By Carolyn Webb
After a tiring and hectic two weeks on the front line of the Grampians bushfire emergency, Ararat and Moyston’s Country Fire Authority volunteers are looking forward to some, albeit brief, new year’s downtime.
“You’re running on adrenaline,” Leigh Dwyer says of the intensity of battling to save lives and property from the inferno in western Victoria.
CFA volunteers at Ararat, Sophie Cooper, Peta Chaplin, Shea Bond, Ash Turnham, Austin Stacpoole, Matt Borecki, Jeydon Nancarrow, Ewan Clugston and Leigh Dwyer.Credit: Simon Schluter
On Christmas Day, from mid-afternoon to 8pm, and over 12 hours on Boxing Day, Dwyer and her colleagues helped defend properties and stop fire entering the town of Moyston, 220 kilometres north-west of Melbourne.
The recent milder weather has allowed them some respite, although “it takes time to adjust to normal routines, normal functioning”, Dwyer says.
But the volunteers stand ready to attack any flare-ups in coming days and weeks. Temperatures in the high 30s are predicted across the weekend.
“I guess somebody has to do it, so we all put our hands up where we can, and do what we can,” Dwyer says.
Firefighters battle the Grampians bushfire in the Moyston/Mafeking area on December 20.Credit: Dadswell Bridge CFA/Facebook
The Country Fire Authority’s deputy chief officer, Garry Cook, thanked firefighters such as the Ararat crew who had sacrificed holidays to labour in tough conditions.
“We just thank them from the bottom of our hearts. I know that I speak on behalf of many grateful Victorians,” he said.
“We’ve had literally hundreds of people go and help another community in their time of need in a firefighting operation.
“That commitment and dedication to serve is phenomenal.
“Our volunteers don’t seek praise for that. They just do it. They don’t seek any form of recognition or heroism.”
Cook also reiterated that the danger was not over, given the hot, dry conditions ahead and the fire edges of Grampians National Park spanning about 400 kilometres.
The blaze could take weeks to control and to deaden flare-ups, but Cook said firefighters would work to contain and black out fires before the next weather “spike”.
In the past two weeks, the fire has burnt more than 76,000 hectares, destroying or damaging at least three homes, killing hundreds of livestock and razing outbuildings.
While it was easier to battle blazes on farmland, it was harder inside the inaccessible terrain of the Grampians National Park, Cook said.
Members of the Ararat crew try to embrace Christmas as they prepared to swing into action.Credit: Justin McManus
“The Grampians is very steep and it has big escarpments and things like that, so you can’t just get in there with machinery, for example, and cut fire breaks,” he said. “It’s very challenging.”
Cook said that at the peak of the fires on Boxing Day, about 800 firefighters had been fighting the blaze.
Many CFA volunteers had driven to the region on Christmas Day, from as far as Gippsland. They joined firefighters from local communities such as Pomonal, Glenthompson and Dunkeld, working in hot, arduous conditions and sleeping in tents.
Cook said that in the first days of 2025, hundreds of volunteers “will remain working to keep the fire in check, and be ready to respond to any new outbreaks that might occur because we know it’s early in summer”.
Farmer and CFA volunteer Tim Gubbins monitors the fire next to his property in the Moyston area on Boxing Day.Credit: Justin McManus
“The two hottest months of the year, January and February, are yet to come.
“So it’s important that we take the opportunity, with the weather conditions a bit more favourable, to do everything we can to keep the fire inside current lines because we don’t want it to come out again. It’s done enough damage.”
Moyston CFA volunteer Ewan Clugston, an Ararat brigades co-ordinator, said CFA crews from outer Melbourne had stayed until New Year’s Eve to contain fires near farms along the Grampians’ eastern side.
Local CFA crews will continue to monitor the situation.
“We’re always on call,” Clugston said. “I didn’t get my Christmas pud [on Christmas Day]. The pagers went off about 2pm, and we were deployed out the back of Moyston.
“I left Moyston fire station at midnight Christmas night, was back there at 7am on Boxing Day, and I got home about 10pm.”
Clugston said Saturday’s hot temperatures and increasing north-westerly wind would probably have the team on the fire ground again.
“The conditions could be extreme again. We’ll be monitoring the whole eastern side of the fire edge on Saturday, so if there are any breakouts anywhere, we’ll be out there attending to that.”
Property owner Janet Stephens said CFA crews had saved her Moyston holiday house twice, on December 22 and Boxing Day, building a firebreak around it on Christmas Day.
Stephens said she and partner Patrick Flanagan felt “heartfelt appreciation and a degree of awe that people are willing to put themselves, in such awful conditions, in such a dangerous situation”.
“We deeply appreciate that our house was saved. It wouldn’t have been, if not for them.”
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