Listed below are selected extracts from the Royal Commission report written by Judge Leonard Stretton, who was selected to lead the inquiry into the 1939 Victoria bushfires.

You can read about the cause of the fires, the evidence given, the role of the Forest Commission, and other general findings in the Report.

Judge Stretton’s was instructed to specifically inquire into the causes of and measures taken to prevent the 1939 bushfires, and to protect life and property and the measures to be taken to prevent bushfires in Victoria and to protect life and property in the event of future bushfires.

The final report into the 1939 bushfires was presented to both Houses of Parliament by His Excellency’s Command in Victoria in 1939.

There is a long standing feud between forestry officers and officers of the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works, and between officers of these bodies and those of other water authorities, on the one hand, and farmers and settlers on the other, who consider that their properties are endangered by the state of nature which the water conservator and the forester consider to be the best attainable state in the forest areas under their controls.

The water supply authority has, in many instances, in furtherance of its desire to give full supply of uncontaminated water, allowed its area to become a menace to the rest of the forest.

It appears that a large part of the Board's policy of prevention of outbreak and spread of fires is to be left to Nature. Nature, however, in another department of its working, sends the abnormal season which encourages the major fire which consumes the forest.