The Hamilton Air Base CFA volunteers keeping fire fighters in the air

The CFA volunteers who manage Hamilton Air Base run as tight an operation as an F1 pit crew.

Flying high: CFA volunteers David Davis, Leighton Wraith, Paul Batista and Neil Sandford are all part of the Hamilton Air Base ground crew that fills aircraft with retardant during bushfire emergencies.

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THE CFA volunteers who manage Hamilton Air Base run as tight an operation as an F1 pit crew.

“I don’t think we are quite as fast as that,” says air base manager Leighton Wraith, who oversees 40 specially trained CFA volunteers who mix and load retardant into planes during the high-pressure bushfire emergencies.

“We can load a bomber with three tonnes of retardant or foam in two minutes and 45 seconds.

“From the time the aircraft touches down, taxis, stops, is loaded and taxis back to the runway and is airborne again is no more than six to seven minutes.”

It is quite a feat, and one the team, comprised mainly of 50- to 70-year-olds, has to repeat countless times every summer.

“We’ve been told that without the CFA volunteers, this base probably wouldn’t exist,” Leighton says.

“Strategically, it is the most important air base in the west and southwest of Victoria.”

The Hamilton base is unique in that it is run by the CFA, while the 15 other fire-bomber air bases across Victoria are all managed by DELWP.

Located at the airport 11km north of Hamilton, it is the main refilling station for aircraft that battle blazes across a vast 2.2 million-hectare region stretching from Peterborough and Warrnambool, to near Balmoral and Glenthompson.

In the first two months of the past summer, the team of volunteers loaded a record 310 planes.

Working in groups of six or 12, a crew is on call every day during peak fire season, from November 1 to mid-April.

On days of high fire danger, they man the base from 9am until 9pm, ready to jump into action at a moment’s notice. Depending on the conditions and a fire’s location, they have water, foam or retardant ready to load.

The job isn’t light work.

“You pull those heavy hoses with retardant in them, load the plane then pull them back and the next aircraft immediately pulls up — you do that for an hour, it’s bloody hard work,” Leighton says.

“When things are really going, we have three fellows just mixing retardant and another team loading the aircraft.

“On a Total Fire Ban day, we have a reserve crew so we can swap if they’re getting too buggered.

“We have a second role where our communication unit monitors all fire-bombers and support aircraft who report ‘ops normal’ each 30 minutes.

“With the Budj Bim National Park fires, between the bombers and support aircraft we were servicing 11 aircraft.

“The teams had their skates on I’ll tell you; they worked their butts off but they were up to it.”

The volunteers are members of brigades in the Hamilton region, and include men and women, most with 20-30 years of firefighting experience.

“Most still want to be involved and are still very active in the CFA, but they are a bit past jumping on the back of a truck,” Leighton says.

Fire-bomber pilot Don Armstrong says he wouldn’t be able to do his job without them.

“They are absolutely fantastic,” he says. “There are occasions when we are coming back quite frequently, and putting the pressure on them.

“Sometimes, when we have fires just to the north, we are returning every 12 and a half minutes.”

Don has been stationed at Hamilton for the past five fire seasons.

“This would have been one of our busiest years,” he says. “A lot of times I have seen six-plus aeroplanes here, so they don’t get a spell when that happens.

“We’d be stumped without any support if we didn’t have the men and women here at this air base to look after us with mixing the retardant.”

Leighton says the ground-support crew’s role goes unrecognised, but is one of the most critical to making sure bushfires in hard-to-access areas are brought under control quickly.

“When you are on the back of a truck you are specifically there to do a task,” he says. “Whereas here, our responsibility is to support our aircrews to cover a massive area.

“Both are incredibly important, but we see a bigger perspective in what we do.”

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