Page:ChroniclesofEarlyMelbournevol.1.pdf/482

style:—" Yesterday yvas the most oppressively hot day remembered in the colony. T h e sirocco that prevailed during the day yvas as hot as the blast of a furnace—really scorching; clouds of dust accompanied by stifling heat penetrating every building in the city. People going out on business were like millers dealing in very dirty flour. If readers can imagine the atmosphere of dust, ashes, steam, heat and suffocation that one might experience in looking into M o u n t Etna immediately after its being extinguished by a yvaterspout, they can form a tolerably fair idea of Melbourne on the 6th February, 1851." If the volcanoism and yvaterspouting be excised from the above, there is a strong substratum of reality in it. But it was not long before accounts of yvoe and desolation came trooping into town, and for a week after every wind that blew bore upon its yvings tales of general ruin, individual losses, and suffering that harroyved those w h o listened to them. East, yvest, north, and south joined in the same refrain of the ravages caused by the bush conflagrations. Amongst the Plenty Ranges the calamity yvas hardly capable of description. T h e lire had, it was said, originated in that quarter through the carelessness of two bullockdrivers, w h o had camped on the AVednesday evening by the D i a m o n d Creek, and left some logs burning when they went ayvay next morning ; these settingfireto the long drought-parched grass, the flames spread everywhere, and fanned by the hot winds fired the bush in every direction. T h e conflagration sped along to the surrounding ranges, and the yvhole country side yvas so rapidly turned into a billowy ocean offire,that the few settlers looked on half dead with fear, and, in the words of one of them, "thought there yvas an end of the world." T h efirekept enlarging its orbit, rolling about like some huge monster, destroying everything it touched, its track marked by charred timber, embers and ashes, cries and lamentations. Not content yvith dashing along the ground, it ran up the highest trees, and the flames leaped in monkey fashion from tree to tree. T h e scrub and brushyvood were ignited as if by the wind, which acted as an avant courier in piloting the course of the fiercer element. T h efirealso glided swift as lightning along the margins of the several creeks up one side and d o w n another, and some of the people ruined by its operation, never even saw it until it crashed in about them with a crackling and roaring clamour positively astounding. A shepherd in the employ of Dr. Ronald saw a large column offireappear suddenly on the top of a hill opposite to yvhere he yvas, deploy, and m a k e rapidly towards him, w h e n he rushed to his hut to warn his yvife, who, with their child, had just time to save themselves by taking refuge on some burned ground over yvhich the blaze had passed. All the chattels they recovered was half a blanket, and some of the personal effects yvhich sought to be rescued were burned in the man's arms. T h e damage done in the Plenty district was considerable. A n unfortunate settler named M'Lelland lost his wife, five children, h o m e and 1100 sheep. Mr. John Bear suffered m u c h by the loss of cattle, and more than 100 persons were left homeless and penniless. A farmer named M'Pherson left h o m e on the Thursday morning to borrow a threshingmachine, but on returning in a couple of hours he found all his worldly property a heap of ashes. Everyone about there was more or less a loser, and there was nothing talked of but thefireand its horrors. Mr. John Harlin was nearly quite burnt out. Every inch of the fencing at his place yvas destroyed, and four m e n in his employ only saved themselves by plunging into a waterhole. O n e Edward Doversdale was with a mate herding cattle when the flames suddenly encircled them. T h e mate escaped to an eminence clear of timber and grass within a short distance, and Doversdale jumped into a creek, where he was afterwards found so maimed that he was conveyed to the Melbourne Hospital, and died after lingering in excruciating agony for a yveek. Every place was a scene of misery and lamentation; the dead carcasses of sheep, horses and cattle blocked up the waterways and thoroughfares ; and an excursion such as I m a d e in that quarter two days after was a sickening trip to take. In one portion of the D i a m o n d Creek yvas a pile of sheep and bullocks, most of them dead, but some of the bullocks yvere in the last agonies of life ; and yvhen anything was seen to approach some of the poor creatures yvould emit a yell enough to freeze the blood in one's veins. Amongst them yvas a valuable mare, alive and othenvise uninjured, except being rendered stone blind from the effects of the fire. About twenty bullocks yvere blind and half roasted, though alive and yvrithing with torture, and moaning in a heart-rending manner. Another remarkable occurrence yvas the finding in several places of hundreds of dead opossums and snakes, some of the latter several feet long. From the Plenty head to Diamond Creek was one vast area of desolation ; and had not the wind changed at a critical period of the day, m a n y believed that the ruin would have travelled along the Yarra to Heidelberg,