Black Saturday 10 years on: TV newsman Brian Naylor’s selfless final act revealed

Ten years ago today, the death of Brian Naylor and his wife Moiree in the Black Saturday bushfires shook Victoria. This is the heartbreaking story of the TV news legend’s final moments, and his chivalrous act for a neighbour.

In the years following the death of TV news legend Brian Naylor and his wife, Moiree, daughter Jane Bayliss was informed by a local tradie of his bravest final act.

On Black Saturday, as the wind twisted wildly and the sky boiled above their house at Kinglake West, a CFA crew arrived to help.

But Mr Naylor turned them away.

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Brian Naylor with his wife Moiree in 1998.

“We’re all right,” he said. “We’ll be OK. Go and see the lady down the road. She’s by herself.”

It was a plumber who would later relay the story to Mrs Bayliss.

“Your father saved my mum,” he told her. “There’s no way she would have made it out if that fire crew hadn’t arrived.”

Tears flow freely when Mrs Bayliss recalls her father’s chivalry.

Even as the fire front jumped the Hume Freeway and raged up the Kinglake Ranges toward them — her father’s only thought had been for somebody else.

The pair were among the first victims as more than 40 separate blazes erupted across Victoria on what would become the worst natural disaster in modern Australian history.

In all, 173 people died.

On the 10th anniversary of the fires, Jane and Owen Bayliss have revealed how their Christian faith helped them come to terms with the tragedy that changed thousands of lives and shifted the fabric of their community forever.

Mr and Mrs Naylor were among 16 people who perished in the vicinity of Coombs and Pine Ridge roads.

They died together crouched in the bathroom, like so many other victims who were convinced they could stay and fight.

Nobody can know exactly what happened in those final frantic moments.

But Mrs Bayliss said it was likely her dad dropped the hose and ran to be by his wife’s side.

“When I had spoken to Dad, I told him to tell Mum to wet blankets and put them in the bath,” Mrs Bayliss said. “It comforts me to know he had come down off the roof and was with her.

“They did everything together. And they were together at the end.”

Brian and Moiree Naylor in 1978.

NOT everybody is comfortable with the concept of an all-loving God overseeing that kind of suffering.

Jane and Owen Bayliss understand that.

But they believe a higher power was at work the day Victoria burned.

They recall seemingly unexplainable stories of hope and survival amid all the heartbreak — last-minute decisions, changed plans, opened doors and escape routes.

Examples, they say, The Almighty was on the move.

Their own daughter, Bron, was among them. She had planned to pay her grandparents a visit but was diverted after a phone call from a friend.

Son Cameron narrowly missed driving into the fireball that engulfed Flowerdale because he’d stayed longer for a swim at a pool in Yea.

Jane Bayliss with a photograph of her parents, Brian and Moiree Naylor. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

“Both of us felt on the day, even though there was tragedy all around us, God was with us because there was so many times things could have been worse,” Mrs Bayliss said.

Then there is their own story of survival.

As the sky darkened, the couple retreated to a dam and watched helplessly as their own home was razed.

Spot fires set their paddocks alight. Thick acrid smoke poured from haystacks and silage. Farm equipment burned.

Mr Bayliss paced the property in a bid to save what he could before realising it was a hopeless cause.

Standing waist deep in the water, Mrs Bayliss battled to find her balance against the wind.

“I was thinking of Mum and Dad most of all,” she said.

“I knew the fire front had come straight over the hill from where their house was.

“Dad had reassured me that they would be all right. I knew they had
a pump and plenty of water.

“But I have spoken to people since who have said there is nothing you can do with a fire like that.

“In so many ways it was unfightable.”

Jane Bayliss and her husband Owen jumped into the dam with their kids when their house burned to the ground on Black Saturday. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

IT WAS 4.45pm when the fire reached the top of the ridge and roared into town.

Survivors say it sounded like several jets taking off at once.

Even now, in moments of silence, Mr Bayliss can still hear it roar back to life.

“It’s like nothing we had ever heard,” he said. “It was surreal, like being in a war movie.”

Day turned to night.

Residents ran from houses by torchlight as the full scale of the disaster dawned. Cars stopped and started along Whittlesea-Kinglake Rd, navigating through smoke as thick as a winter fog.

