In 1983 Kerry Murphy was a 39 year old public servant and Captain of Mt Macedon Fire Brigade.
It was a bad year- with a prolonged drought and severe fire danger.
Today, Kerry is Group Officer for Mt Macedon Group.

"There had been a fire near Daylesford in Nov 1982 where 2 forestry workers had been killed in the Wombat State forest. That fire had run down the western side of the Wombat Forest. A second major fire occurred on the 1^st Feb, 1983 on the north face of Mt Macedon starting near Braemar College. 
The fire ran along the ridge where about 6 houses were lost in Mt Macedon, and more houses down towards Riddells Creek. Significantly, this fire was still burning on the morning of February 16, 1983. Crews had been working since 5am that morning- and more than 2 weeks since the fire began. 
The top half of Mt Macedon Township had been burnt out which would become significant later that day. On the news, we saw that several major fires had broken out around the State, but I was thinking they had nothing to do with our local area- or so I thought....."

 February 16, 1983

"At about 1:20pm, power lines in East Trentham started a fire running into the Wombat State Forest, which was fanned by hot northerly winds.  Whilst local Mt Macedon crews continued to work on the Mt Macedon fire, other CFA Groups and the Forestry Commission took control of the East Trentham fire with up to 100 tankers called in to assist. 

The weather conditions worsened throughout the day, much more than had been forecast by the Weather Bureau. Humidity was down very low, and when the wind change came later that evening, it was much stronger than anticipated- gusting 80-100km/h with very hot dry winds. So the expectation they had of that fire toning down did not occur, and the contingency plans they had to use the army to run dozer breaks down the eastern flank, were not feasible. In naivety, we continued to work on our “little” fire at Mt Macedon (which had burnt several thousand hectares) to keep it under control.

At 9:20pm that evening, a Mrs Trott rang the Mt Macedon fire station to report that a fire had broken out near Roses Recreational Ranch in Bailey’s Road, Macedon. We radioed the Group for support- but there was no support available. We soldiered on with the only resources at hand- one CFA tanker, a Forest Commission “Pig”, and a Landcruiser with Lt Peter Wuthrich and myself. When we got there, we could see flames double the tree height, and a fire front later estimated to be 6-7km wide. I can only describe it as horrific fire conditions. We hurriedly discussed where we would make our “stand’, and decided upon the Calder Highway in the Black Forest. Looking back, it was a token stand because of the enormity of the fire. We evacuated several residents along Bailey’s Road- we just threw them in the truck and got them out of what were horrific circumstances. We called in to Roses Recreational Ranch, however they had decided to stay and defend the property. We gave them some quick advice on what they should do and then progressively fell back as the firestorm approached. Interestingly, the fires kept starting ahead of us- it wasn’t that there was a wall of flame, just fire breaking out all around us. We tried to do what we could, mostly evacuating people and telling them which way to go, particularly in the northern end of Macedon around Cable Street.

We kept calling for assistance, and were assured assistance was coming. But when they told us where it was coming from, it was rather sobering- because it was coming from Swan Hill and Mildura in north-west Victoria, some hours away. The fire had reached Dunns Road, and the Mt Macedon Tanker sensed something was wrong, and decided to make its way home to protect houses. As they fell back, they managed to save quite a few houses.

In Macedon and Mt Macedon, the situation on the ground was chaotic. People were evacuating in all directions, not knowing where they were going. I remember stopping on the corner of Honour Avenue in Macedon and literally turning around a convoy of cars travelling straight towards the fire. We sent them over the top of the Mount to safety. People would later say that they didn’t get any warning to evacuate, but neither did we. There had been no perception in anyone’s mind that Mt Macedon would be in trouble.

Many people were self-evacuating to the Macedon Hotel and Counter Disaster College at Mt Macedon (now the Emergency Management Institute). There was turmoil due to the numbers of people arriving and chaos all around. They had a big old diesel pump at the Disaster College that normally would never start, but on that night they pressed the button and it started first go. Someone was smiling upon us. Water supply on the Mount was almost non-existent because with every house you lost you were losing water out of the system.

Two of the Tankers made a run up the hill past the Counter Disaster College ahead of the fire and I would say they were very lucky to get away with it.  When they actually got above the fire, the crew were very shaken and in a bad way. There was debris and fallen trees across the road everywhere. The Brigade still owns the old chainsaw that got us out. We got back into the town and we ran from house to house putting out fire. We saved many, but lost our last house at 5:30am- it had been burning in the roof for several hours and it was one we just didn’t get to in time. The eventual toll was 8 dead and 399 homes destroyed.

We eventually got out to Gisborne where a task force from the Bellarine Peninsula had arrived which we led back in past my own home, which was miraculously still standing. It had a ½ inch of ash on the roof, the paddocks were burnt but thankfully it didn’t cop the full blast of the fire. 


20 years on, the fire fighting equipment is better, safety is a now number 1 priority, and having aircraft available is a major improvement. The use of aircraft in a fire fight was in its infancy in 1983. On Ash Wednesday, aircraft was being used elsewhere in the State but not at Mt Macedon. If you are going to have a big fire, don’t have the last one in the day when everything is already deployed elsewhere!  

In those days the incident management system had not been introduced. Most fires were run off the bonnet of cars. The incident control system really does make a difference, being able to plan 3 hours ahead rather than being 3 hours behind.  Training is better now too. In those days fire fighters were just using their bush sense and skills, where today training takes a high priority.

The general public are now much more aware, and the other big difference is that in those days there was no awareness campaign about “should I stay or should I go”. There was no advertising like that, so more people would of gone, where today they may be prepared to stay and we would of saved a lot of houses had we had the labour.

My family had followed our agreed plan of pulling the car out onto the gravel drive and if anything happened my wife would get the kids in and stay there until it passed. I remember having this delightful discussion with my wife earlier in the day about putting the hose in the spout. She promptly said “I’m not allowed- there’s water restrictions!”

Other Stories

Peter Moore- Captain of Gisborne Fire Brigade in 1983

Tom Ritchie- Senior Fire Ffighter (Gisborne)

Mary Ritchie- wife of a Fire Fighter