HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Black Friday bushfires of 13 January 1939, in Victoria,
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...
, were part of the devastating 1938–1939 bushfire season in Australia, which saw
bushfires A wildfire, forest fire, or a bushfire is an unplanned and uncontrolled fire in an area of Combustibility and flammability, combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identified as a ...
burning for the whole summer, and ash falling as far away as
New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...
. It was calculated that three-quarters of the State of Victoria was directly or indirectly affected by the disaster, while other Australian states and the Australian Capital Territory were also badly hit by fires and extreme heat. This was the third-deadliest bushfire event in Australian history, only behind the 1983
Ash Wednesday bushfires The Ash Wednesday bushfires, known in South Australia as Ash Wednesday II, were a Bushfires in Australia, series of bushfires that occurred in south-eastern Australia in 1983 on 16 February. Within twelve hours, more than 180 bushfires, fires f ...
and the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires. Fires burned almost of land in Victoria, where 71 people were killed, and several towns were entirely obliterated. Over 1,300 homes and 69 sawmills were burned, and 3,700 buildings were destroyed or damaged. In response, the Victorian state government convened a
Royal Commission A royal commission is a major ad-hoc formal public inquiry into a defined issue in some monarchies. They have been held in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Malaysia, Mauritius and Saudi Arabia. In republics an equi ...
that resulted in major changes in forest management. The Royal Commission noted that "it appeared the whole State was alight on Friday, 13 January 1939".
New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...
and the
Australian Capital Territory The Australian Capital Territory (ACT), known as the Federal Capital Territory until 1938, is an internal States and territories of Australia, territory of Australia. Canberra, the capital city of Australia, is situated within the territory, an ...
also faced severe fires during the 1939 season. Destructive fires burned from the NSW South Coast, across the ranges and inland to , while Sydney was ringed by fires which entered the outer suburbs, and fires raged towards the new capital at
Canberra Canberra ( ; ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the Federation of Australia, federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's list of cities in Australia, largest in ...
.
South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a States and territories of Australia, state in the southern central part of Australia. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, which in ...
was also struck by the Adelaide Hills bushfires.


Conditions

Eastern Australia is one of the most fire-prone regions of the world, with predominant eucalypt forests that have evolved to thrive on the phenomenon of bushfire. However, the 1938-9 bushfire season was exacerbated by a period of extreme heat, following several years of drought. Extreme heatwaves were accompanied by strong northerly winds, after a very dry six months. In the days preceding the fires, the Victorian state capital, Melbourne, experienced some of its hottest temperatures on record at the time: on 8 January and on 10 January. On 13 January, the day of the fires, temperatures reached , which stood as the hottest day officially recorded in Melbourne for the next 70 years. (Unofficial records show temperatures of around were reported on the Black Thursday fires of 6 February 1851).Argus Newspaper (Melbourne, Victoria), Saturday 28 June 1924 The subsequent Victorian Royal Commission investigation of the fires recorded that Victoria had not seen such dry conditions for more than two decades, and its rich plains lay "bare and baking; and the forest, from the foothills to the alpine heights, were tinder". The people who made their lives in the bush were worried by the dry conditions, but "had not lived long enough" to imagine what was to come: " the most disastrous forest calamity the State of Victoria has known." Fires had been burning separately across Victoria through December, but reached a new intensity and "joined forces in a terrible confluence of flame...".on Friday, 13 January.


Effects in Victoria

The most damage was felt in the mountain and alpine areas in the northeast and around the southwest coast. The Acheron, Tanjil and Thomson Valleys and the
Grampians The Grampian Mountains () is one of the three major mountain ranges in Scotland, that together occupy about half of Scotland. The other two ranges are the Northwest Highlands and the Southern Uplands. The Grampian range extends northeast to so ...
, were also hit. Five townships – Hill End, Narbethong, Nayook West, Noojee (apart from the Hotel), Woods Point – were completely destroyed and not all were rebuilt afterwards. The towns of Omeo, Pomonal,
Warrandyte Warrandyte ( ) is a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia, 24 km north-east of Melbourne's Melbourne City Centre, Central Business District, located within the City of Manningham Local government areas of Victoria, ...
(though this is now a suburb of Melbourne, it was not in 1939) and Yarra Glen were also badly damaged. The Stretton Royal Commission wrote: An area of almost burned, 71 people killed, and whole townships wiped out, along with many sawmills and thousands of sheep, cattle and horses. According to Forest Management Victoria, during the bushfires of 13 January 1939:


