Bushfires: Commins sisters return home to help save the family farms

For the Commins sisters, letting their parents and brother battle the fires threatening their Omeo district properties alone was not an option.

Sally and Genevieve Commins returned home to help save the family’s properties in Victoria’s East Gippsland.

For the Commins sisters, letting their parents and brother battle the fires threatening their Omeo district properties in East Gippsland alone was not an option.

The fifth-generation mountain cattle farming family successfully defended their home from the fires that burned all around their Swifts Creek and Benambra properties as teenagers home for summer holidays in 2003, and they’re doing the same as professionals in their early 30s in 2020.

As authorities declared a state of disaster and ordered people to evacuate on Friday, Wangaratta GP Genevieve, Melbourne communications consultant Sally, Melbourne agri-finance professional Dee and several family friends talked their way through a police roadblock at Harrietville to drive over the top of Mount Hotham to their parents’ house north of Swifts Creek, and 2000ha cattle property at Benambra. Sally, who left her 15-month-old daughter at home in Melbourne with her husband, said she believed police let them through only because they were in convoy with their brother Alastair’s girlfriend, Jackie McGrath, who had a slip-on firefighting unit on the back of her ute.

All three Commins sisters are experienced firefighters, having spent their university holidays working as part of Environment Department firefighting crews based at Swifts Creek.

A contingent of 10, including the Comminses parents, Bruce and Kate, brother Alastair, who works on the family farm, Ms ­McGrath and three family friends took on the challenge of defending their properties.

They spent Saturday morning running sprinklers over the house and sheds, filling gutters, and moving horses to the home paddock, as well as cleaning up around sheds and opening gates for cattle to escape on the Benambra property.

“Around noon, the ash started falling really heavily at home,” Sally Commins said. “I called Dad and said you’d better get back here, because things were looking a whole lot worse at home. We didn’t have flames at home (on Saturday), but it was the same as 2003, where it went the darkest orange you can imagine. Really dark, heavy ash falling, and embers. It was very tense for a few hours.”

A wind change mid-afternoon did not help, with gusts making fires to the south, north and west of the properties unpredictable.

Sally Commins said she saw two Chinook helicopters flying to Omeo to evacuate 50 vulnerable residents, and two Black Hawk Helicopters that flew in supplies.

Unlike others near Omeo and Benambra who suffered terrible stock losses, the Comminses survived Saturday unscathed.

Yet the threat remains, with hot weather predicted by the end of the week, fires still burning and all roads out blocked indefinitely.

Said Sally Commins: “If you’re going to stay and defend, you need a plan, and all hands on deck.”