I knew the fire front was coming. You could hear it, you could smell it, you could feel the heat coming up out of the valley … I could hear a rushing, not a wind; it was different from a wind. It was a white noise you could call it almost … like a pressure. If pressure could make a noise that is what it would sound like … The flames were right there. They would have been about 50 metres away. The flames were so high. They were the height of the trees and that again … 300 feet high plus. There were big, swirling vortexes, just big, swirling masses of flames that would just burst and explode out of the … tree tops.
—
Mr Greg Weir, quoted in the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission Final Report.
A terrifying quote, yet oddly poetic.
