AIDA project remembers Ash Wednesday experience

“There were friends of mine down at Lorne and I said to them look if you get in trouble please come here. There’s a bed here for you for the night.

“Little did I know that I’d be the one that would be standing out at night with no bed and no house while we watched it, from the hall, burn.

“They are things that I try to forget, but I don’t.” – Fiona Ethell

Fiona Ethell and her family dodged flames and falling power poles to take shelter in Aireys Inlet Hall as Ash Wednesday’s bushfire inferno descended on the town in 1983.

They had escaped their home with minutes to spare and from their refuge at the hall witnessed extraordinary scenes as their town was consumed by firestorm.

Forty years on the experiences of Fiona Ethell, son Bob and other Aireys Inlet community members have become part of a powerful oral history.

A new Ash Wednesday Remembered digital archive created by Aireys Inlet and District Association, AIDA, shares raw, heartfelt and inspiring testimonies of devastation and recovery from 30 people including frontline firefighters, long-time and seasonal residents and community volunteers.

Ash Wednesday’s inferno razed Traditional Countries of the Gadabanud People and Wadawurrung People as it raced from Deans Marsh to Lorne and then raged along the Surf Coast to Anglesea, torching 41,000 hectares, claiming three lives and 729 homes, including 219 in Aireys Inlet, 177 in Fairhaven, 87 in Moggs Creek and 32 at Eastern View.

Though Aireys Inlet was among hardest hit communities its stories had never been formally archived.

AIDA mobilised its Ash Wednesday Remembered project with support funding from Council’s Community Initiatives grants program, commissioning local documentary maker Alexander Watkins to conduct and document interviews.

He says he feels humbled to have been trusted by survivors like Fiona Ethell with stories of ‘hardship and humanity’, and hopes the archive will grow as a testimony to community strength, helping to deepen understanding of disasters and fire preparedness.

AIDA committee member and project co-ordinator Peter McPhee says the archive ‘rectifies a silence’ in recording Aireys Inlet’s Ash Wednesday experience.

“The Ash Wednesday bushfire 40 years ago was the most significant event of the past century in our district. We are gratified that such a superb collection of recollections and images has been created to mark the losses, sadness and bravery of that time,” he says.

Visit the digital archive