When North Hamilton's Kevin Sparrow was thrown from the fire truck while fighting one of the Ash Wednesday blazes it left him with burnt hands and singed all his hair off.

"It was a very bad day. The winds were so terrible. The grass was very short and it just took off and you couldn't do anything with it," Mr Sparrow said of the Monivae fire that burnt near Hamilton on February 16 in 1983.

The Monivae fire burnt more than 3181 hectares, destroyed three homes and other buildings as well about 209 kilometres of fencing.

About 1469 sheep and 203 cattle were lost in the fire that started at 3.39pm off the Port Fairy Road. "In those days we never had personal protection gear like we've got today," Mr Sparrow said.

He was out in a paddock off Mount Napier Road in an old Austin fire truck which had no heat shield protection on it. When the fire turned on them, the truck swerved and hit a hole in the paddock and threw him off.

But his overalls got caught on the truck, and he ended up burning his hands.

"I got all my hair burnt off and all my beard burnt off. It was a very horrible day," Mr Sparrow said.

He had only been on the truck for a couple of hours when he was injured.

"At the same time St John's ambulance volunteers were there and they took me straight into the hospital," Mr Sparrow said.

Every day for a week after he had to return to the hospital to get his hands treated, but said you wouldn't know now that he'd been injured. "I was very lucky," he said.

Mr Sparrow's wife had to cut all his hair off, but it did grow back.

"It's one of the worst days in my life. The wind and dust and everything was flying," he said. "I've never seen a day like it since.

"If I had of fell off the truck, and the overalls never got caught, the fire would have gone over the top of me it was that close. I might not have been here. I would have hit the ground and been burnt alive."

Mr Sparrow said the smoke from the big fire in South Australia made it worse.

When the Monivae fire burnt into Buckley's Swamp, he said they had "awful trouble" trying to put it out because of the peat.

His injuries didn't stop him fighting fires though.

Mr Sparrow still attends 98 per cent of the fires in his brigade area and he's helped fight blazes in NSW half a dozen times as well as three in South Australia.

On Sunday he attended an anniversary ceremony at Cockatoo along with fellow firefighter Ray Downs to mark the 40^th anniversary.

Mr Downs laid a wreath at the moving ceremony for the young volunteer firefighter who lost his life battling the Branxholme fire.

"It was an honour but it was still emotional," he said. "I didn't know him well but I knew his dad well."

Just talking about it all these years later can be overwhelming, Mr Downs said. "To know that roughly an 18-year-old had just lost his life is a bit hard to come to terms with and remain at terms with," he said.

Mr Downs said he didn't see the firefighter that day but was about 400 yards away when he was injured after problems with his vehicle. He later passed away in hospital.

Mr Downs was in his lounge with his neighbours when he witnessed the power pole across the road fall and spark the Branxholme fire on the Henty Highway about 4.30pm.

"We'd had several minor incidents with power lines over the few weeks before Ash Wednesday. This pole had been condemned ... it had a mark on it to be replaced," he said.

Mr Downs said his neighbours - volunteer firefighters - had come to his house that day to keep an eye on the power pole and were just talking about parking a truck out in the paddock in case it fell when it toppled over.

"They were in the lounge room looking out over at the pole when the telly went off," he said. "Another two minutes and they would have been there but it got away."

Mr Downs said the problem with the fire was that it was at the end of a long drought and the sheep droppings would catch alight and blow away.

The Branxholme fire claimed one life, burnt about 200 hectares, one home and nine other buildings, as well as 20 kilometres of fencing. About 2600 sheep and 159 cattle were lost.

Mr Downs said it was his neighbour's house that went up.

"When the wind changed, the fire burnt the neighbours' house. When I shut my eyes I can still see the flames going over the house and I was probably 300 metres away when it happened," he said.

All that was left of the late 1800s house, which had been built from bricks made on site, was ash and a few solid bricks.

Their elderly neighbours lived with them for 11 weeks after the fire, and a few days after they went to see what they could salvage. They got two buckets of ash from the location where jewellery once sat on a bench and after sifting through it found all the jewels which they used to make new rings.

"Unbelievable," he said.

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