One year on from the Blackford fire, those affected are bouncing back with many fences rebuilt, new sheds erected and paddocks again full of livestock.
The tight-knit Avenue Range and Lucindale communities have shown their resilience, helped by an outpouring of generosity from locals and strangers.
On January 11, 2021 more than 17,000 hectares was impacted with the fire threatening the township of Lucindale and even putting Naracoorte on high alert for hours.
PIRSA at the time reported livestock losses of 7326 sheep and 371 cattle.
Three houses and countless sheds and other infrastructure were also destroyed.
One of those hardest hit was the Bainger family, Hillcrest Pastoral Company, who had four properties in the fire's path, three of which were nearly fully burnt out.
Despite losing 2000 sheep and more than 100 cattle in the blaze, which charred 2600ha of their land, one year on, their breeding herd is back to full strength.
Sheep have also been bought back onto their Conkar Plains property.
Thomas Elder Consulting ag management consultant Bruce Creek, who assisted the Baingers with their fire recovery, credits their good insurance cover and the tenacity of the property managers for their ability to get "back up and running at 100 per cent".
"There were no shortcuts on insurance, so as soon as it happened we could start replacing things and know they were covered," Mr Creek said.
Within a week of the fire, the daunting task of replacing fences had begun and by November they had completed 130 kilometres across the four properties. There are just two new hay sheds still to go up.
Mr Creek says the first couple of weeks after the fire were spent closely monitoring the livestock that had survived the fire, with all of the steers then sold.
"We were unable to sell cattle immediately as we needed to monitor them closely for signs of being smoke or fire affected, and as we only had several hundred acres of unburnt country left on both Hillcrest and Conkar Plains, we confinement fed in those areas," he said.
The biggest challenge for Hillcrest Pastoral Company was finding agistment for the 600 head of cattle that couldn't be relocated to one of their other properties.
We just appreciate how generous everyone has been.
- Hugh Bainger, Hillcrest Pastoral Company
They are hugely grateful to the farmers at Conmurra, Reedy Creek and Camperdown, Vic, who took them, along with the bull breeders that held bulls post-sale for them. The heifers were away for six months and the cows only came back in October.
Mr Bainger says the BlazeAid volunteers made a huge difference and he cannot thank enough everyone associated with the Hay Run and other hay donations, which started arriving while the fire was still smoldering.
"We just really appreciate how generous everyone has been," he said.
The Baingers were pleased to be able to pay some of this generosity forward, donating a B-double load of hay to one of the affected properties in the recent Poolaijelo, Vic, fire.
Mr Bainger, who stayed to defend his house that day and only retreated to a fire proof bunker as the fire front hit, is adamant this, along with the aerial bombers, are the reasons his home of 45 years is still standing.
"No one will get me to leave if there is another fire," he said.
Just down the road from Hillcrest, the Higgins family, Patanga Pastoral Company, had about 80 per cent of their 600ha Avenue Range property burnt in the Blackford fire.
Incredibly their herd of nearly 500 cattle were spared with only one cow put down due to a burnt udder.
They put this down largely to their long-time agent, Miller Whan & John's Mike Newton, moving the cattle back into already burnt areas as the fire raged through.
Keith Higgins says the decision to agist the herd after the fire and give the land time to recover has been a good one, rather than hand feeding for months.
"We are just so grateful to those who agisted our cattle - they stayed healthy and kept going," he said.
"We were able to cut some of our own lucerne with the stock off the paddocks and with what we sourced, we are back to about three quarters of what we should have."
He said the hay donations were also fantastic to "keep them going" when the herd returned home in the middle of last year.
An important milestone was reached earlier this month with the sale of 80 Shorthorn and 37 Charolais Shorthorn steers at the Mount Gambier store sale.
Mr Higgins was pleased to see these cattle, which had come through the fire, sell well. They topped at $2300.
"Cattle prices have given us an extra kick to keep going," he said.
He knows there is still plenty of work to be done, while the below average rainfall year in 2021 has slowed their pasture recovery.
But when he looks around the farm he can't believe the progress - from the new fences, some which may not have been due to be replaced for years, to the new hay shed.
"I never thought we would be where we are, there was so much to do but we got there with everyone's help from family and friends and so many others, especially BlazeAid," he said.
LUCINDALE PREPARES FOR NEXT FIRE FIGHT
COUNTRY Fire Service incident controller from the Blackford fire, Patrick Ross says the community is understandably nervous a bit nervous about this bushfire season but believes the area is even better prepared for the next major blaze
In the past 12 months a new bore capable of delivering 1 million litres of water an hour has been sunk at the Lucindale airstrip, donated by local landholders Ben and Anthea Brinkworth, Willoway Farming, while extra storage tanks have also been installed.
"We can load three aircraft at the same time (3000 litres in two minutes) instead of two so if there were 12 operating, like there were that day, we could fill them incredibly quickly," Mr Ross said.
Community fundraiser, Dollars for Tanks, run by the Naracoorte Lions and Rotary Clubs was also a great success and has resulted in at least 10, 100,000L tanks on roadsides in the Naracoorte-Lucindale council area where fire trucks can quickly refill.
Mr Ross believes landholders have also been more mindful at ensuring they have bare areas on their properties such as laneways to slow any fire, just as the Jacky White drain proved a "god send" in the Blackford fire.
But he is calling on the state government to fund the upgrade of Lucindale's CFS station as an incident control centre.
A year before the Blackford fire, Lucindale was also the command centre for fighting the 26,000ha Keilira fire.
"The aircraft division of CFS recognise Lucindale as absolutely critical so most probably it is time for Adelaide to say let's upgrade the control centre," he said.
"All the things that incident management teams require to do their jobs properly when they come in, we just don't have.
"There is no logistics room, no mapping room or even printers to make maps and we have limited internet capability."
Mr Ross also wants to see progress on CRIMSON Light, a new system being developed by the CFS where air observers can send aerial data on the fire to incident controllers on the ground in real time, rather than relayed from the base.
Another game changer Mr Ross sees for managing crews on a fireground, especially at night, is fitting location transponders to all CFS trucks.
This Automatic Vehicle Locator system is being trialled by the MFS in Adelaide as well as the SES in Coober Pedy and Mr Ross hopes the CFS remains on track to put them in all trucks by 2022/2023 fire season.
"Over the past three to four years we have seen significant fires across the state so the government has seen in their first term that they have to be ready and can't just dial it in, money is being spent but what is probably lacking is the communication from the top," he said.
"To keep volunteers interested and placated on the ground they need these regular updates."
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