It’s six o’clock when the alarm goes off for most volunteers asleep in tents at Ballarat’s firefighters base camp.
As the sun rises on Friday morning, Joe Bandiera unzips his sleeping bag, rolls off the camp mattress and gets dressed to head out for a run before returning for a shower in a portable bathroom cubicle and pulling on his CFA uniform.
By half past seven, Mr Bandiera is briefing his crew — the dozen volunteers who make up the East Gippsland strike team —about their plan for the coming day.
It is their third day on the ground at the Bayindeen Rocky Road fire north-west of Ballarat.
They arrived as reinforcement on Tuesday afternoon ahead of extreme fire conditions forecast for Wednesday.
The team is headed to the community of Warrak, north of Bayindeen, where the fire burnt more than 22,000 hectares since it started on Thursday, February 22.
They will work on clearing roads, assessing livestock and continuing blacking out — extinguishing burning material — and containment work.
Mr Bandiera’s crew is one of dozens that have travelled from across Victoria and New South Wales to help contain the blaze, which burnt out of control for a week, causing more than 30,000 homes in surrounding communities to be advised to evacuate ahead of Wednesday’s conditions.
“I am lucky that I am on leave from work at the moment, so I have got a bit of time up my sleeve, even though I’m meant to be building a deck at home,” he says.
“I have left my wife and four kids at home.
“Hopefully, they are all going to school.”
It’s the first time Mr Bandiera has stayed at a firefighters’ base camp.
The Victoria Park camp sprung up on Tuesday this week as authorities scrambled to brace for the high-risk fire conditions on Wednesday.
It was set up to accommodate the up to 300 firefighters who travelled to the region.
After briefing his crew on Friday morning, Mr Bandiera rushes back to the kitchen — he is one of the last to get a hot breakfast — before he jumps on the truck to start his shift at 8am as the night crew returns.
The crews work 12-hour shifts, so it won’t be 8pm until they make it back to the base camp where they will debrief, have dinner and relax before bed.
“Mainly, our work has been blacking out and patrolling, talking to the locals, seeing how they are going,” Mr Bandiera says.
“So it has been a really productive couple of days so far.”
Mr Bandiera says the residents are “pretty stressed out” because of the fire.
“I have dealt with this before when the fire has come through in 2019. I saw a lot of devastation that time, so I know where they are coming from,” he said.
“Working with them and helping them has been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster for them and for the crews.”
Thursday’s milder conditions allowed crews to bring the Bayindeen fire under control, with communities close to the fire ground allowed to return safely for the first time in a week.
Nell Duly and Daryl South are two of about 110 volunteer firefighters who travelled from New South Wales on Tuesday.
They were part of the “strategic reserve” in case the Bayindeen fire jumped containment lines during Wednesday’s extreme fire conditions or in the event new blazes flared up.
Packing up on Friday morning to travel back home, Ms Duly and Mr South say it was pleasing and a “bit of a relief” they weren’t needed as anticipated and the great work of local crews kept the fire within containment lines.
Ms Duly, a secondary school teacher and Mr South, who works at a university, say they were happy to respond to the call-out for help when they received notification on Monday afternoon.
“It meant we were there ready to go [if needed]. We did a lot of cleaning up, mopping up and interaction with the locals,” Mr South said.
“It is nice to be able to help get the community get back on its feet and do those tidy-up tasks as well. Sometimes it is full-on and sometimes you are there in case it is full-on.”
Ms Duly says she felt a lot of empathy meeting stressed residents and helping them is a big part of the firefighter’s role.
“You often feel in the back of your head if this was my family or my home, I would want someone there putting it out, checking that containment line or making sure my mum is okay,” she said.
“Sometimes firefighting is about lending an ear to a community member who has had either the fear of an evacuation, has evacuated, or unfortunately has lost everything.
“It hurts every time you see someone lose everything.
“I think anyone who doesn’t hurt a little bit is probably not really a firefighter. The empathy aspect of this role is often overlooked by people outside of firefighting.”
Mr Bandiera’s strike team is heading home today.
The base camp set-up, including hundreds of tents, a marquee mess hall, kitchen, bathroom and laundry facilities, is expected to remain until authorities are confident it won’t be needed again.
Mr Bandiera plans to get back to building that deck.
Mr South is looking forward to seeing his wife and expects an inbox full of emails to address.
“I will probably take a day off to relax. Although we have a few fires that have kicked off in our area, so maybe we won’t be relaxing when we get home anyway,” he says.
“It might be home, have a few hours, recollect ourselves, get our gear ready and then we might have to go out again when we get home,” Ms Duly adds.
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