BLUE MOUNTAINS RESORT

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 January 1942, Page 5

BLUE MOUNTAINS RESORT

WIDESPREAD BUSH FIRES

SYDNEY, Jan. 14. Caves House, the 92-room guesthouse at the famous Jenolan Caves, in the Blue Mountains, 80 miles from Sydney, was threatened with destinotion for 24 hours by a fierce bushfire. Kia-Ora, a private guest-house five miles away, was destroyed. Drought conditions have made the bush like tinder, and when the lire started in a gully a lew miles from Jenolan at 2 p.m. on Monday, it spread over a huge area, ranging along valleys and over mountains. When the Caves House became threatened the manager, Mr. V. Rose, called on the guides, electricians, labourers, guests and domestic staff, to stand by all night to help fight the “Luckily the wind shifted slightly in the afternoon and the fire swept down a valley,” said Mr. Rose. I have never seen such flames. They advanced about 10 miles an hour, allhough the wind was not strong. The roar could be heard miles away, the (lames rose 100 feet above the tops of trees. The continual crashing of trees was like a scries of explosions. The whole sky was obliterated by thick smoke. The famous brown wallabies so well known to caves visitors tore in fright through the burning bush. They made for the caverns of the Devil’s Coach-house and Grand Arch, where they are safe.” Mr. Rose said he knew by the direction the lire was travelling that Kia I Ora guest house was in the danger zone, and with six guides raced to the house about 5 p.m. Mr. and Mrs. E. G. Corney, who manage the house, and their son were alone. AFLAME IN FEW MINUTES “I was on the telephone speaking to the captain of the volunteer fire brigade,” said Mr. Rose, “when I heard the fire close to the house. I shouted to the captain: “I’ll have to leave you now, the flames are coming in the back door.’ I hung up and dashed outside as the house started to burn. In a few minutes it was an inferno. The Corneys rescued a few personal belongings and blankets.” Kia-Ora was a two-storey weatherboard building of 20 rooms, unattached bungalow and outhouses. Volunteers from neighbouring towns, police from Lithgow, and more than 100 soldiers from a camp 50 miles away, who arrived in trucks on Tuesday, burned breaks. Besides protecting the Caves House they saved a Government hardwood and pine forest of 12,000 acres. The five miles of winding road to Caves House was closed, the last Cairo go through being a Government Tourist Bureau service-car. Through the burning area it was guided by a truck from Jenolan Caves. There was continuous danger of falling trees, and more than once the party had to clear away burning tree-trunks which had fallen across the road. Telephone lines and a bridge were destroyed.