Bushfires have of course burnt across what is now the ACT for thousands of years. Indigenous people lived with fire, as did settlers, though in different ways.

Once the National Capital was sited here, bushfire defence schemes were devised. It was recognised that the forested mountain country to Canberra's west represented a major fire threat.

But it took the big fires of 1939 to bring this lesson home. Bushfires swept the Brindabellas and Tidbinbilla and came close to the fledgling capital. (Meanwhile 71 lives were lost in Victorian fires at the same time.) Means of fighting the fires were meagre by today's standards.

An earlier fire control organisation in Canberra now became the ACT Bush Fire Council. The government also decided to have a forward outpost to maintain vigilance against fire in the future. The village of Bulls Head on the Brindabella Range was born out of the 1939 conflagration.

The handful of houses was staffed by rangers like Doug Maxwell and Vince Oldfield who lived there with wives and children; these men were born of mountain families and knew the mountain country well. Other men there included Doug's brother Lach, Kevin Primmer and Billy Jemmett.

The men did hazard reduction burns, erected and staffed firetowers along the range and made basic fire trails. The rangers worked under forester and Chief Fire Officer Lindsay Pryor, who recognised the need to control burning-off by graziers over the border in NSW, which was a major threat to Canberra when done at dangerous times. It was largely due to his urging that the Commonwealth leased 53,000 acres on the NSW side of the Brindabellas to control fire.

A fire tower was erected at Bulls Head in 1948, but a lookout had been made at Mt Aggie in 1941, and another was built into an old snowgum at Brindabella Mountain.

Another fire tower was built north-west at Bag Range in 1942, outside the ACT in NSW. Oldfield and Norman Coulton erected the tower, and the hut there built by Ted Kennedy provided shelter for the rangers during their lonely shifts. Billy Jemmett was a bit of a loner anyway, so the isolation didn't worry him.

Remarkable though it may seem today, a major reason for this fire tower in 1942 was fear of bushfire caused by the Japanese dropping incendiary bombs. As early as 1939, the prime minister had written to premiers about this risk of enemy saboteurs lighting fires and by August 1940 fear of enemy fire-bombing was on the political agenda.

In July 1942, when the Japanese seemed unstoppable, head of the ACT Bush Fire Council Charles Lane-Poole (also head of the Forestry School at Yarralumla), highlighted the need for road-making in the mountains. Fire trails were needed, 'particularly as there is a possibility that numerous fires may arise as a result of enemy action'. Lane-Poole wanted POWs or internees to build the fire trails if necessary.

Despite construction of the Mt Franklin Road in the 1930s, the rangers mainly moved about on horseback. Vince Oldfield recalled how "you had to travel everywhere with a packhorse, a couple of blankets, and chuck 'er down wherever it come night".

Pryor and his successor David Shoobridge rode with the rangers out into the grazing country in the north of today's Kosciuszko National Park to liaise with graziers about the fire danger, and to ensure care during stockmen's seasonal burn-offs.

Radio was becoming a key element of bushfire work and Pryor had permanent aerials installed at various points on the Brindabellas. He had the men carry the cumbersome radios and batteries on packhorses, and also saw the potential for RAAF aircraft to assist with fire surveillance.

The importance of Bulls Head was highlighted by Pryor in early 1942 when he sought the deferment of rangers' military service. He wrote of Maxwell and Oldfield as "bushmen of special experience and ability stationed on the ACT boundary for fire protection work which extends throughout the year. "These men are the most important in the fire protection work in the ACT".

Ironically, winter was perhaps the hardest time of year for the Bulls Head families. It was necessary to buy in provisions beforehand as the road was impassable after heavy snowfalls. Maxwell's son Graeme said, "Oh, we often got snowed in. We had more feeds with bread and dripping than anything else during the winter".

Winter snow broke the primitive phone line, exacerbating Bulls Head's isolation. Oldfield recalled that winter horseback travel was very difficult, as the horses would not walk into strong winds when slivers of ice were blowing off the trees: "The horse will nearly go sideways, you know, to try and back into it".

After the war, though the fire role continued (especially during the big 1952 fires), Bulls Head became a hardwood logging centre as contractors felled mountain timber to build Canberra homes, and so the nature of life in the village changed. In the 1960s logging ended and the village was abandoned. Today the ACT's four bushfire towers include only one on the Brindabellas, at Mt Coree.

It was bushfire which brought Bulls Head into being, and it was ironic and yet appropriate that during the January 2003 fires, this spot which for years has been a pleasant picnic area devoid of houses, was the forward operational area against the bushfires which, as we all know, eventually swept into Canberra.