{"id":254,"date":"2017-11-27T21:23:28","date_gmt":"2017-11-27T11:23:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pilens.com.au\/modris\/?page_id=254"},"modified":"2017-11-27T21:24:43","modified_gmt":"2017-11-27T11:24:43","slug":"lara-bush-fires","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/pilens.com.au\/modris\/national-film-and-sound-archive\/lara-bush-fires\/","title":{"rendered":"Lara Bush fires"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is part of an interview Series for the National Film and Sound Archive Aural History Programme by John Fife.<\/strong><\/p>\n

My name is John Fife (JF<\/strong>) and I have with me Morrie Pilens (MP<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

JF:\u00a0 I think you shot the bodies down at Lara?<\/p>\n

MP:\u00a0 Yes, that got on air.<\/p>\n

JF:\u00a0 Tell me that story.<\/p>\n

MP:\u00a0 Oh, my day off, I\u2019m just quite happy sitting at home and a news editor rang up and said \u2018Morrie, there\u2019s a fire down near Geelong.\u00a0 Go and have a look at it \u2013 we haven\u2019t got anybody else.\u2019<\/p>\n

I said \u2018Yeah, okay.\u2019\u00a0 So I hop into my little Carmen Ghia and off I go along Geelong Rd.\u00a0 And I can see this great big bloody pile of smoke coming from the right hand side and I thought wait a minute, I\u2019m not going through that.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to pull over because there\u2019s a culvert along there, sort of wet patch with guttering underneath.\u00a0 So I pulled the Carmen Ghia right off the road next to the culvert and said yeah, fine I\u2019ll stay here, see what happens.<\/p>\n

A couple of cars whizzed past me, right into the bloody dark.\u00a0 I said \u2018Oh, stupid twits.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0 Anyway, waiting for a while.\u00a0 And all this black big thing moving past, went across, disappeared and I said okay, I can drive now.<\/p>\n

JF:\u00a0 So you\u2019ve seen people go by?<\/p>\n

MP:\u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 So I drive up, the fire went across another five hundred metres from me \u2013 so they drove into it, into the smoke before the fire reached them.\u00a0\u00a0 So I drive another half a km further up and there\u2019s bodies all over the place.\u00a0 What they had done, they had jumped out of the cars and tried to run from the fire.\u00a0 Running to the left hand side of the gutter, and this is Lara.\u00a0 They just dead.\u00a0 Most of them killed from lack of oxygen.\u00a0 Because the rest of them was just singed, they weren\u2019t deeply fried like in a fire.\u00a0 They were just dead and bloated.\u00a0 Six people.\u00a0 So I took a couple of shots of that \u2013 that got on air.<\/p>\n

So I went further up into Lara itself and there\u2019s a church burning, and a burning cat running from underneath the church.\u00a0 There\u2019s a bloke with a rag beating it out or what have you, and I\u2019m filming.\u00a0 And all of a sudden he says \u2018Hey mate, your car\u2019s gonna be in the fire.\u2019\u00a0 And across the road where I parked the Carmen Ghia the fire\u2019s starting to burn underneath the back.<\/p>\n

So I run up to the car, put the key in the ignition, turn the key, it started, and I drove off.\u00a0 I\u2019m driving and I\u2019m looking and there\u2019s half a key in my hand!\u00a0 I\u2019d broken the bloody ignition key in the hurry.\u00a0 Fortunate it started \u2013 but still, things like that happen.\u00a0 You\u2019re observing, you\u2019re recording.<\/p>\n

My problem is, doesn\u2019t matter \u2013 blood, guts, whatever.\u00a0 As long as there\u2019s no smell, no problem.\u00a0 As soon as there is smell, I\u2019m out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is part of an interview Series for the National Film and Sound Archive Aural History Programme by John Fife. My name is John Fife (JF) and I have with me Morrie Pilens (MP). JF:\u00a0 I think you shot the bodies down at Lara? MP:\u00a0 Yes, that got on air. JF:\u00a0 Tell me that story. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Lara Bush fires”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":167,"menu_order":12,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-254","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pilens.com.au\/modris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pilens.com.au\/modris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pilens.com.au\/modris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pilens.com.au\/modris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pilens.com.au\/modris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/pilens.com.au\/modris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258,"href":"http:\/\/pilens.com.au\/modris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/254\/revisions\/258"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pilens.com.au\/modris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pilens.com.au\/modris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}