Huge Bush Fires Rage In Australia

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31841, 20 November 1968, Page 17

Huge Bush Fires Rage In Australia

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) SYDNEY, November 19. Australia’s summertime heritage of fire sprang in earnest along the nation’s eastern seaboard today, spawned in part by temperatures of more than 100 degrees and threatening settlements in Queensland and New South Wales.

By early evening, huge bush fires raged unchecked throughout south-east Queensland, blackening sprawling banana plantations in the rich hinterland of the Gold Coast.

Near the smoky industrial heartland of Newcastle in New South Wales, more than 100 army firefighters were battling a blaze sweeping through State forests fanned by a stiff southerly.

On the roiling bushlands of the Blue Mountains, part of Australia's great dividing range, some 30 women and children were hustled into trucks today for evacuating from a hamlet named Mountain Lagoon. A bush fife bearing down on the settlement swallowed hundreds of acres of woodland by early evening. It was not known how the deserted hamlet fared. Only a few miles from

Mountain Lagoon, near the village of Bilpin, a second uncontrolled outbreak trapped a fire-fighting police party for more than an hour and destroyed a hay-loaded articulated truck.

The driver escaped, according to police. A police party near Windsor. only 35 miles north-west of Sydney, on the'Hawksbury

River, had a narrow escape today when fire edged ahead of them. When they turned to flee, they found their path cut by a 30ft wall of flame. The officer in charge of

Blue Mountains fire-fighting, Inspector Bill Hodder, radioed surrounding settlements: “Send more men and equip-; rnent.” In the Newcastle-Cessnock coalfields district, the Army: fire-fighters late today were frantically trying to halt the flames' advance on the big Singleton Army base. Police described the situation at Cessnock, 109 miles north of Sydney, as “extremely grim." A major outbreak was racing towards the town and every available fire appliance —from tankers to garden hoses—was rushed into battle as the bush fire lunged at wood and grasslands just a half-mile distant. Unconfirmed reports said some homes were razed today near Cessnock.