General News
17 October, 2025
On Fire
BARRY'S CORNER: We burned the highway to put out the fire. I was known as the bloke who burned the highway and my crew named me: ‘Barry Backburn’.
Whenever I come across former fire crew this incident might get mentioned.
After that my crew was sent off to the Mansfield area where we propped at Sheep Yard flat with other sections of the forestry crew to chase various fires.
We were lifted onto the Governors in navy helicopters.
It was steep slopes and loose rocks country.
was off work for days.
It was a long fire line and we were stuck with it for days.
Going back to the Sheep Yard Creek was pleasant except we always took notice on arrival of the camp layout and chose our camp spot accordingly.
This time the cook house was set up near the creek and the cooks lifted water out of the creek for camp use but put the kitchen waste above the intake.
It was a fundamental mistake and lucky we had spotted it from experience.
My crew mostly escaped without mishap except for two or three but the rest of the camp copped it hard, losing more than half of their crews.
I had alerted a senior officer but I doubt it was fixed in time.
Showed how a bowel problem can sweep through crews.
Through hells gate Over the Ash Wednesday week we were sent to Powelltown, given a briefing, map and instructions.
We motored up onto the ridge and found the fire and the Board of Works crew with three brand new big bulldozers.
I thought this would not take long to finish, I suggested.
“When are you blokes going to start,” I inquired. Well, they told me they would not start because it was too steep and rocky and dangerous.
I take a peek over the edge and agreed it looked steep, but told them that only a week before we had been in the rough country of Gippsland where we saw operators almost had their machines balanced on the blades and the rear end of the dozers’ under bellies visible from the rear.
That break would have taken the dozers about half a day to knock out and it took us three and a half days.
I was even given a 60-person army team to back me up and they could not keep up with my 15-man crew.
I went back up to them a few times to encourage them to use a match here and there to clean up the line, but this was way too far out of reach and they could not actually drop a match anywhere because it was too much to ask the untrained diggers.
We kept going down this steep hill and into a lush area of vegetation, chopping our way through when I heard a plaintiff voice back on the line, “My missus will kill me if she finds out we have chopped up all these ferns.”
It was Daffy O’Donnell. He never revealed if he had indeed got into a scruff at home.
At the bottom we discovered it was a viaduct with clean running water to supply Melbourne.
If I had the dozers with me I would have got them to push a temporary ramp over the water and walked the machines across to the road.
I was too much of a cowboy for these board workers so we did it the hard way.
I popped into the fire office after we made it back and complained that I could not do back burns.
“Is that right?” said the fire boss, “Leave it with me.”
Early next morning I was back ready to go when he told me he would fix it even if he to go way up to the top of the tree to do that.
On this same fire I had a few successful fires burning around some tall mountain gums when a flame would catch a bit of loose bark, run straight up to the canopy and going nicely when a fire bomber would come along and dump water, putting out my wonderful backburns.
It took a long time to get rid of the planes as the radio reception was so bad in that deep rugged country.
There’s a catch. When we had finished the Powelltown job, the boss told us there was good news and we were all going home.
“What’s the catch?” we asked, knowing there was fires still burning all over the state.
He told us there was a fire in the Grampians and we were needed there.
We make it home and spend a single night in our own bed after nearly three weeks away and then were off to the Grampians.
I got the briefing and was told the CFA had offered 15 fire trucks - a CFA strike force to tackle that fire but swapped them for us.
I made the point to the crew that with their water bottles, rakhoe and helmet each man was worth the equivalent to one fire truck.
The fire was tucked away in the back of the Wonderland area and took us an effort to walk in and knock it off. It was no place for fire trucks.
After we put that fire out we were sent to Tallangatta.
After arriving at the village we were given directions to the fire and spent a few days there before we finally made it home for a longer break.
Another time we were over in Gippsland working from Cann River where the fire and the camp had been going so long there was a choice of meals and dessert at the cookhouse which had been taken up by local district organisations to cater for the firies.
Our job involved saving the lighthouse.
We raked a track from the edge and out to the primary dune and as we worked over the top of the dune beside the lighthouse which was plastered with red dye from the phoschek which the bomber planes had used to stem the run of the fire, one of my crew yelled out this was the first time doing a rakhoe edge with a view.
We could see the long beach with rolling waves away into the distance.
On a hot weekend we had been put on standby, which was not unusual. You had to be contactable.
I was having lunch with Jan and Barry Sherwell and Jan’s father Bill Clugston when there was a phone call to get me and the crew and off to Trentham.
We were to do a back burn along a bush track and meet the CFA part way along the track.
We only had our regular hand tools and no spare water to use on a fire.
Badly need. Dozer operators killed.
This was the fire that killed two department staff.
They had a burnover of the dozer they had been working and it was not too inspiring.
Our burning on this track went on and on until we connected up with CFA.
My crew had burnt about 12 to 14 kilometres while the CFA had about eight trucks and had burnt just over one kilometre.
They certainly took a cautious approach. Later in the early evening we picked up a dozer track and the dozer, so I walked in front of the machine to guide the driver and two of my blokes in a Toyota went behind to help the driver.
As I was walking it got steeper and steeper and we were not going to be able to continue.
I stopped the dozer and looked behind to see that the Toyota was too close.
I put the dozer driver to scratch out a bit of flat to get my crew to turn around.
However it was too steep for the Toyota and I had to get the dozer behind the tray and put the blade underneath the tray and lift it around.
many a year two blokes look so apprehensive, but it was soon straightened up.