As is now common knowledge, at the Matlock Mills, where a large number of men were employed, terrible events happened last week, when raging fires, sweeping through the ranges from three directions, devastated the whole forest, reducing it to a blackened ruin and taking terrible toll of human lives.

The mills destroyed were: Henderson’s (where one life was lost), Porta’s, Richards’ and Fitzpatrick’s. From the last named mill there was only one survivor, and fifteen lives were sacrificed.

...The only survivor from Fitzpatrick’s mill was George Sellars, whom searchers were amazed to find alive, but only semi-conscious, in a fire blackened area in which every other human being and animal was dead. Given water, Sellars revived, and after a rest seemed to have suffered very little physically from his terrible experience. Later, he recovered fully.

He stated that he owed his life to the fact that he seized some blankets from a drum of water in which they were soaking, wrapped them around himself and ran into a burnt-out clearing through which the fire had passed, and then rolled himself on the ground.

[HG, 21/1/39]