By Helen Dwyer, Brigade Secretary
We are located 25ks South West of Millmerran along the Gore Highway heading to Goondiwindi. We have two units one medium and one light attack. We have 12 active members. Our Brigade area is made up of 20 acre blocks and 250 acre blocks, with about 60% of the area having permanent occupancy.
The South boundary borders National Park and state forest, the eastern boundary is private landholders, with the Gorge Highway bordering. The Brigade has always been community minded as we are there to help as much as we can. A large number of landholders have really started to become more self-reliant.
Our members have had an extensive fire season. It started rather innocuously, that is to say there is always a fire some where every now and then.
But this 23/24 season seem to go on and on, it started in September, then October was very big for our crews. We turned out on the 5th to the 7th then the call came out again on the 16thto the 21st then again on the 26th to 31st. We had a few days of rest in between. What a month, nearly lost our fire shed, our cars, some members nearly lost their homes.
And then in the middle of it some crew still put their hands up to go help out at another fire a night shift at Halliford. All crews had a good break before the next run in November, we were quite exhausted.
20/11 to 25/11 another large fire the crew turned out again trying to let landholders know a large fire coming their way, it was a very fast fire moving fire. Anxiety and emotions were running high in the community at this stage.
December was just as busy with a large fire heading from the National Park in the south closer to Inglewood. It was a long way off but didn't take long and it was in our area, our crew turned out once again 29th to 31st and in to January 1st 2nd 3rd 4th. We had one unit put their hands up to go help out at the Beebo fire on 3rd and 4th.
While the crews were out fighting fires we had thank you cards from our community put under our shed door and a lot of messages of ‘thank you’ and ‘keep up the good work’ on our Facebook page.
We thank all the employers who supported us and gave us time off to go fight fires without them we would be struggling to get crews. We would like to thank our local IGA who donated bottle water for the members. We thank our members on the big achievements they all put in!