The Fire
 

Vintage trade succumbs to flames

Kelly Ryan

October 14, 2006 12:00am

Article from: Herald-Sun

IT would be a black day for Victoria if a fire on Friday the 13th wiped out a man carrying on a dying craft.

Cooper George Smithwick was devastated to discover tools of his historic trade, which had been handed down over six generations, had been razed in an inferno at his Beveridge property yesterday.

Thousands of pieces of hand-crafted tools and lovingly crafted goods fuelled the blaze, which would have been seen for miles.

But the fire took more than priceless heirlooms and heritage. It also wiped out months of work in the form of carefully crafted goods awaiting collection from keen customers.

 

Six pairs of horse cartwheels, 10 port barrels and a vat built for a vintage spray cart turned to cinders in the dawn blaze.

Paint thinners, a gas tank and stockpiles of wood helped fuel the inferno, which singed surrounding trees and threatened other buildings on Mr Smithwick's property.

 

Volunteers in eight CFA trucks controlled the blaze from spreading to other buildings. But they were unable to save the giant shed Mr Smithwick built by hand so he could he carry on the craft he inherited from his great- great-great-grandfather.

 

With black ash and soot still blackening his face, he surveyed the damage yesterday and declared the end of an era in Victoria: "It's all gone, that's it. Coopers are no more for Victoria."

Coopers are barrel-makers who were responsible for transporting the food and fluid aboard the First Fleet.

 

A welcome and well-known attraction at the Royal Melbourne Show, Mr Smithwick was training young grandson Will to take over the reins.

"A neighbour was banging on the door about 4am to say the shed was on fire and I remember telling the wife the day before that it was going to be Friday the 13th," Mr Smithwick said.

 

Yesterday was Mr Smithwick's second catastrophic brush with fire. Four years ago he was lucky to escape with his life when his bushy beard ignited in the same shed."I'd been cleaning a machine with petrol to get rid of the carbon on it and the heat already in it ignited my beard. "When I raised my arms to put it out, they caught fire and then it was just, whoosh."

 

Mr Smithwick suffered third-degree burns to 30 per cent of his body and was off work for a year. "(Burn scars) restrict my hand movement a bit and make it harder to work, but I was getting there," he said. "But I look at this (destruction) today and think, 'Well, maybe it's now become a little bit too hard'."

 

An eternal optimist, Mr Smithwick later said he planned on drinking with friends last night and would reconsider his future today.

"There are only three coopers left in Victoria and it is too important to the history of this state to just walk away without giving it another go."

 

Copyright News Limited 2007(c)

 

And George will be giving it another go