Dwellingup fires of 1961
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The Dwellingup fires (20 to 24 January and 24 February to early March, 1961) were a series of devastating bushfires that burned large areas of forest in the southwest of Western Australia. The towns of Dwellingup and Karridale were largely destroyed by the fires, as were a large number of already historic sawmills that fell into disuse around fifty years before the fires. There were also major fires at Pemberton and in the Shannon River region further to the south.
Whilst the 1960 rainy season over the affected region had not been excessively dry, rainfall had been below average over the region affected by the fires ever since August of that year - thus the forests were perhaps even drier than they would normally be by January. However, the underlying cause of the Dwellingup fires lay far to the north in the Pilbara, where a tropical cyclone formed on 18 January north of Onslow and moved steadily southwards, hitting that town on the 20th. With a strong high pressure system to the east of the cyclone remaining almost stationary for some days, hot northeasterly winds developed and became so intense that by the 20th maximum temperatures throughout the south west were uniformly above 40 °C (104 °F) and remained at that level for the following five days. During this period, the cyclone moved slowly along the coast and as it drenched Onslow and the neighbouring district, only dry thunderstorms occurred in the southwest, which started fires that spread extremely radpily in the hot, windy conditions.
The first fires were reported from Dwellingup, 110 km south of Perth, Western Australia on the 19th and the following day, fires erupted in the timbered country of the Darling Range around Mundaring and Mount Helena. Although as the cyclone tracked down the west coast some rain came around January 24 to ease the fires, not all of them were fully extinguished. Moreover, as the normal dry summer weather evaporated further moisture from the forests, when another (more severe) cyclone hit Onslow on 24 February it caused even stronger winds (sustained at up to 60 km/h or 37 miles per hour with much stronger gusts) and as this cyclone did not produce any rain since it moved inland and lost intensity, decaying bushfires were re-ignited to fatal effect.
The fire from Dwellingup consequently moved downslope toward the major town of Pinjarra where it burned a significant portion of the town's buildings. 123 people were left homeless and as the karri forests near Karridale began re-igniting, the entire population of Karridale and a number of other mill towns was relocated to Dwellingup in the following days. As the fires continued to burn owing to the strong winds, many tiny timber towns were completely burnt out - Holyoake, Nanga Brook, Marrinup and Banksiadale were never to be re-built.
Ironically, it was the rain from Onslow's third cyclone in five weeks that finally put out the burning fires. However, in all it is estimated that the fires burned a total of 4,400 square kilometres (1,700 square miles) of bushland, and property damage far exceeded this. It is indeed a major miracle that no lives were lost in the fires, although many people's lives were thrown into turmoil as a result of losing their homes.
Following the fires, there was extensive investigation into their cause and in the following years many recommendations were made to improve backburning in the tall eucalypt forests of the southwest. However, many critics have noted that backburning in Western Australian forests was already widely practiced before the 1961 fire disaster.
