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HUNGRY cattle and sheep saved Wodonga from being destroyed by the 1952 bushfire.
Farmer George Coyle, 97, fought the fire on a farm since swallowed up by modern housing estates.
"The only things that saved Wodonga from the fire were the agistment paddocks,'' Mr Coyle said.
"They were all eaten out.''
Mr Coyle was reminiscing about the fire when he joined former farming neighbours Les Boyes, 80, and Jim Parker, 86, at on old shed behind the Murray Valley Private Hospital last week.
Mr Boyes, a former Wodonga mayor, chose the concrete shed behind the private hospital for the meeting.
"I sheltered from the fire with my mother and three employees and the shed saved our lives,'' he said.
In 1952, Mr Coyle was farming a property called Iona, now the Gayview Drive area, while Mr Boyes' family ran Willow Park located at the present private hospital site and Mr Parker was at Park Hall, now the golf course.
Wodonga's shire population was only about 5000, including 3000 in the urban area.
"We'd been to a sheep sale in Albury and when we came home my wife saw some smoke,'' Mr Coyle said.
The fire came whooshing in from the west.
"You couldn't stand in the heat and I hit the ground,'' he said.
"My wife put out buckets on the front verandah and we saved the house and sheds, but all around burnt and all the fences went.''
Jim Parker's farm lost more, including the shearing shed and 50 tonnes of hay, but sheep and cattle were safely placed in paddocks near the house.
He had initially gone with Des Klinge to tackle the blaze at Barnawartha but they sped home as the fire spread.
"As the fire came over the Felltimber Creek the whole hill exploded like a clap of thunder," Mr Parker said.
He remembers the roar of the fire as it rolled past the house and he agreed that Mulqueeney stock agents' agistment paddocks and the Kelly family's neighbouring paddocks had saved Wodonga because they were practically eaten bare.
Mr Boyes said Willow Park homestead didn't burn but they lost sheds.
Willow Park was incorporated in the Clyde Cameron Trade Union College in the 1970s and converted to a hospital in 1999.
In 2009, the homestead was destroyed by a suspicious fire and barely a trace of it remains -- except the shed.
