 This is a place of history and It had a beauty to it. I had a history of people They had all these things that we were used to and they were a hundred percent destroyed everything When that sort of thing happens You know that you're part of something really special and it's worth fighting for The bushfires are worsening around the ACT. There's an awful lot of smoke around the area Fighters across the ACT are facing an uphill battle. First the worst imaginable bushfire emergency is rapidly Unfolding and changing in the suburbs of Canberra. The ACT is facing It's most severe test in the face of very significant fires the most severe test in the history of the ACT It was Saturday from memory. It was 18 January 2003 was a Saturday and We had been watching the fires and talked them over that you know, this could be bad And as I started driving in, you know, the sky turned black. It was Surreal it was I mean it was black as black can be began to hear some reports on the radio that The fires had come much closer. I was terrifying if I can be honest Had a little couple of emails from some students that were on the mountain and Then suddenly nothing no communication and that's when I became very concerned it was actually two fire fronts that merged right on the mountain and At almost the same time The last people on Stromlo were fleeing down the only road out on the other side The positive thing is that no lives lost. It was close My graduate student was up here in Marlena. She had a Close call by their accounts The fire was like a fluid. It was almost like a wave of water It wasn't like what you think fire being like in that evening There was a little bit of footage from on the television That made it clear that Mount Stromlo was probably affected, but we still didn't know by how much The 50 inch telescope was the first fully robotic telescope in the world But to keep track of it it would send me messages and while I was there it sent me a message and said temperature out of bounds 73 degrees and At that point I was like 73 degrees There's I knew there was a fire up here at that point So yeah, it was the last thing I'd ever said it's like one something PM Set me that it's it's last message on my phone It's a shell of its former self. This was from a scientific point of view a huge loss This telescope has a steel dome and It acted like a giant oven. So everything inside was completely burn scorched But the dome because it was steel with stood I Got into my own car and convinced the policemen that I was Responsible as director and I needed to see what was happening. And so they let me through the police line and I went up and Everything was black and gray and the trees were frozen into a Arched position because the winds were so horrific That they bent them all over and then the trees turned to charcoal to ash Just in an instant. It's interesting, you know from from a scientist point of view The damage was the worst it could be because it was all of the telescopes All of the laboratories and the library I Haven't obviously thought about it that much for a long time The part of this building I really missed is the library because that you know It was a library that went back over a hundred and twenty years And it was just had everything in it. It's all gone and irreplaceable Stromlow was and still is a very special place the Advanced instrumentation and Technology Center, which was born in some sense out of these ashes is now world-renowned Things fade over time and that's natural and we'll remember That was a big day and it'll always be part of the The lore of Canberra in the beginning people just wanted back exactly what they lost They wanted everything just exactly the same but When you're involved in science, you're always wanting you're always thinking of the future. I think about it In many respects and you know this far down the track, you know in many respects Places nicer than it's ever been. So it is it was an end of an era, but it was an era that would have come Anyways without the fire. It just happened like that It really was a rebirth and it isn't the way you would choose to do it But given that it happened. I actually think that Mount Stromlow is now further ahead In many ways than it otherwise would have been I got a note from a schoolchild in Queensland who said she broke her piggy bank to send us what was inside so that we could help rebuild Now when that sort of thing happens You know that you're part of something really special and it's worth fighting for and I think our staff knew that and I I Have nothing but praise For the strength that they showed the way they supported each other the long hours they put in knowing That it was gonna come good and it did