Now living in Yarra Junction, Millee Rickards, right, looks over newspaper reports of the devastating 1939 fires with historian Ellena Biggs.By Kath Gannaway
MILLEE Rickards was just 19 when the 1939 bushfires tore across Victoria.
Seventy years later, the memory of those fires ignites a sadness she has lived with all her adult life.
Living at Powelltown with her father, mother and 11-year-old brother, she had no idea when she awoke on that very hot, windy day in January that the events unfolding throughout the day would change her family’s life so dramatically.
“I was not married then living at home up on Surrey Road and dad worked as a bushman on the forestry,” she remembered.
“You could see it was very dark that day, but the fires had been around for quite some time. Dad was called out as part of the forestry team to fight fires when one broke out on Donna Buang.”
Being so close to Warburton township, Mrs Rickards said there was an urgency to get them under control. Jack Weatherley and the team from Powelltown was out fighting fires for days in punishingly hot weather and were relieved when a change came through.
“They decided to come home, but on the way down the mountain the truck crashed and dad was thrown out,” Mrs Rickards recalled.
Her father died as a result of his injuries on 2 March at the age of 57.
“My mum never got over it. I would have been 20 in the April but dad died in the March,” she says reflecting, no doubt, even after all this time on the years they might have spent together as a family.
“The driver went to sleep. They were all out for so long and were so tired.”
Millee’s story is just one of many tragic stories and, like others, she remembers it well.
The temperature reached 100 degrees very early in the morning and there was a sense of oppression, with fires having burnt for days in other areas of the state before the threat to Warburton erupted.
“You could see smoke and debris and ash falling around the house.
“We had a dug-out built just above our place, built either by the forestry or the mill crew after the ’26 and ’32 fires,” she said.
Her husband to be, Pat Rickards was saved when he and others took shelter in a similar dug-out at the Ada Mill.
Mrs Rickards doesn’t remember anyone being panicked by the fires, which she said at that stage were not seen as an immediate threat to Powelltown.
“We knew it was very bad in other areas, but without phones, or other news coming through, people were just getting on with what they had to do.”
Mrs Rickard’s memories will be part of a commemorative weekend event in Warburton on 10 and 11 January to mark the 70th anniversary of the fires, which took the lives of 71 people and burnt 2,528 homes. Local Anglican minister Gail Pinchbeck, along with historians Ellena Biggs and Val Smith of the Upper Yarra Historical Society have organised the event which will bring together survivors of the fires and other local residents who lived through the most devastating fires in Victoria’s history.
Original film footage of the ’26, ’32 and ’39 fires, interviews with the people involved, photo and information displays and a church service will take place over the weekend.
The displays will remain open until 18 January.
