From the 30th of December until late January we were either out fighting fires, patrolling,
putting in containment lines, or on call for a month, constantly.
We would have days that we'd do between 12 and 16 hours, patrolling or out on the firegrounds.
I would do the night shift and Tony would do the day shift, or vice versa.
So we didn't see each other for quite a few days in there, in the middle.
The only reason I know this is my bedroom is because that's the springs on the bed.
Our house went on the 1st of February,
on the 7th of February it rained, and on the 8th of February they declared most of the fire out
and under control.
So, yeah, we were one of the last to go.
Bit of a punch in the guts, really.
Our plan was always to stay and defend.
As it turned out on the day, it was undefendable because of the intensity of the fire.
And by the time we left, we drove through fire at the top of our road.
This was our forever home.
Everything we'd worked so hard for, for so long, had literally just gone up in smoke.
The sense of loss is,
it's almost like losing a loved one. You lose a part of your life that... I don't have any
baby photographs anymore. No memorabilia, no ornaments, no books, no CDs.
And so many of those things can just never be replaced.
I've been in the RFS since I was probably about 13. I've been captain of it for 35 years.
I've been here all my life, so it means everything to me.
Fourth generation here, my mum was born here, Mum's mum, and my great grandmother was here too.
We reared five kids here, we lost two, they're up in the garden up there, buried in our garden, so
it means a lot to me.
The Border fire that was coming up, you could see the glow down south of us.
We knew that there was definitely something going to happen, but when, we didn't know.
Normally if it was a small-scale fire,
you'd get a couple of crews together, you'd get other brigades here and you would go and fight
the fire. But this fire, it was no normal fire, like a firestorm.
Something we'd never seen before.
It's very sad to lose 40 houses in a community of about 100 houses.
Look at the animals we killed here, just in this fire, there'd be millions of them.
I know here, we had 40 magpies once, we might have 10 now, and plovers and...
I don't blame anybody for it. We managed to save my daughter's place, which is good.
Gives us somewhere to go for our Sunday roasts,
which we do, yeah.
We see what's been lost, but we've got to keep remembering what's been protected.
Houses which the RFS have been at, and have stopped the fire burning the house.
Or the number of people that have been saved.
You're in it to help your neighbours in these times. Once you get involved in it,
you have to keep going.
Yeah no I wouldn't, I mean, I'd change the outcome of the fires, but yeah I don't regret
joining, and I'm certainly going to stay part of it.
Yeah no, I'm proud. Proud to wear that uniform.