Mayors from two of the affected municipalities also attended the morning tea event, held on Tuesday 31 January at the Baranduda Fire Station.
Les Boyes, himself a former Wodonga major also spoke at the gathering to recount his experiences of battling a major blaze and protecting his property in the days where beaters and wet bags were the norm and even knapsacks were rare.
Ahead of the January 31st anniversary, Les and other 60-year CFA members gathered to recount and record their memories of 1952 - incredibly vivid even 60 years down the track.
You can listen to audio of Les, Rusty, Jim and Colin below:
Click on the links below to read their stories:
Barnawartha 60 years on: Rusty
Barnawartha 60 years on: Colin
About the 1952 Barnawartha Fire:
The fire started before midday on a property between Chiltern and Rutherglen, at a locality known as Cornishtown, and was blown by a westerly right down the valley towards Wodonga.
It was fortunate that at that time all that area west of the town was used for holding paddocks and most of it was grazed very heavily. That ‘dust bowl’, including the area bounded by the Mulqueeny’s stock paddocks, was what saved the west area of Wodonga, forcing the fire to skirt around.
However, the small town of Barnawartha, then a self-functioning small town of 400 people, was devastated. Two of its three stores burnt down in the fire, along with a big boarding house, one of the churches and countless houses.
As often happens on a bad fire day, the wind turned the fire right around to the south, creating a new fire front which after midnight turned and swept north right up to the Murray. New South Wales had trucks lined up all along the river, such was their concern. Fortunately their fears were unfounded and the river stopped the fire in its tracks.
In total the fire burnt through 40,000 hectares over an area spanning 50km.
It seems almost a miracle that only three people perished, but while blind luck might have played a part in many cases, for the most part it was down to the dogged battling of the men and women who protected their properties, helped each other to find shelter and get their kids to safety.
In 1952, equipment was a different story. Wet bags, beaters and branches were the norm– knapsacks (20 litres, made of steel) were considered state-of-the art equipment, and anyone who had a knapsack was pretty well off (though by the following year everyone had one).
Self-preservation was the order of the day. The Barnawartha fire struck with such speed and force that there wasn’t time for much else, certainly not time to mobilise resources. Men who drove out to fight the fire quickly found that there was ‘nothing they could do’ and hurried home to protect their properties and assets.
Anyone who has been around long enough to remember January 31 1952 will tell you the same thing - fires of this nature, today and back then, you can’t stop them.
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