Ash Wednesday bushfires

We've had two or three inches of rain around the region and now we're getting beautiful sunny weather and at this time of year when that happens, grass grows and it grows really fast and it grows really long and then not long after that the weather changes and that grass turns to Very, very good fire material and we've had issues around the countryside with some pretty serious bushfires.

We normally have one or two in our region and we always cross our fingers, those if they're old enough to remember Ash Wednesday.

Never ever want to see that again.

But it is an issue.

Well I've seen some land development that I know is 25 years old and if the neighbours in houses 14 and 13 have two friends visiting and both driver, a large american type utility there's not enough room for a honda civic you get between them let alone a fire truck so it's it's been an issue for a long long time um but of course it's not necessarily um a place where fire trucks go often but i think for future development it's time to have a really serious look about this access

Yeah, well, I actually might follow that up just to see how things are feeding in on that, because it is an issue, as I've said, it's been an issue in Winchelsea and as new estates develop.

Again, part of the thing, I guess, about a development is that we had this chat with the forest fire people down in Aries that after Ash Wednesday, there were sort of so many properties, a few were burnt out, and then almost the density doubled in terms of the number of houses, and then they fill their gardens with vegetation that can catch fire.

So it wouldn't be the same as Ash Wednesday, it'd be worse.

The average age of the fleet is a lot less than that, but we also recognise and don't want to minimise the fact that some of those older vehicles do need to get out of the system or we'll get them out as quick as we can.

And going back to Ash Wednesday, 1983, a lot of very elderly people died.

I know you've started a new campaign to get people to look after their elderly friends and relatives.

What's your message to the community there?

The dust storm of 1983 was quickly eclipsed by a more horrific event.

On February the 16th, 1983, Ash Wednesday, the sun rose over a countryside brittle dry from more than a year of drought.

The forecast that day was for a maximum of 42 degrees with hot, dry northerly winds.

Fire authorities declared it a red alert day.

That night, the ABC's nationwide program began with a list of the towns across the country that had been destroyed by fires.

Just some of the names and places that are now part of the history of Ash Wednesday 1983.

It's a day that none of us who live in this part of the country will ever forget.

Peter Couchman hosted the program standing on a giant map of South Australia and Victoria with burn marks on it showing the areas burned by the fires.

And these events have occurred, you know, repeatedly through the last few thousand years.

We know this from reconstructions from ice cores and other lines of evidence, that there have been extreme fire weather events as significant as Ash Wednesday, Black Saturday, Black Summer in the past.

And the critical thing was that the area around this, and it's not a small area, it's a very large lake, Lake Elusive, So the reconstruction area, the resource area of the information coming into that lake is around 100 by 100 kilometres, about 10,000 square kilometres.

And there was no evidence of hot, intense, damaging fires throughout those extreme fire weather events over the last thousand years.

It found colonization resulted in increased fire temperature, eucalypt cover, and soil erosion.

Researchers say dangerous fire weather, such as that seen during Ash Wednesday and Black Saturday, occurred in the region repeatedly before colonization, yet open landscape maintained by cultural burning protected the land from catastrophic fire.

They say their findings prove the value of cultural burning and the need to integrate indigenous knowledge into fire management strategies.

A five-year collaboration between the CSIRO and pharmaceutical company Moderna aims to strengthen Australia's biosecurity capability.

All of Officer.

All of Officer, which was absolutely vital to the future planning of Rob and Carol Porter, who lived through the Ash Wednesday fires.

Yeah.

Melbourne Water has totally changed and ruined the whole concept of Beacons Hill Reservoir.

That's a story I think a lot of Australians wouldn't really realize that that is, like, you know, one of the great stories.

Another one I really liked is Ash Wednesday.

You know, I can remember this as, like, one of the hottest summers we'd sort of had here in Australia, and there was a boxing match held on it.

Absolutely, and, uh, once again, um, it goes back to the era a little bit too where no thought of canceling the, the event or, or the really any concern for, for the boxers.

And, uh, 12-round fight between Barry Michael and, and Frank the Tank Ropus, uh, um, in horrendous conditions at the, uh, Melbourne Town Hall, which for the record didn't have any air conditioning either, so it wasn't exactly pleasant conditions inside in a, in an air-conditioned venue.

So we should add for people that don't know Ash Wednesday, huge bushfires in Victoria, people killed, smoke everywhere, incredibly hot, those northerly winds.

A day of great tragedy for us, for Victoria, and then you've got this boxing match at night.

What sort of temperatures are we talking about when this is happening?