FURNER


Grid Reference -37.346570, 140.307112 (GDA 94)
Department ForestrySA
Work Centre ?
District Furner
Grading ?
Elevation (ASL) 56m
Height 10.7m
Construction ?
Cabin size ?
Public access to site ?
In use since 1974
Photo and information supplied by Dennis R. Page, via Alison McLeod

Please click on thumbnails for enlargements
This photo is Copyright ForestrySA and provided by the City of Mount Gambier Library in March 2022 and used with permission.
For the City of Mount Gambier Library's website page with the collection of fire tower photos, please click here. On this page, you can click on the individual photo for detailed description. It is unknown when the photo was taken.

Both photos are very similar and we don't know when either photo was taken. The main photo has safety railing around the first landing so we believe that one to be the most recent one of the two.

Below is an extract from the Fire Tower chapter of a book, Forestry Tales, that was written by Michael H. Bleby OAM. It is used with permission, thanks Michael.
The Furner tower was constructed in the mid 1970's after a major grass fire threatened the forest from the North. It covered an area that would give earlier warning and useful cross bearings for such grass fires. It was left unmanned during Moderate fire danger weather and was used at the higher end of the forest fire danger scale. On one particular day the tower man collected the gear and left HQ to travel to the Furner tower. The office staff became concerned when his first weather report on the hour from the tower was not on time, and did not even come in late. They tried radio calls to his vehicle to no avail. Then a faint radio signal for help was picked up by chance from the Regional Base station and the message relayed to Mt Burr Forest HQ. We soon realized that the call was from the tower man who was in trouble. A supervisor was despatched to follow the route to the tower to investigate. Soon skid tracks were found crossing the road into the scrub. The unsealed road had plenty of loose gravel on a particular bend, and the upturned vehicle was soon found with its passenger, who was pretty shaken but thankfully not injured. His call for help somehow happened to get out in spite of the vehicle being upside down and the radio aerial being on the roof!
Due to its remote location I used to check out the Furner tower whenever I was nearby. Sometimes during the non-Fire Season, a swarm of bees would decide the tower was a good spot for a hive. There had also been occasional vandalism and a requirement to fit reinforced bolts and padlocks at various times.
One of the regular jobs was to do some tower "housekeeping". Clean-ups were required, and removal of accumulated "reading material". Part of the observer training stressed that the job of the tower man is to observe constantly and not to read books or magazines. There were often understandable newspapers in the cabin to be cleaned up as one of the ways to determine wind direction was to let a small chit of paper go out the window and take a bearing of where it landed. However on regular occasions I found myself descending the ladder from a tower with a sack containing magazines that in this day and age, would only be sold with a brown paper covering!
There were also occasions when a tower clean-up was required to remove literally millions of dead ladybird insects. For some unknown reason, during the off season, they were attracted in to the cabin of some fire towers in huge numbers that led to them being up to 30 cm deep on the cabin floor ! The vast numbers of insects was the result of a ladybird population explosion as a natural form of biological control during the autumn, of the Monterey Pine aphid that had arrived in the region. This particular aphid attacks the needles of Radiata pine causing defoliation, resulting in a significant impact on seasonal tree growth. Even entomology and fire towers can be connected!

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