A Victorian policeman risked his life to help a badly burned man and boy escape an inferno on Ash Wednesday, 1983

COUNTRY policeman Don Wilson put his own life on the line in a desperate bid to save a man and a boy staggering through flames on Ash Wednesday.

1983. Ash Wednesday. Bushfires. A mother and daughter died after abandoning this car near Timboon. Neg: 830217/4

WITH flames all around him, it was the closest thing to hell country copper Don Wilson had ever seen.

Then, impossibly, a man and a boy - both on fire - staggered from an Ash Wednesday inferno towards his police car.

Mr Wilson, now retired, was the sergeant in charge at Port Campbell police station, on Victoria’s rugged west coast when heat, high winds and a terrible year-long drought combined on February 16, 1983.

On a day when 47 people were killed in Victoria and another 28 perished in South Australia, Don Wilson found himself in the middle of a fire storm east of Warrnambool.

He’d been sent to a crossroad at Nirranda East, near Warrnambool, to assist a policeman from neighbouring Timboon who drove in his private car, without a police radio, to direct traffic.

A burnt-out car at Timboon following the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires. Picture: News Limited

When he arrived about 5.10pm, his colleague had already left as the smoke grew ominously thick.

Fires sparked earlier that day at Branxholme and Framlingham had joined, and raced across the flat limestone dairy country, spotting up to 2km ahead on a searing northerly gale.

Mr Wilson turned for Timboon just as the fire swept across the road, surrounding him.

“The trees were burning freely and the wind was so strong,” he told AAP in 2008 ahead of the 25th anniversary of the bushfire disaster.

“Then I saw two figures come out of the smoke and the flames towards me.”

Kevin Grigg, an earthmoving equipment salesman, had been on a nearby farm with Nellie Anderson and her son Gareth, 10, when the fire descended.

They tried to escape in the Andersons’ Holden Commodore, but the intense heat vapourised its petrol, stalling the engine.

Nellie, wearing shorts, a t-shirt and thongs, panicked and fled.

Mr Grigg and Gareth held on until the heat became too intense, forcing them to take their chances.

“Gareth’s facial features had been burned off,” Mr Wilson said.

“He was holding his arms out to me, like he wanted a cuddle or something ... but the more he touched me, the more obvious he was in pain.

“Kevin’s skin was coming off his arms. I thought he had been wearing gloves but it was his skin coming off his hands and arms.

“His face and most of his body were burnt. His leg was on fire.”

Mr Wilson radioed for an ambulance, laying Gareth on the back seat.

Another car pulled up at the intersection. Inside was Gareth’s father, Max.

Max mistook his son for his nephew Mark, Mr Wilson said.

“And Gareth said `No Dad, it’s me’. He couldn’t even recognise his own son in the car.”

Max tried to get into the police car but Gareth cried out in pain.

Mr Wilson held him back, saying an ambulance was coming.

Perhaps out of shock, Max drove away towards his property.

The front page of the Weekly Times after the Ash Wednesday fires shows Brian Parsons of Nullawarre, near Warrnambool, with his burnt-out farm house. Picture: News Limited

When it was clear the ambulance couldn’t get through, Mr Wilson tried an alternate route to Timboon and the town’s bush nursing hospital.

“Trees were coming down over the road and the car was sliding from side to side on the melting bitumen,” he said.

“Luckily I kept the car in first gear. I didn’t know about fuel vapourisation. I just kept the foot down and the car was sucking the fuel faster than it was vapourising.

“Every now and then a tree would flare up and Gareth would scream out in pain from the radiated heat but Grigg beside me was yelling, ‘Don’t stop!’.”

“I had to stop because I couldn’t see a damn thing when another car ploughed into the back of us in the smoke.”

The police car was undrivable but Mr Wilson waved on the other vehicle, a four-wheel drive with several passengers.

Soon after, as a wind change swept in, another Timboon policeman, Alan Burns, arrived in a patrol car.

“I’ll never forget his first words to this day. He said ‘You having a bit of trouble, Don?’.”

The two officers transferred Gareth and Mr Grigg to the other car, but Gareth died before they reached Timboon.

Mr Grigg was later taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital, where he endured months of treatment.

Later, Mr Wilson found Nellie Anderson’s charred body near her burnt-out car.

Her thongs had stuck to the melting bitumen.

After working all night, Mr Wilson went home and found his shirt was pocked with burn holes, the Victoria Police crest melted on one sleeve from the heat radiating through the car window..

In the following days he gathered information for coronial inquests into the seven deaths in the district that day and shot countless injured animals.

With no counselling from the force, Mr Wilson said he found solace talking with his workmates.

In later years, he spoke to service clubs about what he saw on Ash Wednesday.