Today we filmed an interview at Perry’s Lookdown with Ivan Thelander, who was one of nine teenage boys who got caught in the Grose Valley fire, two days before the great Leura bushfire of Dec 2, 1957. The devastating blaze caught the bushwalkers unawares and they tried to escape up the path on the cliffs. Four boys who tried to outrun the fire were caught by the flames and died. But Ivan and several other boys fled back through the flames and survived.

I found Ivan through the White Pages and he hadn’t talked about this terrible experience in public before, so it was an emotional experience for all of us to visit the memorial in this beautiful place.