LES BOYES was 20 at the time of the 1952 fire, and vividly recalls the experience of sheltering with his mother and sisters at their property just south of Wodonga as the fire came over.
“The fire came through to my area at around 15.30 hrs.
“Prior to that you could see it balloon up, you could see it coming. The closer it got, the worse it looked, and as it approached it started to light ahead of itself across the bare paddocks – they’d just been cut for hay but it made no difference. The haystacks lit up and they continued to burn.
“It was terrifying, but my family decided we were going to stay. There was myself, my mother and two kids - we stayed while others said “you silly buggers” and went off. We were fortunate in our case it worked.
“By the time the main fire front came, everything was going, everything was lighting up ahead of it. The flames were higher than the trees. But what you noticed was the wind blown stuff, the embers, the heat and the rolling smoke and the flames that were amongst it. The sheer velocity of it all was incredible.
“We had a two-car garage with a cement room of equal size on one end – this was to be our refuge. About four of us got into this cement room and prepared for the fire to go over. When that moment came all of the oxygen was sucked out of the air. The sensation was like being king hit, and it dropped us to our knees. It seemed like minutes passed but probably it took a fraction of that time for the burn to go over.
“After that brief spell of time when we had no oxygen had passed, we gathered ourselves up and went back to it again – got the knapsacks on and went to try and save the sheds. We were on an old family farm that my grandfather had built, and there were massive sheds, mainly of timber and iron, a big stable, a big shearing shed, a dairy and some minor buildings
“Little burns were starting all over the place and we ran from one to the other, putting a bit of this out here, a bit of that out there… but by the time you went back the other one was alight.
“We had watched our hay shed ignite well before the fire front got there, about 200 metres west of the house and the hay just continued to burn. I remember being out there at four in the morning with a ___ knapsack, spraying the bales as they rolled out towards the house.
“In the end we saved the house, but the fire burnt everything else, including the country dunny. There wasn’t even a bush left to get behind - that was rather embarrassing!
“Wodonga recovered fairly quickly. It was the pioneering spirit in those days: people realised the damage had been done and they just got on with it."
Les is a 60 year member of CFA and a former board member who was an officer with Wodonga West Fire Brigade for many years. He is also a former mayor of Wodonga.
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