Summary

Extract of video recording of an interview with Mona Farr by Liza Dale-Hallett conducted at her home, Kinglake, 6 August 2010. In this extract Mona Farr reads the final two stanzas of her poem '1919 Bushfire', which she lived through when she was 9 years old.

Mona Farr was born in 1909 and was featured in the media following Black Saturday, as a "triple-fire survivor" of three major bushfires: 1919, 1939 and 2009. Mona Farr married in 1932 and continued to live in the Otways at 'Laughing Waters', a mixed farm surrounded by pine trees, she and her husband lived through the 1939 bushfires. In 2009 Mona Farr was living with her younger son, Peter Farr, in his home at Kinglake; Peter and his son successfully defended their home. Many of the homes in his road were destroyed on Black Saturday, including his daughter's home.

This video extract is part of two interviews in which Mona Farr describes her background and early life growing up on a farm in Beech Forest, in the Otway Ranges, Victoria. Mona Farr recalls her life interest in art, writing prose and poetry. The interview features Mona recollections of the 1919 bushfire which she experienced when she was 9 years old. She also reads a poem, titled '1919 bushfire', which she wrote when she was about 18 years old. Both her recollection and the poem provide detailed and evocative descriptions of the experience of fire at a time prior to telephones, electricity and the Country Fire Authority (CFA). Mona Farr describes how families raced away in horse-drawn buggies, the scarcity of water, how a 5 gallon cache of ginger beer saved their lives, how a wild fox sheltered in their home at the height of the fire, and how "birds fell out of the sky with a sad little plop". These interviews also include her more experience in being evacuated just ten minutes before the 2009 Black Saturday bushfire hit Kinglake, and her experience of returning to Kinglake five weeks later. She recalls how "there was just the house sitting in amongst the ashes", there were no birds for many weeks after the fires, and "there were heroes on that day that will never be known".

Description of Content

In this interview Mona reads the last two stanza of her 1919 poem recounting her experience as a 9 year old child in the Otway bushfires: Through suffocating smoke and heat, we struggled to draw breath And some while fighting for their homes, were trapped and burned to death. Though the odds were great, all they had they gave, battling for all they were worth, And many will carry the scars to their grave of that terrible hell on earth. Now the ranges are all green again, blooming brightly in the spring, And amongst the slender saplings the wild birds nest and sing. But the swaying golden wattle and the scent of sweet briar Can never teach us to forget the Nineteen-Nineteen fire.

Physical Description

Digital file.

Significance

Mona Farr is one of few who has lived through three major bushfires: 1919, 1939 and 2009. This interview offers a rare and evocative description and example of the enduring presence of fire in Victoria's landscape.

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