Name: Jack Jones

Age: 85
Occupation during 1939: Lived on a farm near Wangarra and was on a bus on the Great Ocean Road, near Lorne, when a fire swept down onto the road, forcing him to shelter in the sea.
Age at time of fire: 18
Location of interview: Birregurra

"We could see that the fire was going to reach the beach and cut us off, and I mentioned this to Charlie. He said, “I can see that”."

In those days, you didn’t listen to the wireless to see what the weather was going to be. You had little idea. I was going with a truckload of sheep to Geelong and in those times, the trucks were a fair size, but the engines were never big enough to pull the truck well.

As we came up to Forrest and Birregurra it started to get hot, like a hot north wind. The chap that was driving the truck had a pair of rubber boots as well as his leather boots. He’d use his leather boots for driving, but the rubber boots if he had to get out and work with the sheep. I had to jump out every time we’d pass a dam and run down and fill the rubber boots with water so we had water for the radiator to keep going. It was that hot, the engine was just boiling.

We sold the sheep in Geelong, and I had to go down to the depot and pick up the bus to Apollo Bay. I was travelling to Wangarra, which is eight miles on the Geelong side of Apollo Bay. The chap who happened to be driving the bus was Charlie Simms. He was the son of the proprietor, and a very good friend of mine, like I’d known him all my life.

I said, “I’m going down to Apollo Bay”, and he said “That will be okay. You bought stock?” and I said, “Yes”. Well, we loaded up and headed around to the Ocean Road where it breaks off and you go down to Anglesea. And there was smoke on the horizon, smoke in all directions.

"Charlie threw the bus in under, as close as he could get to the wrong side of the road, hoping that the fire would go over the top of it."

When we got past Lorne, you could see that there was likely to be trouble, so I said to Charlie, “What do you think about it?” He said, “Just shut up and don’t mention it, we’ll just see how we go, but don’t start a riot”. He said, “A lot of people, they’ll do stupid things in an emergency”. Anyhow, we came along and then we could see that the fire was going to reach the beach and cut us off, and I mentioned this to Charlie. He said, “I can see that”.

He said, “We’ll have to get out of it somehow”, and he came to a point where what we call the batter goes up. That’s where the road is cut in under the side of the cliff. Charlie threw the bus in under, as close as he could get to the wrong side of the road, hoping that the fire would go over the top of it. Which it did later on, but in so doing, it blistered the paint right off this bus.

"We knew we had to get everyone from the bus down onto the beach. It was getting so smoky that you didn’t really recognise what part of the road you were on."

In the meantime, we knew we had to get everyone from the bus down onto the beach. It was getting so smoky that you didn’t really recognise what part of the road you were on. I knew the road well, but you didn’t know just where you were. But we came to this spot, not far from where we’d parked the truck and Charlie said, “We’ll get down here”.

So we had a very quick look to see where the best area to go through was, and there was no particularly good area to get through the tea tree down to the beach. Tea tree is a prickly little bush, which grows about half as high as a refrigerator.

There were several elderly women on the bus, who were coming to Apollo Bay for holidays. They were not panicked, but just sort of saying, “What do we do? Is there anything we can do?”

I’ll tell you one thing; we had to be less than gentlemanly with those elderly ladies. I would get hold of one from the front and sort of pull her, and Charlie would push her through this tea tree.

"The fire was coming right at us. We were standing in the water up to about our knees, and the burning leaves and bits of bark and twigs were landing on us."

They went dumb, but they realised very quickly that they had to go through or else. There was no crying or anything else like that. We pushed them, and they just struggled to keep going. There were two or three and we had to go down a bit of a steep bank onto the sand. Once they got out of the tea tree, there was somebody waiting there. We would give them a push to go over the edge and two or three folk were there to stop them from falling down.

After one had got through, it was easier for the others, because you’d untangle the branches. Finally we got out in the water. By then the fire was coming right at us. We were standing in the water up to about our knees, and the burning leaves and bits of bark and twigs were landing on us. We had to flick water over ourselves to keep our clothes from catching alight, so we went further out. It seemed to last a long time, but I would expect it was not more than a quarter of an hour we were in there.

"The sight of that fire was nothing compared to the volume of the noise, like a crackling and roaring as it was going though the bush."

The fire came, and the sight of that fire was nothing compared to the volume of the noise, like a crackling and roaring as it was going though the bush. It seemed a long, long time, but then when it was burned out, it was burned. When it stopped, we could come back in and onto the sand. We walked along the beach perhaps four or five hundred metres ‘til we found a place where you could get up to the road more easily – a bit of tea tree that hadn’t been subjected to so much burning.

When we got back into the bus, the fuel system had all vaporised, and it wouldn’t start.

But Charlie had a pail of water in the boot of the bus. He just kept pouring it over the carburettor and got it going and away we went. Some time, about 12 months later, I was talking to Charlie and I said, “When we went through that fire, did you think we were at risk?” and he said “Yes, we were at fairly big risk, but not of the fire”.

I said, “Well, what were we in danger of?” And he said, “A lot of people, mainly city dwellers, if they’re caught in a fire, their one objective is to get up the most speed they can with their vehicle, it matters little in which direction, as long as they’re fleeing the fire”.

There was no white line on the Great Ocean Road then. It was a much narrower road. Charlie said, “If they had come around the corner and disabled us in a part where we could not have got down to the beach, it would have been a disaster.” We would have been cooked.

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Read more about the 1939 Black Friday fires in the Otways in the Map Section