'Absolute heroes': Retiring teacher recalls escaping Ash Wednesday blaze

Mrs Zeunert was farewelled at King's College this week with a standing ovation in recognition of her 32-year career at the school.

But almost 41 years ago, she was a teacher at Nullawarre Primary School when fires were headed towards it on February 16, 1983.

"The students and the parents were absolute heroes... that's what I remember about that day, apart from the sky," she said.

Many of the parents who came to collect their children that day then had to go home to bring in their cows.

"We kept a line of pine trees in view and they just went.... they exploded," Mrs Zeunert said.

"We got all the children home apart from one little prep girl and she got to spend the night with us.

"We just couldn't get on to her parents. I guess that must have been horrible for them. Somehow in the end we did so they knew she was with us and knew she was fine."

They initially took refuge at Childer's Cove before finding a safe way out.

"That girl now is a wonderful teacher."

The grounds had been kept well watered at Nullawarre, so when the fire front did arrived at the school it divided and went around it. "It did come very close on the three sides," she said. "Other schools were taken.

"But the blackened cows the next day....how people ever got over it...."

Mrs Zeunert said she never really felt unsafe that day and thought she was always "fine with it".

But then years later when she was at school at King's College, someone was singing a song they'd written about a family who'd taken shelter in a milk vat during the fires.

"I started not being able to breathe, racing heart and I looked at the door and thought 'can I get to the door?'," she said.

"Must have been a delayed reaction. So now, if it's a 40-degree day and a dangerous day I don't travel anywhere."

Despite the events of that day, Mrs Zeunert said she had loved being a teacher.

"I did always want to be a teacher and I just loved every day of teaching. It's just the best job in the world," she said.

"My grade five teacher read the class The Lion Witch and the Wardrobe and taught me how to play three or four chords on the guitar.

"And I just wanted to be like her. She loved children."

Mrs Zeunert grew up in the Mallee a long way from the nearest high school, so ended up spending four years at boarding school in Melbourne.

As a newlywed, she got her first job at East Warrnambool Primary School before teaching at Nullawarre for five years.

"It was a great community," she said.

After the arrival of her first child, the couple moved to Bendigo where she taught across five different rural schools for 18 months.

When they arrived back in Warrnambool, she noticed a King's College brochure on someone's table.

"Our three boys ended up being able to go there and I started there at the end of 1992," she said.

After teaching her own children, her middle son Brad followed in her footsteps and is now the head of senior school at King's College.

"One of our principals told me: 'it's better to be the fence at the top of the cliff rather than the ambulance at the bottom', so that's why I loved to develop relationships with the kids," she said.

"I knew every footy team that every family barracked for.

"The families, they're my friends. That's what I loved about teaching at King's.

"God is a big part of my life and being able to have God at the centre of my classroom. It was just a pleasure and a privilege to be able to go to work every day.

"I love taking my guitar and singing silly songs."

Even though she has officially retired, she will still do some relief teaching from time to time.

She has recently returned from overseas and would love to do more travel.