Major fires

There were five major fire areas. Smaller fires included; East Gippsland,
Mount Macedon Mount Macedon ( ; or ) is a dormant volcano that is part of the Macedon Ranges of the Great Dividing Range, located in the Central Highlands (Victoria), Central Highlands region of Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia. The mountain has a ...
, Mallee and the
Mornington Peninsula The Mornington Peninsula is a peninsula located in the south of Greater Melbourne, Victoria (state), Victoria, Australia. It is surrounded by Port Phillip to the west, Western Port to the east and Bass Strait to the south, and is connected to ...
. The major fires, listed roughly in order of size, included; # Victorian Alps/ Yarra Ranges # Portland # Otway Ranges #
Grampians The Grampian Mountains () is one of the three major mountain ranges in Scotland, that together occupy about half of Scotland. The other two ranges are the Northwest Highlands and the Southern Uplands. The Grampian range extends northeast to so ...
# Strzelecki Ranges


Towns damaged or destroyed

; Central *
Dromana Dromana ( ) is a seaside suburb on the Mornington Peninsula in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, south of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the Shire of Mornington Peninsula local government area. Dromana recorded a populati ...
*
Healesville Healesville is a town in Victoria, Australia, 64 km north-east from Melbourne's central business district, located within the Shire of Yarra Ranges local government area. Healesville recorded a population of 7,589 in the 2021 census. H ...
* Kinglake * Marysville * Narbethong – destroyed * Warburton *
Warrandyte Warrandyte ( ) is a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia, 24 km north-east of Melbourne's Melbourne City Centre, Central Business District, located within the City of Manningham Local government areas of Victoria, ...
* Yarra Glen ;East * Hill End – destroyed * Nayook West – destroyed * Matlock – 15 died at a sawmill * Noojee – destroyed * Omeo * Woods Point – destroyed ;West * Pomonal * Portland


Stretton Royal Commission and long-term consequences

The subsequent Royal Commission, under Judge Leonard Edward Bishop Stretton (known as the Stretton Inquiry), attributed blame for the fires to careless burning, campfires, graziers, sawmillers and land clearing. Prior to 13 January 1939, many fires were already burning. Some of the fires started as early as December 1938, but most of them started in the first week of January 1939. Some of these fires could not be extinguished. Others were left unattended or, as Judge Stretton wrote, the fires were allowed to burn "under control", as it was falsely and dangerously called. Stretton declared that most of the fires were lit by the "hand of man". Stretton's Royal Commission has been described as one of the most significant inquiries in the history of Victorian public administration. As a consequence of Judge Stretton's scathing report, the Forests Commission Victoria gained additional funding and took responsibility for fire protection on all public land including State forests, unoccupied Crown Lands and National Parks, plus a buffer extending one mile beyond their boundaries on to private land. Its responsibilities grew in one leap from . Stretton's recommendations officially sanctioned and encouraged the common bush practice of
controlled burn A controlled burn or prescribed burn (Rx burn) is the practice of intentionally setting a fire to change the assemblage of vegetation and decaying material in a landscape. The purpose could be for forest management, ecological restoration, ...
ing to minimise future risks. Its recommendations led to sweeping changes, including stringent regulation of burning and fire safety measures for sawmills, grazing licensees and the general public, the compulsory construction of dugouts at forest sawmills, increasing the forest roads network and firebreaks, construction of forest dams, fire towers and RAAF aerial patrols linked by the Commissions radio network VL3AA to ground observers. The Commission's communication systems were regarded at the time as being more technically advanced than those of the police and the military. These pioneering efforts were directed by Geoff Weste. Victoria's forests were devastated to an extent that was unprecedented within living memory, and the impact of the 1939 bushfires dominated management thought and action for much of the next ten years. Salvage of fire-killed timber became an urgent and dominant task that was still consuming the resources and efforts of the Forests Commission a decade and a half later. It was estimated that over 6 million cubic meters of timber needed to be salvaged. This massive task was made more difficult by labour shortages caused by the Second World War. In fact, there was so much material that some of the logs were harvested and stockpiled in huge dumps in creek beds and covered with soil and treeferns to stop them from cracking, only to be recovered many years later. Further major fires later in the 1943–44 Victorian bushfire season and another Royal Commission by Judge Stretton were key factors in the founding of the Country Fire Authority (CFA) for fire suppression on rural land. Prior to the creation of the CFA the Forests Commission had, to some extent, been supporting the individual volunteer brigades that had formed across rural Victoria in the preceding decades. The environmental effects of the fires continued for many years and some of the burnt dead trees still remain today. Large areas of animal habitat were destroyed. In affected areas, the soil took decades to recover from the damage of the fires. In some areas, water supplies were contaminated for some years afterwards due to ash and debris washing into catchment areas.


