COROMANDEL.

Auckland Star, Volume III, Issue 632, 20 January 1872, Page 2

COROMANDEL.

BUSH FIRE ON THE TOKATEA,

A correspondent writes :—" For the last couple of weeks a bush fire has been burning on both, sides of the old sledge road leading from Driving Creek, to the Tokatea range- Little notice was taken of it, and no effort made towards its extinguishment. It remained for yesterday to shew the result of such negligence. About noon a southerly breeze arose, and with it the fire began rapidly to extend; the sky becoming over-cast with smoke, and reducing the sun's light to a yellow lurid glare. The flames swept upwards, taking the country on the right hand side of the Tokatea tramway, until arriving at the topmost gradient, pent in the steep and hollow gorge, it shot a solid sheet of flame, leaping cleared spaces, alighting on a stack of mining timber —there it found abundant food. A dense and solid sheet of flame, too fierce almost to be accompanied, by smoke, enveloped the trees and adjacent buildings. Mr Stewart's butcher's shop and residence, Halligan's store, a number of miners whares, quickly fell a sacrifice, the inmates barely escaping with their lives. At night the view from the tramway, eastward, was inexpressibly grand. Leaping from tree to tree, the fire enveloped limbs, shewing exactly the outlines of many a forest giant. Meantime the wind increased by the vaccum, blew with extraordinary fierceness, and as the dense volumes of smoke rolled away, shewed in illuminated outline the whole of the mountain spurs. The managers of the Pride of Tokatea, Excelsior, Royal Oak, &c, were conspicuously foremost with their men in removing property to the shelter of the various drives, and great praise is due to them. . A summary of the damage includes about £50 to Govt. Tramway ; Mr Halligan's store and stock, entirely consumed ; ditto Mr Stewarts's shop and residence ; about £70 worth of firewood, the property of Messrs Spencer and party; about 20 miners' whares ; and Tookey's quartz shoot. While enveloped in flames, we have the satisfaction to note the preservation of Tookey's Battery, Luks' and Ratgen's stores, and many other properties whose escape seems miraculous. Meantime our anxieties are not ended. A bush fire is lighted, which will be a source of danger until a winter has drowned it out. While another fire of equal intensity is creeping up the mountain range from Paul's Creek, and may at any time take us in rear and flank.