Camperdown and Cobden do not know how lucky they are. That’s the opinion of Bostocks Creek captain Lance Robilliard after he and dozens of other firefighters fought the fire that broke out near Camperdown on the night of March 17 this year, one of the four big St Patrick’s day blazes that caused widespread heartbreak throughout the south-west.
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Mr Robilliard said the fire that started on Cross Forest Road at Naroghid, west of Camperdown, and rapidly spread south had great potential to threaten both Camperdown and Cobden.
For him, the frightening night began about 9pm when the temperature was still about 30 degrees and the trees near his home on County Boundary Road at Tesbury were roaring as the wind continued to pick up.
Well aware of the fire danger those weather conditions caused, Mr Robilliard thought he would head to the Bostocks Creek brigade station and stay there so he could respond quickly to any fire call.
With the grass in paddocks “crispy” after the dry autumn, he knew that if the strong winds blew a branch on to power lines, it would not take much for a spark to ignite the grass.
At the brigade shed were three other members who, also aware of the rising fire danger, had come in without being called so they could respond quickly to a call out.
They didn’t have long to wait.
The call for Bostocks Creek to assist with a rapidly spreading fire at Terang came through soon after.
The truck had a crew of four so “we bolted”, Mr Robilliard said.
Instead of going via Camperdown, Mr Robilliard, who was driving the truck, decided to take a short cut around Lake Bullen Merri and Lake Gnotuk.
En route, he saw “a funny little glow in the distance”.
As the truck got closer, the red glow exploded.
He believes the explosion of red happened when the fire, started by a branch across a power line, got into dry phalaris plants and took off.
A crew member yelled there was a power line across the road and Mr Robilliard braked to see the fire was burning fiercely along a driveway to house with hay bales and trees also alight.
Sheds nearby were threatened and the tanker called in the fire, seeking an extra 10 tankers if available to tackle the blaze.
If Bostocks Creek had not responded as quickly as it had, the fire which started on Cross Forest Road about a kilometre south of its intersection with the Princes Highway, would have been an inferno five to 10 minutes later, Mr Robilliard said.
“The wind just took it. It fanned out across the 10-15 degree slope of the hill, ” he said.
Mr Robilliard, who has been fighting fires for about 40 years, said he tried to get the tanker up the burning driveway three times but each time had to retreat because it was too hot for the crew on the back.
Instead they fought the blaze from the road reserve as it raced south in the direction of Cobden.
The house was spared in the fire but several sheds were destroyed.
The tanker ran out of water and had to be refilled, making one of numerous trips it did to hydrants on Cross Forest Road and at the intersection of the Princes Highway during the next six hours as firefight unfolded.
By the time the tanker returned to the fire, it had spread further south to Sadlers Road and another four tankers had joined the fight at that location.
But with the wind roaring at about 100 kilometres an hour and gusting even stronger, the tankers and slipons weren’t able to outrun the flames that were jumping quickly across the short grass. Firefighters cut fences to get to the fire but “there were not enough of us,” Mr Robilliard said.
“Wherever we could get to it, we were able to stop it but it ran free where we could not get to it,” he said. “It was a desperate situation. We did not know how it was going to work out for a few hours.
“We could not stop it at night. We had no air support.
“People did not know their paddocks were on fire. The person that lost their house got told by a neighbour and the fire followed them out the drive.”
As the fight continued through the night, his tanker chased the fire down to Naroghid Road but Mr Robilliard was becoming increasingly concerned about the possibility of a wind change.
He was acutely aware of the dangers of wind change during big fires due to his experiences during the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires and many others, when a westerly wind change turned the front of fires that had been running to the south.
A south-westerly wind change that came through about 5.30pm on Ash Wednesday turned the long eastern flanks of the area already burning into a massive fire front that devastated the south-west and much of south-eastern Australia.
With the four big fires in the south-west on March 17 running to the south-east, a westerly wind change would bring the four long fingers of fires together and head east to threaten Camperdown and Cobden.
During the firefight, Mr Robilliard’s tanker and three others headed north east to hit the fire as it came up the escarpment on the western edge of Lake Gnotuk where the deep crater creates swirly winds that had sent the fire north-west.
On the property of the Total Livestock Genetics animal genetics and reproduction business, the four units fought the fire as it came around the top of the crater while other units on the crater floor battled it down there.
Mr Robilliard said it was too dangerous to send members down the steep crater sides and they fought from the crater rim.
The units cut fences to get access to the fire front and saved the high-tech facilities of Total Livestock Genetics.
Then in the early hours of Sunday morning, a light fall of rain, only about 1.5 millimetres that was “just spitting” helped dampen the grass and stopped the run of the fire up the lake escarpment.
And even more critically, there was no wind change. The winds eased about 3.30am and the fire was stopped at the southern end. Exhausted by the battle, some of his crew headed home at 7.30am on Sunday morning to milk their cows.
Mr Robilliard headed home about 1.30pm on Sunday after getting something to eat at a service station because the fire had cut power to his home.
He and other Bostocks Creek CFA members got a day’s rest before they were again called out on Tuesday to help fight one of the peat fires, ignited by the March 17 fires, that were still burning in the Camperdown and Cobden areas.
The peat fire was still breaking out on the Tuesday but the CFA was throwing a lot of resources at it, he said.
Mr Robilliard said there were not enough trucks to fight all the large rapidly spreading blazes in the south-west on March 17 and in the end, it had been “mother nature” that stopped the Camperdown fire rather than firefighters.
“It could have been far worse, we were very lucky that there were no lives lost or serious injury,” he said.