Tour Down Under riders draw crowds as they ride through fire-damaged parts of Adelaide Hills
Big crowds turned out to watch the Tour Down Under start its leg through fire-damaged countryside in the Adelaide Hills, including some CFS volunteers. Then they saw the signs that were for them.
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Up at Woodside, Barry Langbein and Lance Lawson have nearly 100 years’ experience between them volunteering for the Country Fire Service.
But nothing quite prepared them for what’s happened over the past month – and they’re not just talking about the fire devastation.
It’s been the public response to the fires – and to the remarkable efforts of the CFS – that have touched the hearts of these seemingly hard-bitten firefighters.
The love for the CFS in Woodside was obvious yesterday as the Tour Down Under rolled through town.
The garishly coloured peloton stood in stark contrast to the ash and black of the ruined countryside.
But in the township, there were “thank you” banners hanging from buildings, handmade signs were on the side of the road and there was an ad for a bushfire relief concert at the Woodside Hotel.
Mr Langbein, 74, has 54 years in the CFS under his fire helmet. He said the fires that swept right up to the edges of the Adelaide Hills town, and destroyed 14 homes, “were worse than Ash Wednesday’’.
But it’s been in the days since those terrible fires that he has been touched by the love and gratitude shown by his fellow citizens.
“I have been going around thinking for the last 10 years that people didn’t really care,’’ Mr Langbein said. Now, he said, people were coming up in shops to “tap me on the shoulder to say thanks’’.
Mr Langbein, himself something of a hero, took out a hose on the back of a truck because all the regular fire appliances were out fighting the blaze, and, according to his colleague James Dunn, “saved three houses’’.
“With three other blokes,’’ Mr Langbein pipes up, making sure he’s not seen as taking too much credit.
When some eight-year-old girls brought a cake they had made with “Thank You CFS” on it, grown men were seen to be darting around corners to surreptitiously wipe a tear away.
The Woodside CFS doesn’t tend to “rattle the tin’’ to chase donations from locals but now they are finding people are coming to them wanting to hand over the cash.
Some of the fire-ravaged areas could still be seen from the balcony of the Bedford Hotel but there was still an optimistic feeling in the air as the colour, noise and movement of the Tour Down Under took over the main street.
Before the start of stage two of the race, won by Australian Caleb Ewen, Premier Steven Marshall told the crowd: “Get behind the Adelaide Hills, get behind Kangaroo Island, get behind the areas of South Australia that have been hit by drought.’’
All through yesterday’s race route, from Woodside, through to Oakbank, Balhannah, Mylor, Aldgate and Stirling, people emerged to watch the bikes glide by.
In between the towns, they were perched on the roofs of four-wheel-drives, picnic tables had been set up with lunch and bottles of wine, and there were signs everywhere saluting the CFS. There were hundreds of amateur cyclists in their brightly coloured clobber sweeping down hills, then struggling back up them.
It felt like some of the wounds of the fire were starting to heal, even if they will still be felt for a long time to come. The CFS yesterday declared the Cudlee Creek bushfire as “safe”, more than a month after it started.
Back at Woodside, Lance Lawson, a 62-year-old train driver with 44 years in the CFS, said having the TDU come through town was a blessing. “What’s happening now is lifting the spirits of the country, there’s no other way to put it,’’ he said. “After all the despair, to have this come to town just lifts spirits.’’