This month marks a remarkable milestone: the Upper Ferntree Gully Fire Brigade’s Centenary on 22 February.
For 100 years, the brigade has been a cornerstone of safety and community strength – responding to local emergencies, supporting statewide deployments, and serving with dedication and deep community spirit. Their history reflects generations of volunteers who have protected our community through countless challenges.
I look forward to celebrating this milestone with brigade members and their supporters and expressing the gratitude of our community to them all.
Daniela De Martino MP
100 years of fighting fires in the hills
By Ray Peace, Knox Historical Society
The start of the year 2026 will be remembered as a bad fire season, one in which the volunteers of the Country Fire Authority were tested in their mission to protect the community from wildfire.
If we look back 100 years, to the year 1926, we find the fire brigades of that era were also struggling to contain conflagrations that threatened their townships and localities, with far more primitive equipment than the sophisticated fire services of today.
The communities along the rail line at the foot of the Dandenong Ranges were little more than villages. None had a population of more than 1,000, and none had an active fire brigade. Yet the signs were there early in the New Year that the surrounding bush could erupt in flames. Rainfall for the preceding season was down; bark was flaking off the eucalypts, adding to the fuel load.
On 28 January 1926, the inevitable spark was struck at the corner of Emerald Road east of Belgrave and Monbulk Creek, spreading southward on a northerly wind. The Age referred to teams of men arriving from Ferntree Gully and Upwey to fight the fire. But they were equipped with little more than flour sacks, rakes and shovels to control the blaze, and the newspaper noted what they faced: ‘Many complaints have been made by the firefighters at the neglect of absentee owners to make their places reasonably safe. Instances were found where the trees were growing right up to and touching the walls of dwellings, with spouts full of dry leaves, grass, and rubbish up to and under the home.’
This fire was controlled, but only Upwey had an organised brigade, established in 1918. And there was worse to come. Less than a week later, on 4 February 1926, fire flared around the National Park in Ferntree Gully, prompting the Victorian Railways to run a special train to Upper Ferntree Gully carrying 50 volunteers. The fires were not reported as under control until 10 February. In that week, huge areas of forest and farmland were devastated across the state, hundreds of homes, sawmills and public buildings destroyed, and thirty-one people died.
This type of catastrophe had occurred before. The dates stood out like red exclamation marks in the state’s history: Black Thursday, 1851, Red Tuesday, 1898, along with un-named fires in 1892, 1896, 1902, 1905, 1913, and 1919. But in Ferntree Gully, 1926 was different.
On 25 February 1926, a public meeting was held at the old Ferntree Gully Shire Hall, chaired by Cr George H. Knox. A resolution was adopted: ‘A district Bush Fire Brigade be formed and that it be designated the Ferntree Gully Bush Fire Brigade’.
This was the origin of both the Ferntree Gully and Upper Ferntree Gully Fire Brigades. The Ferntree Gully Brigade became an Urban Brigade in 1942. Upper Ferntree Gully Fire Brigade celebrates its 100th anniversary this month. The 100 years following 1926 have seen the disasters of Black Friday, 1939; fires in Lysterfield and the Dandenongs in 1944; major fires in Ferntree Gully and The Basin in 1962 and 1968; Ash Wednesday in 1983; fire on One Tree Hill in 1997; the Black Saturday fire in Ferntree Gully in 2009.
On all these occasions, and many others, the community has given thanks, and rightly so, to the men and women volunteers who make up the Fire Brigades of Ferntree Gully.
