But the year 1886 unexpectedly witnessed a 'Black Thursday' on a small scale. In one corner of Victoria are situated the Cape Otway ranges, which are covered by fine forests and are the scene of a new and sparse settlement—hardy pioneers venturing in advance of the railways which they expect in due course to come up to them. The summer of 1886 opened with great heat: 100° F. was registered in the shade, and over 150° in the sun. And soon the news spread in the towns and cities of a disaster at the Otway. Steamers coming into port reported that they had passed through a pitchy darkness in the straits. One of their log records reads: 'Off Cape Otway at noon the darkness became so intense that it was necessary to light the binnacle lamp. The gloom was caused by smoke. A considerable quantity of ashes and charred sticks fell upon the deck.' This smoky volume rolled across the straits to Tasmania, and it proclaimed the fact that the forest was on fire. Fortunately to the south there is nothing behind the forest but the sea. The northerly wind, which alone fans these conflagrations, blew smoke and fire, not over parched tracts ready to burst into flame, but across the straits towards Tasmania, and the enveloped ships were not put in jeopardy, as hamlets would have been. At first it was almost forgotten that the forest was no longer lonely, but was showing here and there patches of occupation; but so it was, and a sad tale of ruin was soon told. Mr. S. H. Whittaker, who was on the heels of the flames as an 'Argus special,' kindly supplies the following narrative: 'The night before the great fire was an anxious one in the forest. There was an ominous deep-red glow at sunset—a redness deepened by smoke rising from distant hills. The settlers, as they watched the smoke from the highest points near their selections, fervently hoped for a change of wind, for the country, scorched by the heat of midsummer, was ready to burst into a blaze. Daybreak brought with it the fierce north wind, fiery as the blast of a furnace, and strong as a gale. The bush fires could be plainly seen from many a homestead, but there was at first no apprehension of a general calamity. Some damage is done in the forest every year by fire, but never before has one hundred miles of country been left a smoking ruin. Never before have the selectors been driven half-blinded from their houses, which they had vainly sought to save, to find refuge only for their lives in their small green patches of cultivation. The settlers had seen brushwood fires, had fought the flames and conquered them after suffering some loss, and, profiting by the experience, had cleared the brushwood around their homesteads. The whole forest ablaze, the sky red with lighted fragments flying before the high wind over cleared spaces, creeks, and roads, and igniting, like the torches of a thousand incendiaries, fences, orchards, farms, crops, and buildings in many places at once, had happily never been seen before. The people vividly remember the scenes of that terrible day—how the smoke made the day blacker than night, until the flames got nearer; how these made "leaps and bounds" from tree to tree, and the terrified wallaby, dogs, cattle, fowls, and kangaroo helplessly crowded among the people, seeking shelter and protection from the common danger.
'The struggle to save the home is sometimes touchingly told. Mrs. Hurley was alone on the selection at Cowley's Creek with her seven children, her husband being away cutting grass-seed to plant in the autumn. The eldest children were a boy of fourteen and a girl of twelve. She said: "When I saw the fire coming I sent the children to the water-hole to get water in the bucket and dipper and everything that would hold it. We put the water on the fence and houses. The children all worked till they were ready to drop to save the place, even the youngest. The boy was on the roof of the house pouring water on the rafters, and the girl was on the shed. The fire came quick and scorched us. It burned in the tree branches more than on the ground. The wind blew the big sparks right at us and burned our clothes, but the little ones and myself kept going to the water-hole with the dippers and pans to keep the house wet. The boy kept the house well soaked on the roof, and I thought we might keep it safe, when one of the girls cried out, 'Mother, it's alight inside.' Then the place went all up on fire, and we couldn't get anything out. The sheds and the reaper and binder and thresher went just after, and the orchards and fences as well. The children asked me to run with them to Mrs. M'Donald, our neighbour's. I told them to run on ahead, as one of the boys had a bad foot, and I had to help him. The other children got to Mrs. M'Donald's all right, but before I could get through with the boy the forest was all burning, and the branches were coming down in showers. My boots were burnt off my feet, and I have not been able to wear a boot since. Mrs. M'Donald and the neighbours kindly helped me to put some things on the children, and Bob Cowley gave me the tent we're living in now."
