“RUN RIOT”

Wairarapa Daily Times, 20 January 1932, Page 5

“RUN RIOT”

NATURE’B VAGARIES.

FIRE AND WATER,

(Received Wednesday, 10.60 a.m.) SYDNEY, This Day. Nature appears to have run riot in Australia. While Queensland is suffering from a cyclone and floods New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia are in the grip of a heat wave and bush fires. Great fires are raging in Victoria, in forest-covered ranges, on the shores of the Southern Ocean and to the north of Melbourne. A dozen gangers raced for life along a mile of railway track to Moe, with flames jnany feet high on each side. Groups of men at Upper Beaeonsfield had narrow escapes when trapped by walls of flames. Many fire-fighters collapsed. Mr. T. Bourke’s home at Bayswater, valued at £60,000, was destroyed. Five children were rescued in the nick of time. The smoke haze is as thick as dense fog and hangs over the whole of Victoria and extends several miles out to sea-. The steamer Mcrnoo was forced to reduce speed for safety and arrived at Melbourne a day late. The mercury reached 111 degrees at Melbourne. Adelaide experienced another sizzling day, with a maximum of 107 degree and many towns in western New South Wales reported century readings. There was a strange scene at a funeral at Innisfial when a coffin was akent as far as posible by motor lorry and then transferred to a flat-bottom-ed boat which, men walking in water up to their armpits, projjelled towards the cemetery.