Ray recalls the run of his life

By Casey Neill
RAY Tremain vividly recalls sprinting for his life as a raging bushfire in Belgrave Heights threatened to engulf his path home 70 years ago.
Mr Tremain was just five years old when the Black Friday bushfires swept through the hills in January 1939.
A long drought, severe summer weather conditions and extreme winds were to blame for the fires that ripped apart two million hectares and claimed 71 lives across Victoria.
Mr Tremain had moved to Lockwood Road with his mother and eight-year-old brother Jack following his father’s death in 1937.
The 75-year-old told the Mail he saw distant smoke and flames as he began the 2.5 kilometre trek to Belgrave Heights Primary School one fateful morning in late January.
Mr Tremain, Jack and two neighbours took their usual path across the golf links that backed onto his property, and along Colby Drive.
The school’s 20 students attended classes as usual until lunchtime.
But as the blaze got closer, Headmaster Sidney Courtier sent the children home.
“I was so young,” Mr Tremain said.
The fire front forced the four boys to take a different route home, along Belgrave-Hallam and Mt Morton roads.
“Then the fire was catching up to us. The wind had swung around,” Mr Tremain said. “We ran as fast as we could because embers were falling around us and trees were burning and falling down.”
The fire was getting faster as he neared his home. “It chased us,” he said.
The house was built in the middle of their half-acre block and the tree line ended at the property’s fence.
Thankfully, the flames stopped there too.
“It was very scary,” Mr Tremain said.
The fire burnt through the golf links, where the Belgrave Convention Centre is today, but did not claim a single house or life in the area.
Mr Tremain can hardly believe 20 children were sent out to fend for themselves with a fire front approaching.
“Something like that would never happen today,” he said. “It was a very frightening experience. I can still remember running along the road.”
Mr Tremain and his family moved away from the area in 1941.
Years later he was caught in a bushfire in Anglesea and was forced to sleep on the beach.
He also fought blazes in the Dandenong Ranges as a volunteer in the 1960s. But 1939 remains his closest call.
See Page 5 for more on the 1939 bushfires.