'The cry, "The house is alight inside," was the despairing message from many a watcher to those who, mounted on the ridge, were striving in the blinding smoke and scorching heat to beat back the fire from the dwelling. The high wind blew live coals underneath the shingles to enkindle the canvas lining, and then the exhausted settler, foiled in his endeavour to save his or his neighbour's home, could only throw himself face downwards in his potato crop to get a breath of fresh air. But Mrs. Power, of Curdie's River, was more fortunate, and it was impossible to belie the simple and unaffected sincerity with which she devoutly ascribed her escape to the direct interposition of Providence. Her husband, like too many other selectors in the wild and inhospitable Heytesbury forest—inhospitable until by laborious toil it has been reclaimed—was away at other work when the fire happened. The holding was directly in the track of the fire. "It was on the hill yonder," said Mrs. Power, "that we were burned out seven years ago—I mean there where the scrub is as thick as ever, which shows how hard the scrub in this forest is to kill. After we lost our first home we came to this side of the creek, and got on a little better. On the Tuesday morning the fire got all about us, in spite of my boys cutting down a tree and putting water on the fences and houses to keep them from burning. They said we had better go away; but wherever I looked there was fire; and I said, 'Where shall we go? We might as well be burnt here, beside the old place, as anywhere else.' So I got the boys around me, and I dropped on my knees just here and prayed to the Almighty God that it should be His will to spare us, and not leave us again without a home over our heads. The clothes of one of the boys caught fire, as you see, so did the pigstye, and the eighteen bags of grass-seed that I had put in the little garden in front of the house. I expected it to go every minute, but the house stood through it all. It took fire in four places inside and out, but it did not burn, and the roof was left to cover us, in answer to my prayer. It was too hot to go into the house, and I stayed under the blackwood tree; and the wind changed, and the drenching rain came and doused the fire. If the rain had not come, there is no knowing where the fire would have stopped."
Before and After the Fire.
'The rain, which will be remembered as one of the greatest downpours ever experienced in the colony, did indeed save the forest selectors from annihilation. It came just when the fire was at its height, when the trees were crashing to the ground in all directions, and when the fire, not merely scorching and singeing the bark of trees, as bush fires usually do, was consuming thousands of huge boles to charcoal, and the ground, as can still be seen, was at white heat, like a smelter's crucible. The mournfulness of the gaunt, weird scene which the fire has left is peculiarly striking and depressing. Such a mingling of night and day as the sunlight lighting the pitchy blackness of the landscape, as far as the eye can reach, is indescribably grotesque and desolate. It is hard to conceive anything like this contrast of the sunshine sparkling brightly upon the wide, inky, silent waste. It is almost like a smile upon a ghastly death's-head. There is not a bird to flutter a wing or to break the oppressive silence with a single note. There is no sign of life or what has been life, except here and there the roasted carcase of a wallaby or kangaroo. The dense forest of straight black bare boles alone reveals the might and fury of a bush fire.'
More frequent than the fire, and as thrilling, is the episode in bush life of 'the lost children.' This is a drama that is constantly enacted in the one place or the other. Australian children are quick, and they learn in a wonderful way how to travel about country, but still, where there is scrub in the neighbourhood or much undergrowth of any kind, the younger members of the family are terribly apt to go astray. The father or mother returns home to learn that 'little Johnny and the girl' were playing about, and did not come in for their evening meal. They could not have tumbled into the water-hole, for that is fenced off. They have not found their way to neighbour Dean's. There is no time to be lost. The biggest boy jumps on the colt and rides in hot haste to the nearest police-station, and rouses up neighbours on his way. The policeman telegraphs all about for aid, but faster still 'the bush telegraph' spreads the intelligence that 'Big Giles, of Wattle Tree flat, is in trouble. Two of his little ones are astray.' Then it is that human fellowship shows to advantage. All business is laid aside. The sheep that were being bargained for are neither bought nor sold; the hay is left unstacked; the reaping is discontinued. Nothing can be done that night beyond searching around the homestead, but all night long the clatter of horses' hoofs will tell of new arrivals, and the morning will witness a couple of hundred men ready to be divided into parties and to take care that no portion of the country is unsearched. From east and west parties will return disconsolate and silent; but the joyous 'Coo-e-e!' of the returning horsemen on the southern hill-top will tell its own tale of rescue. But rarely does a second night elapse before the distracted mother has her children with her again, and one night in the Australian bush is not likely to have injured the little ones much.
One of the most singular cases on record is that of the girl Clara Crosbie, who was lost for twenty days in the depth of winter in the Victorian uplands, where frosts will set in and where snow will fall, and who lived without food during that time. Clara was a town-bred girl, twelve years of age. Her mother took a situation in the year 1885 as housekeeper to a Lilydale farmer, some twenty-five miles away from Melbourne towards the mountains. Clara was left at a neighbour's house after she had been a few days in the district, but before she was fetched she wanted to go to her mother, and so she slipped out, got off the track easily enough, and was soon hopelessly involved in the reedy fens with which this part of the country is intersected.
Found! | A Squatter's Station. |