General News
20 April, 2023
Volunteerism spans decades
At 78, Dixie Fire Brigade volunteer Daryl Crawford is still going strong and helping to keep his community safe.
At 78, Dixie Fire Brigade volunteer Daryl Crawford is still going strong and helping to keep his community safe.
After more than 60 years as a CFA volunteer, Mr Crawford can reflect on tough times when he led strike teams during massive local blazes and good times when he helped to save properties and people.
Now first lieutenant, he has taken on virtually every role in the brigade and for more than a decade, he and wife Val housed the local fire truck on their Dixie farm.
Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria chief executive officer Adam Barnett said volunteers like Mr Crawford provide the backbone of rural brigades and pass on their knowledge and expertise to the next generation.
“Volunteers like Daryl are the heart and soul of their communities and the CFA,” he said.
“They are critical to emergency management in Victoria, especially in country communities where families often continue their commitments through successive generations.”
Mr Crawford joined the brigade at 17.
“Back in those days, things were simple,” he said. “Everyone was in the fire brigade; farmers had to band together to protect their properties.
“They’d burn the roadsides at night and get us young blokes in to hold the hose and put it out…that’s how we trained.”
Mr Crawford led crews through the two biggest fires to hit the region over the past 60 years, Ash Wednesday in 1983 and the St Patrick’s Day fires of 2018.
Today Dixie is a separate entity, well serviced by a strong band of volunteers, but in 1983 it was combined with the Terang brigade.
“We knew it was going to be a bad day so we were on duty minding the radio at Terang, where our truck was kept at the time,” Mr Crawford said.
“There was a roaring north wind and we knew if a fire started it was going to take off.”
Predicting the worst, one of the volunteers went to the Terang Co-op and bought five sets of goggles, which were not standard issue in those days.
The crew was not called to the first fire at Cudgee but soon after was sent to an outbreak at Ballangeich.
About half-way out, they realised the plastic lenses on their goggles had been blown out.
“Normally if we hear there’s a fire, you’ll see smoke coming up, but the wind was so strong that day we didn’t see anything,” Mr Crawford said.
They met the fire head on near the burning Framlingham bridge.
“We’d come in at the front of the fire – not by choice – and had to find a safe spot so we followed a local and found a cleared spot on the top of a bank,” Mr Crawford recalled.
“The cabins weren’t smoke proof in those days. We couldn’t see the fire coming – but we could feel the heat and thought we were going to choke to death.”
The crew was hailed to a house that was starting to burn.
“A concrete water tank was split open and two gas bottles were hissing but we cooled them off and turned off the pipes,” Mr Crawford said.
“There was smoke coming out of the roof so we ran a big hose through the tiles. About 10 old people had gone there for refuge in the kitchen. They weren’t capable of getting out but they all survived.”
After refilling out of a cow trough, they went to Garvoc.
“We’d only been there an hour. The most devastating thing I’ve ever seen were the destroyed buildings and the dead cattle on the way back.”
The truck had to cross a bridge over a drain but the wooden decking had been burnt.
“There were two girders going across it – if we had missed them, we wouldn’t have made it,” Mr Crawford said.
They come across a burning fire truck outside a house that had been reduced to ashes. “I was the officer in charge and had to look in the cabin but the crew had jumped ship and got onto another truck.”
Mr Crawford’s crew joined with other tankers to make a stand at Sampsons Ford Road.
“It was that hot I remember turning the hose on myself to cool down,” he said.
“We still didn’t know where the fire was, just the smoke. I remember the sound of all the trucks crunching to get into reverse when the fire arrived and we realised we couldn’t stop it.
“We then decided to make a stand at Peterborough Road but it wasn’t wide enough and was too dangerous so we were called back to protect Terang.”
Mr Crawford heard that the fire had crossed the Dixie hill.
“I still remember driving up the road expecting to see our farm black but the fire had run into a rape crop near Lake Mumblin that pushed it away,” he said.
“It went out in fingers and blew out. We couldn’t put it out. Water was hopeless that day.”
Mr Crawford later joined clean-up efforts, visiting farmers to see what they needed.
“We hadn’t insured our dairy for too much because it was a brick building with stainless steel – but in the dairies I visited the concrete was cooked like chalk and the steel milk lines were stuffed.
“I felt guilty because they were burnt and we weren’t.”
Mr Crawford has responded to hundreds of fires over the decades, including being on the spot when a windmill spark started a blaze that could have been disastrous on a hot and windy day.
The St Patrick’s Day fires in 2018 took the veteran by surprise, even when he responded to a call for a grassfire near the Terang power station.
“It was a windy night but you don’t expect fires to start at night,” Mr Crawford said.
“I was driving and we came out of the trees; it looked like Terang was on fire right through to Camperdown.
“We went down Depot Road and then the wind swirled and we were in the fire. I hit the accelerator as hard as I could to get the poor buggers out of the flames.”
Mr Crawford and wife Val’s farm had hosted the Dixie fire truck for about a decade before the local fire shed was built in 2001.
“We had the best turnout times in the district because we lived with it,” he joked.
In 2018 the home was full of locals while the volunteers tackled the fire front.
“People came here because we’re on a hill,” Mrs Crawford said.
“One woman wanted to go to Warrnambool and I said you’ll die if you go. Another wanted to go to Terang and I said the same thing,” she said.
“We didn’t have power, but one bloke had a 1000-litre pack on the back of his truck so we had water and everyone felt safe.”
The fire burnt to the bottom part of the farm.
During the night, the Dixie crew twice went to one house to put out a threatening fire.
“The owner later embraced me and had tears in his eyes and called me his hero because I’d helped to save his house,” Mr Crawford said.
“People say why do you do it – that’s why.”
