AVENAL.

Waikato Times, Volume VII, Issue 428, 13 February 1875, Page 5 (Supplement)

AVENAL.

For the last few days extensive files have been raging in the Plenty Ranges, and on Tnursday the flames entered the valley, doing a considerable amount of damage. Numbers of fences were burnt. So fierce was the fire raging that the Plenty District appeared at one time to be one mass of flames. At Darriwill and the She-oak Ranges it is believed that between two or three thousand pounds' worth of property has been destroyed, he countiy for many miles square being cleared of fencing and pasturage. The fire in this diiection extended from Chevy Estate, on the i Queenscliff road to the Barwon River, causing a great amount of destruction to the holdings of small farmers. The heat was intense : pigs were roasted in their styes. A bush-fire laged in the vicinity of Leigh load township, sweeping over Mr. M'Fadzean s paddock, spread fiom thence into Milward s, at Bruces Creek, and swept over the pound and fair enclosures into Milward's paddock again. . In Geelong the thermometer registered 113 in the shade at one o'clock, and 115 half an hour afteiwaids. Dm ing the heat a young man named Robinson, when driving a cait on the main road, was struck down by coup de soleil. The Grampians will be almost stripped of herbage and undergiowth fiom end to end. In Gipps Land the horizon appeared like a circle of fire, and bush files laged near Glencoe station, and at Toongabbie. Sale was in the centre of a circle of conflagration.