MT. ARAPILES
Lat / Long GDA -36.752291, 141.835957
Department FCV...etc...DEECA
Work Depot Horsham
Region Far South West
Grading Primary
Elevation (ASL) 396m
Height On Ground but cabin floor at 2.7m
Construction Brick - Concrete
Cabin size 3m x 3m
Public access to site Yes
In use since 1955 - 1994
1994 - current
CFA Region 17 - North Western
Photo (200?) supplied by Merilyn Johns

Mt. Arapiles is a very popular area for mountain climbing.

Updated info in relation to "tower use years" was supplied by Ron Jardine (March 2010)

Please click on thumbnails for enlargements
1989 supplied
by Rocky Marsden, ex-DSE 		April 2009, supplied
by Nathan Jolly 		May 2013, supplied
by Andre Belterman

The above photos (Oct 2012) were supplied by Andrew Dixon

The above photos (Jan 2018) of a storm developing were supplied by Ron Jardine, the long time FLO at Mt. Arapiles. Ron ended his FLO duties at the end of the 2020-21 fire season.
Ron featured in a few mewspaper articles over his FLO career. A transcript of a 2008 article can be found here and a 2012 article here

There was a post on the 17th April 2024 on the Lost Horsham FaceBook page. It showed a newspaper clipping from 1969 with the heading: Janet Hoss Kemp sent this news cutting in (assuming Mail-Times 1969) and commented, "this was my dad Alan "Runky" Knight and he was the Fire Tower Lookout at Mt Arapiles way back in 1969."
It's a bit hard to read so here is a transcript of it:
Mr "Runky" Knight of Natimuk has a job with a panoramic difference. His office is on Mount Arapiles. Mr. Knight is a fire spotter for Region 17 of the Rural Fire Brigade. He started work for the summer season on Monday. Mr Knight says that from the mountain’s pinnacle he can see a 30 – 40 miles radius. If he sights smoke, he obtains a degree reading and then pinpoints the area on a map – inset picture. He has a telephone link to a main station at Natimuk and is also in touch with 12 mobile radio transmitters. Mr Knight says his transmitter can call in Clear Lake, Brimpaen, Langkoop, Edenhope, Kaniva, Harrow, Nhill and Goroke. The fire-spotting job is a seven days a week position. Mr Knight will work 12 hours a day on a declared fire danger period. If you want to know the Wimmera's weather ask Mr Knight. He has a bird's eye view of atmospheric conditions. Mr Knight has worked as a fire-spotter in previous seasons and he says it is not a lonely job. "It’s surprising how many visitors I have," he said. In his visitors book, he has signatures from Malaysian tourists as well as interstate ????. "One thingy" he laughed, "they all complain about the climb."
To our knowledge, Mt. Arapiles has always been a FCV...etc...DEECA tower and NOT a Rural Fire Brigade one.

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