RFS volunteer Steve Hillyar battled Malua Bay blaze while his own home burned

Volunteer firey Steve Hillyar was 24 hours into a brutal shift, going door to burning door in the seaside town of Malua Bay, unaware his own slice of paradise was burning to the ground. Only his chooks, three pigs and a sheep were still standing.

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Volunteer firey Steve Hillyar was 24 hours into a brutal shift, going door to burning door in the seaside town of Malua Bay, unaware his own slice of paradise was burning to the ground.

The chippie had just finished painting the pickets on the veranda of his south coast home when he went on night shift with the brigade.

“If this place burns down I’ll be really pissed off,” he told his daughter with a laugh.

Beneath his she’ll-be-right humour the RFS veteran of 26 years knew the bushland around Malua Bay was tinder dry and ready to go up.

RFS volunteer Steve Hillyar in front of the remains of his home on Blackbutt Lane in Malua Bay. Picture: Toby Zerna

It was at about 10pm on December 30 Mr Hillyar’s crew were called to Nelligen, west of Batemans Bay, where homes were about to come under threat of a raging inferno.

“We had two trucks protecting houses while we were putting out spot fires,” he said.

“But it just rolled on through as triple-0 call after triple-0 call came through.”

They fought the flames into the early hours of the morning until, at around first light, emergency warnings began coming from Mogo, near his own town.

“We could hear captains screaming code reds which just means ‘everyone shut up and listen, we need more trucks’,” he said.

“But there were no more trucks to be had.”

The crew drove back into their home turf with sirens and lights blaring under an orange morning sky.

At about 10am, Mr Hillyar said, he watched a rolling cloud of smoke and heat combine with a pyrocumulus system which sent the encroaching firefront into overdrive.

They filled their water tank at an ambulance station in their seaside town as flames came over the top.

“Everything that came in contact with this was just exploding,” he said.

“There were so many houses on fire and we couldn’t do a thing about them.”

Mr Hillyar had just painted the railings on his veranda when he headed off to help his brigade.

The four were 23 hours in now, not a bite of food or a moment’s rest, going door-to-door dousing flaming gardens and homes. Their driver, John, is 80 while Mr Hillyar is the youngest at 51.

“We would have been okay if it was a bushfire,” he said.

“But it was a firestorm, a big angry beast.”

As relief were called in the men returned to the station to find their own cars on fire or melting.

A senior deputy asked Mr Hillyar if he could give a few more hours – and he said yes.

“At the last house a guy called up and asks if we can save his home. I said ‘probably not’,” he said.

“It was burning behind Colorbond cladding. If we opened it up it would explode into flames. But we had to open it – and off she went.”

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Mr Hillyar threw in the towel after two more hours. He got in his car and it still ran, so he crawled it back through the smoke, downed power lines, trees and licking flames toward his home at the top of Blackbutt Lane.

Some homes in the picturesque suburb were still standing, others are just twisted tin roofs on the blackened earth.

“My heart lifted a little” when he saw the surviving structures, he said. But when he came over a ridge he realised he was not one of the lucky ones in Malua Bay.

“Gone,” he said.

“It wasn’t even smoking when I got to it.”

All that remained on Mr Hillyar’s property the day after.

His chickens and the sheep, who they like to ride around on the back of, survived. As did his three pigs.

The house and the shed, which had been set up to live in, were both reduced to fragments.

Later, while working on the blitzed property, one of the chickens grabbed what appeared to be a small worm. It was a baby brown snake sheltering beneath a trailer wheel. It killed his chook.

The hardest part of the ordeal, he said, was telling his wife Mandy and daughters Abbey, Annie and Ellie, that their home was gone.

His wife still can’t return to the property where Mr Hillyar and Abbey, on Monday, fed scraps to the animals in drizzling rain.

She’d returned to their home during the chaos and towed away their caravan – but had left the keys hanging in the house, Mr Hillyar said with a chuckle.

Mr Hillyar’s sheep grazes in front of the remains of his home. Picture: Toby Zerna

He said his wife had been a wonderful support for the family in the difficult time since, which has seen them move into his parent’s holiday home down the road.

“She and the girls didn’t know if I was alive or dead for most of a day, it would have been hard.”

The family is committed to rebuilding but Mr Hillyar wants RFS members to be given financial relief when they lose their homes and wants more payments for the volunteer force.

“The mortgage payments don’t stop even for houses that aren’t there,” he said.

“I think people wouldn’t care if people got money put in their account to help with that.”

His daughter picked out fragments of melted glass and shattered crockery from the ashes. She plans to make a mosaic out of the remnants of their home to hang in whatever her father rebuilds on the block.

“You have to keep going to move forward,” he said.

“I don’t know what I focus on, getting my girls through.”

Originally published as RFS volunteer Steve Hillyar battled Malua Bay blaze while his own home burned