1968 photo supplied by Michael Bleby. This tower no longer exists.
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. When based at Tantanoola Forest as a student in 1969 the Works Supervisor took me up to an open tower with no cabin, similar to the one at Wirrabara, which was located on Mt Watch west of Glencoe. This lookout was not regularly manned and used for occasional cross reference or when poor local visibility warranted extra lookouts. Whoever was allocated to tower duties had to collect the tower gear from the office. This was a bag containing tower log sheets, pencils, a communication device, either a 2 way radio or a telephone which could have been an ex army field phone, binoculars, polaroid sun glasses and a hand held anemometer for measuring wind speed. This was either a simple calibrated tube with a hovering pith ball or a more sophisticated type with spinning cups. The polaroid sun glasses were part of the kit as they helped distinguish smoke from dust, as smoke becomes more defined with them on. Colour blindness ruled out some for tower duties, however a skilled observer had to be reliable, good at distance estimation and not easily bored. I remember listening to the radio, something that was allowed.
