TEMPERATURES rapidly soared into the 40s and strong winds swirled on what has been described as the Loddon’s darkest fire day 60 years ago tomorrow.
Two lives were lost in the Kingower fire that stretched from Inglewood to Rheola, among them volunteer fireman Alan McKean
Four other firemen were injured when the flames came over a hill near Arnold.
One was Kevin Poyser who had rushed from his job at the Bridgewater flour mill to jump on the brigade’s truck as sirens summonsed firefighters to action soon after lunch.
“I can’t remember a day as bad with the heat and an immense wind from early in the morning,” Kevin recalled this week. “The siren was still going when we left the station on an Austin tanker - Don Jenkins was the driver, Charlie Lumber, Jack Jenkins and myself were on the back.”
Kevin said: “We weren’t there long ... in a paddock that had not been stripped at Arnold West, the truck became immobile when a wall of fire came over the top of us.
“Don, who was a mechanic, tried to get the truck moving ... it just wouldn’t move.
“Within minutes, it might have been seconds. It all happened so quickly ... the truck tyres were well alight. 
“We then walked, side by side,  probably half a kilometre to a farmhouse where there were people, the four of us were put in the back of a ute and taken to Inglewood hospital.
“It was a horrific drive and painful, especially with the wind.”
For Jack and Kevin, it would be the start of six months of care at Bendigo and Melbourne’s Preston and Northcote Community Hospital for skin grafts and later plastic surgery as they recovered from burns in the fire.
Kevin said it was only last year that he returned to that Arnold West paddock where the Bridgewater tanker crew was injured on January 17, 1965. 
“It was a shocking day and a savage fire.”

Reports in the Wedderburn Express described the blaze as the largest to eve