Situated close to the heart of the city and covered by a swathe of dry eucalypt forest, Black Mountain Nature Reserve might prove to be Canberra's Achilles heel as it has not always been subjected to fuel management practices. That was nearly so in 1979 when, with many years of accumulated fuels, it came close to conflagration on Tuesday 13th February, a day of Extreme fire danger which saw 6 major bushfires burning throughout the Southern Tablelands region and the Australian Capital Territory.

Unforseen, a small and intense meteorological depression moved over the region bringing very strong and gusty north-westerly winds, high temperatures and exceptionally low humidity taking the Fire Danger Index well into the Extreme range and masking the region with a thick dust and smoke haze.

At 2.40pm, a serious fire started in grassland on Mount Painter, two kilometres directly upwind of Black Mountain and joined by a wide corridor of dry grass and woodland fuels. Alerted at midday by sharply deteriorating weather conditions, bushfire units were ready and quickly dispatched and able to contain the blaze to twenty hectares.

Twenty minutes later, during a period of very strong winds, a power line fault ignited another fire in heavy grass fuels near Hall to the north of Canberra, which quickly overwhelmed the small fire fighting force available and spread rapidly in open country to the south-east.

Later, it was surmised that had the order of fire ignitions been reversed with fire units drawn northwards to Hall instead of Mount Painter, the Painter fire may well have escaped early containment and spread eastwards onto the steep and heavily timbered slopes of Black Mountain as a severe conflagration causing widespread spot fires to erupt throughout gardens and reserves across the city and northern suburbs of Canberra and the Mount Ainslie reserve with great loss to homes and buildings. Then, in all probability, given the subsequent southerly wind change, burnt severely through to the Wamboin district.

Canberra was spared that day.