Aust, holocaust recalled

Press, 2 March 1984, Page 6

Aust, holocaust recalled

By CHRIS PETERS, NZPA Melbourne

This time last year people all over Victoria and South Australia were starting to pick the remains of their lives from the ashes of what have become known as the Ash Wednesday Fires.

Seventy-three people died in the fires that raged in two states, more than 2000 homes were destroyed, 25,000 head of stock and countless wild animals perished in the nine main infernos.

In New Zealand, as in the

rest of the world, people started digging into their pockets to help, and the cash flowed into Australia — about sAust3 million from Britain, $252,000 from New Zealand plus $20,000 worth of grass seed, a jumbo jet-load of aid from the Netherlands, and a cheque for SUS2O from an American woman asking that it be given to the woman in an attached photograph cut from an American newspaper. There were the tragedies, such as the South Australian farmer whose wife and four

young children died with a neighbour as they tried to flee the fires while he was away defending his parents’ home nearby, and the 12 firemen trapped in their two fire-trucks trying to get up a back-track to defend the Victorian town of Upper Beaconsfield.

Ash Wednesday, 1983, fell on February 16. This year it will be on March 7. Some of the anniversary commemorations have already been held, but in the minds of the victims the fires will always be associated with the feastday 40 days before Easter.