Ash Wednesday MemorialPrint Page

The stone entrance to the school commemorates the rebuilding of the school which was destroyed in the Ash Wednesday bushfires in 1983. The stones were taken from the former school buildings. 

The Ash Wednesday bushfires, were a series of bushfires that occurred in south-eastern Australia on 16 February 1983, which was Ash Wednesay in the Christian calendar. Within twelve hours, more than 180 fires fanned by winds of up to 110 kilometres per hopur caused widespread destruction across the states of Victoria and South Australia.Years of severe drought and extreme weather combined to create one of Australia's worst fire days in a century.The fires became the deadliest bushfire in Australian history until the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009. In Victoria 47 people died. There were 28 deaths in South Australia.

The Mount Macedon fires burned 400 homes and 30,000 hectares of forest, and have become etched in the collective memories of Victorians as one of the more terrible experiences of the realities of the Australian bush.

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