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“GOIN’ all right?” asked the firefighter, his face smudged in ash and brow beaded in sweat.
“Like a well-oiled machine,” grinned back the captain, Ross Coyle, his own face not much better.
They make it sound easy, these CFA firefighters; deceptively so — but you only need to look at the hills rising in the background, the rocky outcrops and charred ground to know it’s anything but.
They’ll tell you what it’s like up there, about the steepness of those hills, the rocks slipping under their feet, how boulders are dislodging, or the sheer beating down.
They’ll tell you that, in the same tone of voice as when they describe what they had for breakfast.
It’s just a job that needs to be done and to them, their efforts are no cause for fanfare.
“If we don’t do it, who’s going to?” said Reino Brunnenmeyer, a 40-year veteran of the Wooragee CFA.
“You just go in and do it. If I lived out here, I’d like to know there are people who would look after me,” he said.
Mr Brunnenmeyer was fighting fires near Wangaratta on Tuesday before coming to help with the clean-up in Wodonga yesterday.
His Wooragee CFA mate, John Weber, was back again yesterday after working on the Plunketts Road fire from 7am to 7pm on Tuesday.
It was, he said, “extremely difficult going” but his captain “had no hesitation in sending us — you go where you’re needed”.
They’re down at the staging area set up at the gun range on Klings Road, where crews can kick back, have a a feed, and relax in some longed-for shade.
“Right, I need two tankers now, I don’t care who they are,” barked someone suddenly.
There’s a split-second glance among colleagues before sandwiches and drink bottles are put down and a dozen blokes jump up, no questions asked.
Staging manager Wally Prior, an Eskdale brigade member, knows from years of experience just how much “hard yakka all round” it takes.
“Dragging the hoses up and down those hills, it’s hard work ... it also plays around on your mind,” he said, tapping his temple.
But it’s the view that keeps them going; Wodonga West CFA captain Ross Coyle said up there, all you can see is the urban fringe, where thousands of people are going about their business, perhaps oblivious to battle in the background.
“That’s what drives these guys,” Mr Coyle said.
“They’re predominantly volunteers we have here — they have jobs, families to look after and they give up their time to do what needs to be done.”