DRIVING through burnt paddocks on Mal Thomson’s South Stirling farm, it is hard to believe a major fire event has taken place just days before.
Instead of the expected black ground covered in ash, the paddocks are totally bare and white in colour.
It is only the blackened and broken trees in shelter belts and along creek lines and the burnt remains of fences that signal the ferocity of the fire that swept through the property last Thursday night.
Such was the force of the wind, that by Friday morning the ash and charred stubble and pasture had been blown off paddocks, along with the valuable topsoil, leaving only sandy soil laid bare.
The fire consumed more than 17,000 hectares of land in total, with an estimated 2500ha of that farmland.
It was a cruel blow to affected farmers in the area, who were already dealing with an unusually late break to the season and lack of feed for livestock.
Mr Thomson said the conditions on that night were the worst he had seen in his time farming.
Catastrophic winds that reached an estimated 120 kilometres per hour meant the fire raced out of the Stirling Range National Park and into farmland to the south at a ferocious pace.
The combination of smoke and dust blown from the dry paddocks, mixed with straw from stubbles swirling in the air, made for terrible visibility and increased the danger of fighting the fire.
Mr Thomson estimates he had up to 700ha of land impacted by the fire, but it was the loss of 380 twin-bearing ewes that really hurt.
“They had just started lambing about three days before the fire,” Mr Thomson said.
“They didn’t stand a chance, they had nowhere to go.
“We were really struggling for sheep feed like everyone, but we had enough to keep going and we were buying more in but the fire has taken out 170ha of pasture that would have been used on one property, plus 50ha on the home place.
“Basically it means a quarter of our pasture paddocks have gone.
“Not to mention the topsoil that has simply been blown away – you can’t put a value on that.
“We are now going to have to put something on those paddocks just to hold them together to stop further wind erosion.
“We will wait for a rain and then sow them down to wheat probably.”
Mr Thomson said they were monitoring the fire throughout the day on Thursday and at one stage thought they wouldn’t be impacted.
“We were told the fire was out of control but heading east, away from us,” he said.
“We had a crew on standby and by 3pm we were asked to go up and wait at a farm to the north east of ours because they thought it was going to head through there.
“The fire was a long way off at that stage and we actually requested to stand down because there wasn’t a lot happening.
“We even went to the local country club to have a meal that evening but while there we saw some vision of the extent of the fire coming out of the Stirlings and I thought I better head home and get ready just in case, because it didn’t look good.
“We headed up to the boundary of the property to have a look and couldn’t see anything, there was a lot of wind but we still couldn’t really see the fire.
“Then some spot fires started and we were fighting them and trying to direct them into some swamp country, when all of a sudden we turned around and the full force of the fire front was right on us.
“We thought it was kilometres away but it just came in so quick that it caught us by surprise and we just had to get out of there.
“I had an idea of how I was going to get out of the paddock, there was that much smoke, dust and stubble being whipped up – you couldn’t see a thing.
“We were doing 60km/hr in the truck and the fire was catching us, we had no visibility and all I could see were the lines in the paddock from the seeding the year before and they ran north-south, so I just headed across them in an easterly direction towards where I knew there was a gate out of the paddock.
“There were trees on the left and a pine plantation on the right, if we went too far left we would have hit the trees and if we went right and the wrong side of the pines we would have been trapped.
“Luckily we got through the gap and got out of there and headed to the house where we regrouped.
“By that stage there were quite a few trucks there to help out, but we couldn’t fight it, we just had to watch it and that is really why no one got injured because you couldn’t get close to it.
“I haven’t spoken to anyone since that has said they have seen a fire similar to this one.”
Mr Thomson said there was a lot of angst from the community in regards to the prescribed burning that took place earlier that week.
“A lot of people are angry at the Parks and Wildlife Service for conducting a prescribed burn that week,” he said.
“We are all for prescribed burning but I don’t know why they had to light it up that week.
“The wind was probably worse than what was forecast, but even what had been forecast was always going to make for a nasty situation.”
Senior fire control officer for the area and Chillinup farmer Mick Moir said the extreme weather event made it a difficult fire to fight.
“It was a massive community effort to get in and tackle the fire and everyone is still rallying behind the guys that have been impacted by the fire,” Mr Moir said.
Mr Moir acknowledged the community anger at the Parks and Wildlife Service and said while no one was against prescribed burning, it is important to pick the right conditions in which it is undertaken.
“I think this is where the communication lines need to be opened up and local knowledge utilised,” he said.
“As a local brigade we had instructed farmers in the area to shut burning down due to the pending weather conditions and the fire risk that came with them.”
Mr Moir said there had been dialogue with Parks and Wildlife since the fire and he hoped this would bring about some change to processes.
“Hopefully we can get some of those bureaucrats higher up the ladder that make the decisions to come and have a look at the damage and at the same time talk through with them how these processes can be improved,” he said.