Healing of an unnamed sick child during the bush fires at Gladstone
Published October 5, 2026 at 1:44 AM
Contributed by
Millennial Star Research
During a severe bush fire at the mining hamlet of Gladstone in Victoria, Australia, on December 24, 1868, the inhabitants were forced to take refuge in a gully. Children were crying for water, and for two hours the people remained in danger until a man successfully located water. Though the village was destroyed and many animals perished, the account notes that the population survived the event.
In Their Own Words
“The children were crying all the time for water, and there was none to wet their lips. For two hours did they remain in this position, with no hope of ever again seeing the light of day, when one of the men ventured out in search of water. He was, however, fully half an hour groping about in the dark before he could find a water-hole. As the smoke gradually cleared, however, and the daylight returned, the scene which met the gaze was one of desolation—not a vestige of a house was to be seen—the entire village had been but a morsel in the mouth of the devouring giant, and no living object was visible.— Millennial Star 31:11”
Sources & References
The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star (Manchester, later Liverpool, England, May 1840–1970), 13 March 1869 (Vol. 31, No. 11). https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_the-latter-day-saints-millennial-star_1869-03-13_31_11 (account extracted verbatim from the issue's Internet Archive OCR text; research confidence: high)
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