Fires in other states

Other states also suffered severely in the extreme heat and fires. In New South Wales, suffered 37 consecutive days above and hit a record on 10 January. In mid-January, Sydney was ringed to the north, south and west by bushfires - from and Port Hacking to the Blue Mountains. ; New South Wales Following the weekend of Black Friday, '' The Argus'' reported that on 15 January, fierce winds had also spread fire to almost every important area of New South Wales, burning in major fronts on Sydney's suburban fringes and hitting the south coast and inland: "hundreds of houses and thousands of head of stock and poultry were destroyed and thousands of acres of grazing land". On 16 January, ''
The Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid newspaper published in Sydney, Australia, and owned by Nine Entertainment. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuous ...
'' reported that disastrous fires were burning in Victoria, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory as the climax to the terrible heatwave: Sydney faced record heat and was ringed to the north, south and west by bushfires from Palm Beach and Port Hacking to the Blue Mountains, with fires blazing at Castle Hill, Sylvania, Cronulla and French's Forest. Disastrous fires were reported at Penrose, Wollongong, Nowra, Bathurst, Ulludulla, Mittagong, Trunkey and Nelligen. ; Australian Capital Territory Canberra was facing the "worst bushfires" it had experienced, with thousands of acres burned out and a fire front was driven towards the city by a south westerly gale, destroying pine plantations and many homesteads, and threatening Mount Stromlo Observatory, Government House, and Black Mountain. Large numbers of men were sent to stand by government buildings in the line of fire. While five deaths in New South Wales were reported, in Victoria the death toll had reached more than sixty. ; South Australia In
South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a States and territories of Australia, state in the southern central part of Australia. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, which in ...
, the Adelaide Hills bushfires also swept the state, destroying dozens of buildings.


Comparison with other major bushfires

Internationally, south-eastern Australia is considered one of the three most fire-prone landscapes on Earth, along with southern California and the southern Mediterranean. Major Victorian bushfires occurred on
Black Thursday Black Thursday is a term used to refer to typically negative, notable events that have occurred on a Thursday. It has been used in the following cases: *6 February 1851 – devastating day of bushfires in Victoria, Australia *21 June 1877 execut ...
in 1851, where an estimated were burnt, followed by another blaze on Red Tuesday in February 1898 in South Gippsland when about were burnt, 12 people died and more than 2,000 buildings were destroyed. The deadly pattern continued with more major fires on Black Sunday on 14 February 1926 sees the tally rise to sixty lives being lost and widespread damage to farms, homes and forests. Considered in terms of both loss of property and loss of life the 1939 fires were one of the worst disasters, and certainly the worst bushfire event, to have occurred in Australia up to that time. Only the subsequent
Ash Wednesday bushfires The Ash Wednesday bushfires, known in South Australia as Ash Wednesday II, were a Bushfires in Australia, series of bushfires that occurred in south-eastern Australia in 1983 on 16 February. Within twelve hours, more than 180 bushfires, fires f ...
in 1983 and the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009 resulted in more deaths. In terms of the total area burnt, the 1974–75 fires burned , equivalent to 15% of Australia's land, while the Black Friday fires burned up and the
Black Thursday Black Thursday is a term used to refer to typically negative, notable events that have occurred on a Thursday. It has been used in the following cases: *6 February 1851 – devastating day of bushfires in Victoria, Australia *21 June 1877 execut ...
fires of 1851 having burnt an estimated .


See also

* List of disasters in Australia by death toll *
Ash Wednesday bushfires The Ash Wednesday bushfires, known in South Australia as Ash Wednesday II, were a Bushfires in Australia, series of bushfires that occurred in south-eastern Australia in 1983 on 16 February. Within twelve hours, more than 180 bushfires, fires f ...
* Black Saturday bushfires * Black Thursday bushfires *
Country Fire Service The South Australian Country Fire Service (SACFS, commonly abbreviated as CFS) is a volunteer based fire service in the Australian state of South Australia. The CFS has responsibility as the Control Agency for firefighting, rescues and Hazar ...
(South Australia) * Country Fire Authority (Victoria, Australia) * New South Wales Rural Fire Service (Australia) * Adelaide Hills bushfires *Book: ''Forests of Ash'' by Tom Griffiths, published in 2002


References


External links

* *McHugh, Peter. (2020). Forests and Bushfire History of Victoria : A compilation of short stories, Victoria. https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-2899074696/view *
Black Friday site on the ABC
ABC site with comprehensive coverage of all aspects of the fires.
Map of the area burnt by the 1939 bushfiresState Library of Victoria's Bushfires in Victoria Research Guide
Guide to locating books, government reports, websites, statistics, newspaper reports and images about the Black Friday fires.
Royal Commission to Inquire into the Causes of and Measures Taken to Prevent the Bush Fires of January 1939
Digitised copy of the Royal Commission report, available from the State Library of Victoria's catalogue. {{Bushfires in Australia Bushfires in Victoria (state) 1930s fires in Oceania 1939 fires 1930s wildfires January 1939 1930s in Victoria (state) 1939 disasters in Australia