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.

The Lands Department has taken and acted upon the view that it has no right to carry out any fire prevention policy in protected forests because the produce, with the exception of certain ground growth, is under the control of the Forests Department. It confesses that it has no policy of fire prevention, and that if it had it would have no staff therewith to implement such policy.

(The Lands Department was not represented before the Royal Commission, nor did it appear to give evidence, until late in the proceedings, and then only after published comment by your Commissioner concerning its absence and after a written invitation from your Commissioner to be present.

This transparent 'tactical' conduct by a public department, whose government has set up a Commission of Inquiry into matters in which such department is interested is, it is suggested, to be deprecated.)