Photo Mary Voorwinde

Here, parrots glitter in red and green.
The jay with feathers of sober sheen.
The laughing jackass, the whip bird bright,
Wheel and whirl in their joyous flight,
The jeweled lizard with scampering feet,
Takes no heed of the noonday heat.
The kangaroo and wallaby pass
Taking their toll of the luscious grass.
The Nature scatters with lavish hand
Her wealth of treasure through all the land.

A swagman passing along the way
Boiling his billy one Summer’s day
With careless hand his camp fire scatters,
He had had his meal, and nought else matters.
A puff of wind, a spark, a flicker,
A reddening glow o’er the sticks runs quicker:
A few dry leaves, like a powred train
Swiftly carries the creeping flame,
Some rotten branches, a sapless tree
An upward spring – and the fire-fiend’s free.

Higher and higher his read arms grasp.
Tighter is drawn their burning clasp:
From tree to tree the red flame goes,
Sraring the grass thet beneath them grows:
Yet wider those blazing arms stretch forth
Eastward and Westward, to South and North.
Till al the land, like a funeral pyre
Is a blazing furnace of liquid fire.
Wide flung are the blood red gates of hell
And dancing devils the red tide swell.

Like a far off whisper of coming ill
The hearts of God’s creatures with terror fill,
The lyre-bird starts in the shadows dim,
And the jackass’ laugh has an echo grim.
The parrots fly with frightened shriek,
And the wallaby leaps o’er the reddening creek:
The snake and possum go side by side
Blind fear, to their flight, the only guide.
The fire-fiend comes, with his read arms spread
Gathers them living, and leaves them dead.

The whole wide land, that has glowes with life
Laughed with brightness, and throbbed with strife.
Lies charred and blackened, as formless things
To which no semblance of life now clings:
No bird, no beast, nor thing that crawls
No sound on the deadly silence falls.
And Autumn’s fingers are powerless quite
To soften destruction’s awfull blight,
And Winter comes with its cold and rain
But brings no help in its bitter train.

The slow weeks pass on their weary way,
Till, suddenly, one brightening day
A green flush spreads o’er the waking earth
The fresh grass springs in its bright new birth.
The radiant sun and the soft Spring air
Bring forth all manner of verdure rare:
The settler now, with hardy toil,
Clears and prepares the fruitful soil,
And the stricken land, that had useless lain
Is ready for cattle or golden grain.

Miss Florence Finn

This poem was found in a rare book "The Land of the Lyrebird: a Story of Settlement in the Great Forest of South Gippsland" published in 1920 and now available on te internet: archive.org/details/landoflyrebirdst00melb/page/308/mode/2up

Photo Murray Lowe

In that book there are several accounts of the great bushfires which occurred in the period of December 1897 - February 1898.

"Almost the only lihgt now was the read glare of the distant fire reflected on the canopy of smoke overhead, and to look upwards was like looking up into a great dome of burnished copper, that glowed and paled alternatively under the influence of the wind on the distant masses of flame. There seemed to be some unusual quality in the atmosphere that changed the appearance of flame and of burning embers. Flame burned with a steely blue light, and embers looked like glowing pieces of silver…. Riding to the top of a hill from which we could get a view Eastward, up the valley of the Bass, we caught our first view of the fire. A far-blown spark, carried along in some upper current, had lit a patch of cut scrub far up the valley, and the strange looking flame appeared to be blowing over it. It looked like a molten silver, with tongues of it running up the dry trees like silver snakes." (T.J. Coverdale).