By Mikayla van Loon
It’s been 60 years since one of the worst bushfires raged across the Dandenong Ranges and threatened homes in the foothill towns of Montrose and Mount Evelyn.
For five days from 17 January in 1962 fires burned across the hills and the Yarra Valley, wiping out thousands of acres of bushland and forest, as well as 450 homes and taking the lives of eight people.
It was the closest a bushfire had ever been to Melbourne, extending out to Maroondah highway between Ringwood and Mitcham.
Former Montrose resident Brad Martin was 10 years old at the time and can still remember the sounds of trees falling and the fear that ran through his body as the fire approached his home.
“In the first instance it was the fear of knowing that something was coming and was the knowledge that we had to get away because it was serious,” Mr Martin said.
“Coming home and seeing just how black things were and living amongst. Listening to trees just crashing in the night. Trees were still burning and they burned for weeks and weeks afterwards.”
Mr Martin said he believes he can remember the fire so vividly because his family was always very fire conscious living on Sheffield Road.
After evacuating to his grandmother’s house in Box Hill, Mr Martin watched on from Middleborough Road as the fire burned from the base of the hills all the way up the mountain.
“I can still see that vision in my head. It’s just one of those crazy things,” he said.
His father and uncles stayed in Montrose to fight the fire as it edged closer to their family homes and throughout his life, and his father told stories of what happened during those few days.
“One of the most significant stories that dad talked about until he died 30 years ago was that this place would never have been here if it wasn’t for those 200 men who marched up with beaters, knapsacks and whatever else and just in a line were sent into the bush to wet down as the fire approached them,” Mr Martin said.
In those days, Mr Martin said the equipment and fire protective gear was nowhere near the standard it is now, making the people who fought the fires quite heroic.
Mount Evelyn CFA firefighter Ken Reed remembers the ferocity of the fire as it burned from The Basin across to Kinglake and down to Yarra Glen, before taking hold in Mount Evelyn.
“We started off on the Sunday with the fires in The Basin. On the Tuesday, we had the fire that started in Mount Evelyn which did most of the damage,” he said.
Mr Reed said At one stage he was pumping water out of a swimming pool to combat the fierce blaze but soon the fire grew, spreading to Olinda and connecting with the one in Mount Dandenong.
“It met up with all these other fires, especially the fire at The Basin and when it met up with that, it went down along Inverness Road, down the hill into Sycamore Grove and we lost about 49 houses, they were all old shacks but we lost a lot of houses in that area at that time,” he said said.
Although only 11 at the time, Janice Newton also remembers the fear of her parents and fellow neighbours who were worried about the fires destroying everything in its wake.
“I remember the anxiety that there were three fires and people were basically saying Mount Evelyn was surrounded, there were fires coming at it from all directions,” she said.
Being as young as she was, Ms Newton said she probably couldn’t comprehend the danger of the fire.
“My sister and brother, we were actually excited as kids that there was this bit of drama and so we didn’t feel the fear of losing a house like that.
“It was just like, there was this drama and everyone was out talking about it. We were actually evacuated to my mother’s friend’s work and I remember the sky being black with a red glow where the sun should have been.”
Mr Martin said after the 1962 fires his father and himself would do fuel reduction burns every year, while Ms Newton said the hedge around her property was removed due to fire risk.
Mr Martin said the summer fires in 1962 changed the way the community viewed fire preparedness.
“‘62 changed the whole community and by the time we got to ‘69, the next big [fire] around Montrose, they were much, much better prepared,” he said.
“So often you’d just see a field of blokes literally whacking away at the fire to get it put out and those days quickly disappeared after 62.
“Places like Montrose and Mount Evelyn and The Basin are so much better for it because it made people wake up.”
