16 hours ago
1
As wild bushfires bear down on the town of Yea, Greg Barker says goodbye to his wife, unsure if he will see her again.
The farmer is staying behind at the brick home they have lived in for more than 20 years and is bracing for the fight of his life to protect their home.
Farmer Greg Barker is bracing to fight to protect their home from bushfires bearing down on Yea.Credit: Eddie Jim
It is Friday afternoon, his wife Jacinta has the car packed and she is backing out the driveway to flee.
“Jacinta, you’ve got to get out of here,” Barker tells his wife as the sky turns an ominous light shade of orange and the wind begins to pick up and whip and roar.
Nearby, the town of Yarck has already been engulfed by fire. Barker promises to stay safe. They quickly say goodbye, exchanging worried glances.
Jacinta drives off towards Seymour hoping to get to there before the roads are closed.
Thick, grey smoke is blanketing Yea, and almost all the houses in Barker’s street are empty.
Most of his neighbours evacuated quickly, following a warning from authorities that an out-of-control fire was travelling south towards the town.
Thick smoke blankets Yea on Friday.Credit: Eddie Jim
“I’m not scared or anything, just apprehensive as we just don’t know what this wind’s going to do. When it comes into the edge of Yea, what’s it going to do?” Barker says.
“Is it going to go around us? Or is this going to go right over the top of us?”
By late afternoon, every shop in Yea’s main street is shut except the service stations and supermarket, which have stayed open for the crews of firefighters battling a fast-growing inferno, which is being fanned towards the town by sudden changes in the wind.
Barker is no stranger to fires. He has battled plenty over the years, including in nearby Strathbogie, but these bushfires feel different.
“Some of the fires have been pretty horrific, similar sort of country, really hilly, stony, steep country,” Barker, who has trained as a country firefighter, says.
“We’ve had a few major grass fires here, but nothing ever like this. This was as bad as the Black Saturday fires in 2009, when the wind would burn the back of your legs.
“But once you make a decision to stay, you stick with it.”
Most people who live in Yea have packed their cars and left the historic town, which eerily endured a devastating bushfire on January 8, 1969. The latest fires circling the town come almost to the day of those blazes.
Yea resident Micky Rawlings moves her animals to a nearby vacant plot where she hopes they’ll be safer.Credit: Eddie Jim
Barker has heavy-duty hoses ready and sprinklers already running at the front of his garden, ready to extinguish any flying embers that may hail down on his house.
The 67-year-old has been on the phone all day to friends who live in nearby fire-stricken towns.
When we arrived, Barker had got off the phone to a friend who fled as the fires suddenly changed direction and began roaring towards his house.
“He’d made up his mind to stay, and then he called me, and he just said, ‘The fire is coming straight for us, we’ve got to go now’,” Barker says, as he hoses down the garden.
“The poor guy is probably going to go home tomorrow and his house is gone.”
As word of the bushfire moving towards Yea spreads, the area shifted into resembling a ghost town.
The wind turns wild as Rawling put her horse, pony and calf into a small paddock.Credit: Eddie Jim
For those who decided to stay behind, a sense of unease lingered. Fire trucks race down the main street and sirens wail in the distance.
The smell of smoke fills the air and the winds turn fierce as Micky Rawling put her horse, pony and calf into a small paddock.
She turns on some sprinklers and explains that she is trying to create a marshland, a low-lying, wet area, to protect her beloved animals from the bushfires.
“Things are getting a bit hairy now,” she says. “But I’ve decided to stay because I want to protect my home and animals.”
Rawlings says she stayed to protect her home and animals.Credit: Eddie Jim
A street away from Rawling, Paul Heyen is putting down buckets of water throughout his front yard.
He also decided to stay behind to protect the weatherboard house he and his family have lived in for more than 40 years.
His wife, teenage sons, their cat and a young man and woman who did not make it out of the town in time are sheltering inside.
Heyen, who has trained as volunteer firefighter in Tasmania, has a battery-operated hose ready for any flying embers.
For hours, he has been closely watching the smoke from the fires move towards the back of his home.
“We’re really worrying with the way things are right now,” he says. “I heard earlier the fire has about a 100-kilometre front, and it’s really, really dangerous.”
Paul Heyen decided to stay back in fire threatened Yea and put buckets of water throughout his front yard.Credit: Eddie Jim
The father of three says several of his friends in the nearby small towns of Ruffy and Yarck have lost their homes.
“It was devastating to hear that,” he says.
“I’ve lived through a lot of fires here. It is life in the country. The Black Saturday fires, that one was awful, really bad. My kids lost a couple of their friends in that one, so they’re a bit anxious because of that.”
Heyen says if his house catches fire the family have a plan to flee to the small hospital across the road.
“But it is going to be a very long night,” he says.
Be the first to know when major news happens. Sign up for breaking news alerts on email or turn on notifications in the app.
