with a thundering noise, the sky red, with clouds of smoke flying upwards.
— Marie Tipping (ed.), An Artist on the Goldfields: The Diary of Eugene von Guerard. Melbourne: Currey O’Neil, 1982, 63.

It was a very hot day. So extreme was the heat that to save the lives of some young swallows my father had to put wet bags over the iron roof above their nest. A galvanized-iron awning connected our kitchen and house: in this some swallows had built, placing their nest so near the iron that the young ones were baking with the heat until rescued by the wet bagging. I had a heavy day’s work before me, and, from my exertions of the day before, was tired at the beginning.

Bush-fires had been raging in the vicinity during the week, and yesterday had come so close that I had been called out to carry buckets of water all the afternoon in the blazing sun. The fire had been allayed, after making a gap in one of our boundary fences. Father and the boys had been forced to leave the harvesting of the miserable pinched wheat while they went to mend it, as the small allowance of grass the drought gave us was precious, and had to be carefully preserved from neighbours’ stock.
— Miles Franklin, My Brilliant Career, 1899.

A road runs through this part of the country. Near it is the quiet preparation for another sort of thunder. A bottle lies here, brown, unbroken. Tomorrow it will bend thirty square inches of summer sunlight into five. This will go on for some hours. Before noon, more than twelve hundred square miles of bushland will be totally destroyed.

— Ivan Smith, The Death of a Wombat, Sun Books, 1976.

There is a fire in the bush at Lane Cove, which has been burning above a week. It has destroyed one settler’s dwelling. The weather is indeed parching, and is not rendered cooler: by these fires in the bush. Another fire burnt a field of hay at Home Bush, on the Parramatta Road, and another large bush fire has been very destructive in the neighbourhood of Windsor. It will be well if we hear of no fields of wheat being burnt. A spark is enough those hot winds to ignite a field of ripe grain.
— The Monitor (Sydney), 1 December 1832, 2.

Swan River Extracts. The bush-fires around the town of Perth, within the last week, have threatened some danger. Lieut. Armstrong promptly hastened with a detachment of the military to render every assistance in extinguishing the flames, and succeeded in getting the fire under during the day. At night, however, it broke out again, when their efforts were renewed, and, we must say with a degree of alacrity and willingness which entitle them to our consideration. Lieut. King attended on the second occasion. We observed but few civilians so active as we could have wished; we hope this arose from a persuasion that there was little danger, and not from a want of disposition to assist. It has been suggested, indeed we believe it was remarked by us some period last year, during the prevelence of the bush fires, which it is almost impossible to guard against, that it would be advisable to clear a road all round the town. To do this immediately and effectually, we would call upon all the inhabitants, either by their own labour or by supplying a substitute, to come to work with a willing hand. It would soon be done, and the aid of the military, no doubt, could be obtained, on a representation being made to the proper, authorities. It requires but the exertion of one individual to put this in a train to be accomplished — we hope some influential gentleman will step forward to effect it.
— The Sydney Monitor, 7 May 1836, 2.

Portland. A gentlemen resident in the Portland Bay District, thus writes to a friend in Melbourne “The bush is on fire in all directions; the creeks and water holes in this district were never known by white men to be so low. If this weather continues the stock will die off fast. Mr Grey, late of the firm of Grey and Marr had his homestead burned to the ground, along with 400 sheep. Mr Neil Black has had 3500 sheep destroyed by fire, and now while I am writing, you cannot see 300 yards, so dense is the smoke. I am in constant dread of the destroying element reaching the houses. The station is literally surrounded by flames.”
— The Argus, 7 February 1851, 2.

As everything became parched up, fires were frequent, both caused by the carelessness of people travelling through the bush, and by lightning striking trees, which was very frequent, and these bush fires surpassed, in their terrible grandeur and horror, anything I had ever seen. We passed through part of one on our way down, the thought of which makes my blood creep even now, and causes wonder how we ever escaped alive. Blinded with smoke, half choked, galloping, full tear along, on, on we went, feeling that each moment was precious, as it was life, dear life, that was at stake. Providentially the wind favored and we got out—it would be cold words to say—escaping a great danger.
— Mrs A (Isabella) Campbell, Rough and Smooth, 1865, 112.

Not far at the rear of G’s tent the bush fire is raging. Many tents are being rapidly taken down, while some have already been caught by the flames. It is a grand but terrifying spectacle, hundreds of trees with the flames rushing up their trunks, the foliage being consumed like fireworks, and the huge giants crashing to the ground on all sides, with a thundering noise, the sky red, with clouds of smoke flying upwards.
— Marie Tipping (ed.), An Artist on the Goldfields: The Diary of Eugene von Guerard. Melbourne: Currey O’Neil, 1982, 63.

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