The couple, their son and a family friend finally made a dash
for the house next door. The neighbours had fled but left everything unlocked.

They spent the night putting out spot fires and praying.

“I don’t understand why some people survived and others didn’t,” Mrs Bayliss admitted. “All I know is that we were where God wanted us to be on that day.”

It would be her husband who would discover her parents’ remains the next day, just as news was breaking that the TV veteran and his wife were among the missing.

It is not easy for them to talk about it. But Mrs Bayliss said their grief had been eased in some ways knowing that in his final months, her father no longer shifted awkwardly when she told him she loved him.

Nor did he bristle at conversations about life and what might come after it.

She said the changes in his personality had been sparked by the death of her brother in a tragedy on her parents’ property nine months earlier.

The ruins of Brian and Moiree Naylor’s property outside Kinglake after Black Saturday.

“That gives me a great sense of peace.”

Matthew Naylor, 41, was a passenger in an ultralight aircraft that plummeted to the ground after takeoff from the family acreage.

It gutted them — but it also prompted Mr Naylor, who for years had remained fiercely opposed to the idea of religion, to start asking questions of his Christian daughter and son-in-law.

“It brought us closer than we ever had been,” Mrs Bayliss said.

It was a big turning point for a man whose focus, like any TV identity, had long been about building and maintaining his public profile.

Mr Naylor wasn’t so self-absorbed, but after four decades of anchoring the TV news, he had grown fond of being recognised.

He thrived on the attention, as anybody thrown in front of a camera on a daily basis would.

In the tentative first months of his retirement, Mrs Bayliss recalled her father’s struggle as he was forced to redefine his identity.

He eventually found it surrounded by family on the sprawling property with views of the city.

But it was in the last year of his life that Mrs Bayliss noticed her father become far more open.

Attending a friend’s funeral only two days before the fires, her father had been particularly struck by a poem. It spoke of a place being prepared for those who believed.

“Dad was so taken by the words,” she said. “He went on and on about them. I really feel God was preparing him for what was to come.

An aerial picture of Brian Naylor’s property outside Kinglake.

MEMORIES stand like iron monuments for anybody who survived Victoria’s darkest day.

But there are still tangible reminders.

Today, Kinglake is framed by tall mountain ash trees, stripped and blackened but still standing.

Mr and Mrs Bayliss need only look at a golden statuette displayed in the hallway of their rebuilt home.

In the months following his death, Mr Naylor was inducted into the Logies Hall of Fame.

The couple regret not having properly thanked the television industry at the time for the overwhelming recognition of his career, but those early weeks and months remain a blur.

“Certain things will trigger a recollection,” Mrs Bayliss said.

“I get a little more anxious on a hot, windy day. I’m not filled with fear, but I am far more conscious of it.”

She is more emotional, too, sometimes embarrassingly so.

It hits hardest when she looks at the six great-grandchildren her parents never met.

The kids will never completely understand the local notoriety of the man who delivered the news to thousands of viewers each night.

Nor his larrikin humour and penchant for a well-timed joke.

They won’t be able to appreciate how their great-grandmother’s failed attempts at baking gave the family a laugh. Mrs Bayliss can still see her mum at the sink trying to resurrect overcooked muffins.

She says they are the kind of memories and anecdotes that serve as an important reminder: embrace your family; cherish every moment.

The wider family have grappled with the death of her parents in different ways — just as the community itself still struggles to shake the emotional burden of it all.

“Everybody grieves differently and that is something we have had to learn,” Mrs Bayliss said.

“You have to factor in other people’s responses.”

In Kinglake alone, scores of residents never returned.

Others left once they realised they could not endure the constant daily reminders.

Those who remain have learned to shuffle their grief to the side.

But emotion still weighs heavily at the most unexpected moments.

Mr and Mrs Bayliss said their faith was testament to their own ability to move forward.

It’s not easy. It never will be,” Mrs Bayliss said. “I don’t understand why some people survived while others didn’t. But I believe we lived through our own experience for a reason.

“God’s ways are not our ways.”

LONG JOURNEY AND A HARD ROAD TO HEALING

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