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On Sunday 23rd October; a contingent from South East Region deployed to the Barcaldine area in western Queensland to assist local crews and land owners who had been battling large grass fires for several weeks. Ripley Valley RFB sent two members; John Bowles and Matt Phillips. This is a summary of the story of the South East Region Deployment to central Queensland.

The team left Brisbane General Aviation terminal around Sunday lunchtime the 23/10. Arrived at Barcaldine airport mid afternoon after refueling at Longreach. Fixed wing water bombing aircraft were at the airport on arrival.

An information session was conducted with the outgoing IMT and the incoming IMT and Crews. Word was fire was now under control, and the team were reportedly only required to generally Blackout and Patrol, and assist and work with Landowners if any situations arose. The plan was that appliances were to be available at Barcaldine for the South East Strike Team, which were to come from the Northern Region Strike Team (around Townsville). One would do the Night Shift and the other the Day Shift.

The team acquired two of the local RFS Rural Operations vehicles and some members drove to Aramac to see if we could find the Northern Strike Team, while other Strike Team members helped out at the Airport refueling the 4 Water Bombers and 2 Fire Spotter planes. The Communications in the area around Aramac were non existent, and the Radio Techs were hard at work trying to establish some sort of Repeater and UHF and VHF channels for us to use. Crews left Aramac late afternoon, returning to Barcaldine in the RFS vehicles, which was not the best time to be driving 70km on a dirt road dodging numerous kangaroos, emus, horses and cattle. At Barcaldine, crews stayed at the Landsborough Lodge Motel and rested up to see what happened the next day.

On Monday, 5 appliances from the South West region were at the Staging Area, which we were to use as our appliances, while the South West crews rested. Two appliances were tasked to proceed to Speculation Station via Jericho (to pick up the lunches) and then to meet up with the Northern Region crews to relieve them, as we were advised that two of their appliances were there.

 

A view of the terrain at Speculation Station. Other South East region crews stayed to assist at the airbase. All crews returned to Barcaldine for the South West crews to use the appliances on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, the team used the Council 22 seater bus to go to the Staging Area to changeover appliances and on leaving the fireground took a wrong turn and followed the edge of the previous days fire. This ended up being very fortunate as they found that trees had fallen over the track and were still burning and the edge required a lot of blacking out with materials still burning. They returned to Locharnoch Station to drop off the appliances, have tea, hand over and brief the South West Strike Team and then return to Barcaldine in the Council bus. A lot of photos and GPS tracking for mapping of the fire edge had been captured. Crews returned to talk to the night shift IMT to show them what was actually happening on the fireground, and suggestions made as to what would be required to be done in order to contain the fire to the present containment lines.

On Wednesday the plans that had suggested were in place, and the crews were required to pick up the Aramac Community Bus from Aramac and proceed to the fireground where the South West Strike Team would bring over their appliances.

Crews slept at Speculation Station that night. The South West Strike Team took the bus back to Barcaldine as they were preparing to go home.

On Thursday, crews continued to monitor the fireline with a number of sightings of smoke in the area which required the Firespotter planes to check out. The tracks were now getting to a dangerous state in places with thick bulldust a real safety issue, and it was decided to send out only one truck at a time to do a patrol every three hours or so. Crews stayed at Speculation Station again that night and celebrated Bruce, the landowners birthday with a cake and a few amber refreshments.

On Friday, the team were up at 0500 hours and returned to Barcaldine to have the vehicles checked over by the mechanics and commence a rest period, before returning to Brisbane later that day arriving at around 1615 hours.

John Bowles summarised his experiences as follows:

"The people at the properties, Barcaldine and Jericho were fantastic. They were very appreciative of what we had done and how we had conducted ourselves. The members of the whole Strike Team bonded together really well, and a lot of existing and new friendships were reinforced and established. There were a number of relatively inexperienced Rural members in the team, but by the weeks end they were real performers, and it would be a pleasure to have them on any future deployments."

The journey home.

A photo of one of the fires near Barcaldine taken by QFRS Fire Spotter Crews that made the media.

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