Looking at Wayne Fitzgerald's Bobin home post-bushfires, you'd think it was a marvel it survived when you see the ground burnt right up to the walls of the house.
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When you hear that the house was saved with only Wayne fighting the fire with one single line of hose, you'd start to think it was miracle more than marvel.
However, if anyone could do it, it was Wayne.
He moved up to Bobin from Sydney when he bought his property in August 2018. He immediately joined the Bobin Rural Fire Service brigade, and with 40 years of professional firefighting service with Fire and Rescue NSW, he was the perfect candidate.
On the day the fire front hit Bobin, Friday November 8, he and the rest of the Bobin crew had already been fighting fires over the whole week previous at Harrington, Crowdy Head, Caparra and Cooplacurripa. And then all hell broke loose in Bobin.
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"The boys were packing up the truck to come (to Bobin Hall). We heard the school was on fire and we (brigade captain Alan Moore and Wayne) attempted to come down in my ute and see what was going on," Wayne said.
"We drove into a fire front when we were trying to get to the hall and we couldn't get through. We had to reverse it out. That was a case of reverse at 80-90 kilometres an hour. When I reversed out with Alan, I hooked him up with the fire engine and I went home. And on my way home I hooked up with Alan Glassop and together we put out a little fire in the original Gunyah House."
I know my stuff. I wasn't going to let my place burn down without my having a say so. If I wasn't there, it would have gone.
- Wayne Fitzgerald
Wayne then did finally get to his property, determined to save his own home.
"I know my stuff," he said. "I wasn't going to let my place burn down without my having a say so. If I wasn't there, it would have gone," he said.
Wayne watched as the fire consumed each of his structures one by one - his granny flat stables, his machinery shed, storage sheds, and outhouses.
"I was fighting the fire from the inside of the building. It was a case of pulling gyprock off the walls, putting out the studs and the noggins and hosing things from the inside on the outside and cooling down the gas cylinders, because the flames were all around the house," he said.
After saving his own house, Wayne then headed headed up the hill to help save a young couple's house.
"Their house was in danger of burning, so we set up the portable pumps up there and I showed him how to use it and put out most of the fires around his house, and then left him on fire duty for the rest of the night because I was exhausted."
Back home, in the early hours of the morning Wayne had difficulty breathing. He drove himself to Manning Hospital where he was diagnosed with a burnt throat and airways, treated with drugs and told to "get out of town for a while" because of the smoke. He went home, packed and headed to Sydney, where his parents and children live.
A common phrase heard everywhere in fire affected areas in recent weeks is that nobody has "ever seen anything like this" when it comes to fires.
Wayne, however, said he has.
"I've seen much worse. Forty years - I saw the Canberra fires go through Canberra, I saw the fires in 1994 go through Sydney. I was dropped off with lines of hose and a standpipe and looking at whole streets on fire in Sydney," Wayne said .
Wayne is now back home in Bobin, albeit with a voice that still sounds a bit scratchy.
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