‘There was literally a ring of fire about us’
A rare audio recording from 1967 of 11-year-old Tasmanian boy Bob Elliston, talking about his family’s successful efforts to save their rural home during the Black Tuesday bushfires on 7 February.
The Black Tuesday fires claimed 62 lives, making them the deadliest in Tasmanian history. Hundreds of other people were injured, and 7000 people were left homeless.
A subsequent Royal Commission found that 110 separate fires had been burning within a 56 km radius of Hobart. Some came within two kms of the city’s CBD.
“It was just a miracle that we got out of it,” says Bob Elliston, whose home was at Longley, about 15 km south-west of Hobart. “There was literally a ring of fire about us.”
(Note the difference between 1960s and modern-day Australian accents!).
(Audio courtesy of John Teniswood).
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