By Callum Ludwig
Former Warburton CFA Captain Barry Marshall remembers pulling up to the Warburton Fire Station around 7pm on 16 February 1983, a day now known as Ash Wednesday.
Around that time, a fire was reported on the western slope of Mt Little Joe and Mr Marshall said they had a direct line of sight to Millgrove from the station.
“Soon there was a column of smoke rising from Mt Little Joe and all of a sudden our siren went off. Brigade members took off, going to protect the houses and sawmill there and we virtually only had the Warburton pumper here, as Yarra Junction had to take off to the hills,” he said.
“My biggest memory of the fire was when the fire on Mt Little Joe took off, it started a spot fire a couple of hundred metres in front of it and when the two fires met up, the noise was unbelievable, it sounded like a couple of steam trains coming up the Valley.”
According to the book ‘Yarra Junction Fire Brigade: A Story of Community and Comradeship’ written by Yarra Junction Fire Brigade members Frank Colverson and Paul Hill, the fires in the Upper Yarra threatened Warburton, Wesburn, Old Warburton and Brittania Creek in the first hours, and Gladysdale, Big Pats Creek and Powelltown overnight.
Mr Marshall knew where the fire was heading and, with the Melbourne and Metropolitan Boards of Works having a depot in Warburton at the time, made a decision to help protect the town.
“They used to look after the Upper Yarra Dam and watershed areas and had a couple of bulldozers there. We used them to open up a trail from Scotchman’s Creek Road to Old Warburton Road to stop the fire coming straight back into what we called Crew Hill,” he said.
“I sat up there and there was a fish farm down there on the Warby highway so we put a pump in their dams. Around that time there was a strike team coming down from Shepparton who had taken a wrong turn and ended up at Warburton, twelve of them, so we stationed six of them at Warburton and six at Powelltown.”
In the Upper Yarra, Warburton and Old Warburton lost a total of five homes.
In Powelltown, a sudden change in the wind direction took the fire around the town and mill, which were safe, but destroyed two houses, including the former guest house ‘Tall Timbers’. It also burnt over 44,000 hectares including large areas of water catchments at the O’Shannassy and Upper Yarra Reservoirs.
By Thursday morning, the fire had made its way to Big Pat’s Creek, East Warburton, McMahons Creek and Reefton, which destroyed 30 homes.
Close to 100 residents sheltered in the pipe tunnel at the Upper Yarra Dam as the fire approached, with fire brigades aiming to protect the wooden bridge on Woods Point Road at the Reefton Hotel.
Paul Hill said in the book that some of the residents had left their pets at the pub instead of leaving them at home.
“The bar seemed to be full of all sorts of animals including goats, dogs, cats and birds,” it read.
“I can remember thinking that it probably wasn’t the first bar to be full of animals.
”As the fire marched on, crews protecting a house further up Woods Point Road with a family of four sheltered inside were lucky to have it pass over them, with crews fighting hard to save the house as it was showered by embers and the fire burnt all around them.
Eventually, the fire was stopped on Friday at the rear of the Bedgoods Mill as the flames reached the log yard.
Mr Marshall said he wasn’t scared at the time, because you didn’t have time to be.
“I really just had to get the brigade members to do what they had to do and that they did, I suppose it was scary but you just had to make sure the fire never got to the township,” he said.
“It could happen again if we get another severe summertime.
“We’ve been lucky the last two summers with so much rain but with the growth, the grass is so high at the moment, a grassfire along with less logging now is what is the biggest worry for me at the moment.”
