The head of the Australian National University has been remembering the day the disaster destroyed his place of work and one of the most advanced sites of scientific enquiry in the world.
Professor Brian Schmidt is now the ANU's Vice-Chancellor but on January 18, 2003, he was an astronomer at the university's Mount Stromlo observatory. His work there won him a Nobel Prize for Physics in 2011.
As he remembers the day today, he is on the verge of tears: "It had a history of people. It had all these things which were 100 per cent destroyed. Everything."
In 2003, he had a mobile phone to which the telescope could send automated text messages. "While I was at the fire front, the telescope sent me a message saying the temperature was out of bounds at 73 degrees Celsius.
"At that point I knew there must be fire up at Mount Stromlo. It was the last message the telescope ever sent."
"We had been watching the fires, and talked them over - that this could be bad.
"And as I started driving in, the sky turned black. It was surreal. It was as black as black can be. It was terrifying, if I can be honest."
Only the next day did he realise that the complex was heavily damaged - all of the telescopes and most of the buildings had been destroyed.
The Director of the Stromlo Observatory at the time, Penny Sackett, said some students at the observatory had sent emails as the fire intensified and closed in: "And then, suddenly, nothing. No communication and that's when I became very concerned. It was actually two fire fronts that merged right on the mountain.
"And at almost the same time, the last people on Stromlo were fleeing down the only road out on the other side," the head of the ANU's Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics from 2002 to 2007 said.
"I got into my own car and convinced the policeman that I was responsible as director and I needed to see what was happening, and so they let me through the police line.
"And I went up and everything was black and grey and the trees were frozen into an arched position because the winds were so horrific that they bent them all over, and then the trees turned to ash, to charcoal, just in an instant.
"From a scientist point of view, the damage was the worst it could be because it was all of the telescopes, all of the laboratories, and the library."
Professor Schmidt chokes back tears as he remembers what was lost.
"The part that I really miss was the library because it was a library that went back 120 years. It had everything in it, and it's all gone and is irreplaceable."
There is a silver lining to a very dark day, and that is that the ANU built the facility anew, according to Professor Sackett: "Given that it happened, I actually think that Mount Stromlo is now further ahead in many ways than it otherwise would have been."
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