With the Christmas celebrations over, the main topic of conversation was ‘How dry is it?’ and ‘When do you think it will rain?’ The air was filled with tension and concern with the weather being extremely windy and some days the temperature was so intensely hot. The storms were proving to be mainly filled with massive amounts of lightning. The inevitable happened with a lightning strike causing a fire that rapidly gained traction growing from 30 hectares to to 1,800 hectares very quickly. The Brassknocker fire trail fire was heading in the direction of Wandella.

We discussed what we had done last time, and we decided it worked so let’s do that again. It was an understatement to say that to prepare and organise all that is required to protect what one owns was extremely difficult. Personally, we again moved stock to what we believed would be the best option for them and set about the process of placing sprinklers on all the buildings, machinery connected for power, machinery placed in open paddocks etc etc.

We did feel concern – would we be as lucky to survive such an event twice? We also faced the concept of if it did burn us out again would we have the strength of character to rebuild it all again. I was asked how can you stay so calm, and my explanation was that I know the fire is coming and I can’t stop it, I cannot change that. But I can do my best to prepare and protect so it’s better to face that and put my energy into that instead. The wind turned the fire at a critical point and we had some relief.

The next day the helicopters collected water from two of our dams all day. The skill of the pilots was incredible to watch and we hoped the water would help go towards putting the fire out. At this point in time, we got our second break and the rain started to fall. The relief was palpable. We know a lot of people in the area felt something similar. A huge thank you to all who volunteer in the Rural Fire Service and all the machinery operators who certainly supported the needs of our community.

June Tarlinton

Photos: Monday morning saw the ‘cavalry’ arrive in town. Crews in utes and trucks from the National Parks and Wildlife Service and Forestry Corporation of NSW came from as far afield as Taree and Wauchope to help our local NSW RFS brigades with the fire in Wadbilliga National Park. A sight for sore hearts and nervous bodies. Louise Brown