Jenny Drummond still remembers the hot and windy day fire tore along the Bengworden Road threatening farms and livestock.
It was January 15, 1978, and Mrs Drummond was then Mrs Patterson, married to sheep and cattle farmer, Peter Patterson.
The couple lived on a 1000-acre grazing property with their three teenage sons, Andrew, Mark and James.
It was a comfortable and happy life, until one fateful day.
“I remember clearly Peter pulling the curtains open that morning and saying ‘it’s going to be a dreadful day’,” Mrs Drummond said.
As she busied herself organising breakfast for her boys, little did she realise just how dreadful that Sunday would be, that by day’s end, their property will have been threatened by an inferno and her beloved husband would lose his life trying to protect the farm.
The Bairnsdale bushfire also took the life of Ronald Armstrong, a farmer and fireman, who had a property in Boundary Road.
In all, 6500 livestock would be lost, one house razed and 36 outbuildings burnt.
The fire, which started after a trailer wheel bearing ignited grass on the Princes Highway in Bairnsdale, was fueled by hot northerly winds.
While the fire would be brought under control by nightfall, its destruction would leave deep scars.
Mrs Drummond remembers her husband, the secretary of the Bengworden Fire Brigade, fighting the fire near Comleys Road.
“He was trying to stop it going onto our property on Bengworden Road,” she said.
“It had already destroyed a lot of our fencing and Peter was trying to prevent it going further.”
The couple’s 16-year-old son, Mark, was with his father who was using a water tank from the back of a ute in an attempt to douse the fire.
However, when the fire ignited gum trees on both sides of Bengworden Road, Mr Patterson screamed at his son to jump in the ute and drive home.
Mark arrived back at the farm safely where his mother and youngest brother, James, were waiting.
Mr Patterson was found in a paddock by a local farmer.
He was rushed to the Bairnsdale Hospital before being flown to Melbourne.
Mrs Drummond saw her husband at Bairnsdale before he was flown to the city.
She explained that his heart had stopped a couple of times and hence the decision to fly him to Melbourne.
After the fire, which burnt right down to the Banksia Peninsula, was eventually brought under control, a strange new blackness bearded the landscape.
Mrs Drummond was by then half way to Melbourne to see Mr Patterson in hospital.
Drummond this week received a visit from the Volunteer Fire Brigade’s support officer, Mark Dryden, who presented her with a framed photograph of the plaque which commemorates her late husband.
It honors firefighters who lost their lives during fires and has been in a garden at the CFA training ground in Fiskville for many years.
The ground is about to be decommissioned and the plaque will soon be placed at Treasury Gardens, where all emergency services personnel, who have died in the line of duty will be remembered.
PICTURED: Jenny Drummond, whose late husband died while fighting the 1978 Bairnsdale bushfire, is presented with a framed photo of the plaque honoring his death. Beside her are Graeme East, president of the volunteer fire brigade for district 11, and Mark Dryden, VFB support officer.
