What a tough old lady!
"I know how they felt"...Mona Farr feels lucky and grateful. Photo: Rebecca Hallas
MONA FARR was entitled to believe life's catastrophes were behind her. But the Kinglake great-grandmother has just survived her third big bushfire.
Relatives helped the 99-year-old flee her weatherboard home late on Saturday as the flames roared towards her. The family spent three days driving to safety via Bonnie Doon, Mansfield and Benalla.
Now staying with her son Brian in Regent, Mrs Farr said these bushfires were the worst she had seen.
"It was a most dreadful day," said Mrs Farr, who survived a major blaze in 1919 and Black Friday in 1939.
She remembers running with her brother Ron with their buckets to fetch water when "fire came straight for us and then it parted and went straight around our house, for some mysterious reason. We lost all our cattle and all our sheep."
In 1939 Mrs Farr and her husband Noel were living not far from Wimba at Laughing Creek. They lost their house and all their cattle and sheep. The couple survived by fleeing to a two-room shack 6 ½ kilometres away in the hills. Four days later their two horses, which had escaped, returned, their manes and tails burned off.
Mrs Farr lives with her son, Peter, and daughter-in-law, Margaret, a kilometre east of Kinglake. They first heard of the Saturday fire about 5.30pm when Margaret's daughter rang from the west side of Kinglake to say she could see flames 100 metres from her house.
In 15 minutes the sky had turned black and fire had spread to the street.
Three houses of six in the street burned down. Margaret's husband, Peter, and son, Michael, 34, defended the house. Margaret believes their lives and the house were spared only because the roof's plastic sprinkler system had been replaced with a copper one - which they had only installed at 3pm on Saturday.
Mrs Farr says she feels lucky and very grateful. "But it was too late for so many. It was so sad. I feel for people who have suffered so much because I know how they felt."
MONA FARR was entitled to believe life's catastrophes were behind her. But the Kinglake great-grandmother has just survived her third big bushfire.
Relatives helped the 99-year-old flee her weatherboard home late on Saturday as the flames roared towards her. The family spent three days driving to safety via Bonnie Doon, Mansfield and Benalla.
Now staying with her son Brian in Regent, Mrs Farr said these bushfires were the worst she had seen.
"It was a most dreadful day," said Mrs Farr, who survived a major blaze in 1919 and Black Friday in 1939.
She remembers running with her brother Ron with their buckets to fetch water when "fire came straight for us and then it parted and went straight around our house, for some mysterious reason. We lost all our cattle and all our sheep."
In 1939 Mrs Farr and her husband Noel were living not far from Wimba at Laughing Creek. They lost their house and all their cattle and sheep. The couple survived by fleeing to a two-room shack 6 ½ kilometres away in the hills. Four days later their two horses, which had escaped, returned, their manes and tails burned off.
Mrs Farr lives with her son, Peter, and daughter-in-law, Margaret, a kilometre east of Kinglake. They first heard of the Saturday fire about 5.30pm when Margaret's daughter rang from the west side of Kinglake to say she could see flames 100 metres from her house.
In 15 minutes the sky had turned black and fire had spread to the street.
Three houses of six in the street burned down. Margaret's husband, Peter, and son, Michael, 34, defended the house. Margaret believes their lives and the house were spared only because the roof's plastic sprinkler system had been replaced with a copper one - which they had only installed at 3pm on Saturday.
Mrs Farr says she feels lucky and very grateful. "But it was too late for so many. It was so sad. I feel for people who have suffered so much because I know how they felt."