Jericho feels New Year heat

Rather than pack the esky for a night out relaxing, vehicles were loaded up with fire fighting units and graders mobilised for backburning operations.

One of the larger blazes began on Marston Station south of Jericho, and owner Bevan Doyle said it was the biggest fire he’d experienced in his 53 years in the area.

“It had the potential to burn all the way to Jericho the way the wind was blowing at one stage, and if it hadn’t been for the helicopter spotting, I think we would have lost it,” he said.

“The hills to our south one night were glowing like a crowbar in a blacksmith’s forge.”

An estimated 24,300ha of country was burnt before it could be contained and 30km of fire fronts gave volunteers plenty to contend with.

While no major infrastructure was damaged, the fire came to within a kilometre of the homestead at Winooka.

Alan Lawrence said he thought it was a lost cause when embers began swirling across the paddock but was saved by a change in wind direction.

“We also had a fire on another block to deal with so by the end of it all, we’d been awake for 50 hours out of 54.”

He arrived at a newly equipped bore with solar panels to see the fire front only 200m away, and all he could do was drop a match and drive away fast.

Alan estimates he’s lost 6000ha, about half of it precious grass that came from relief rain last November.

The force of the wind off another fire that started at Park Gate station, also south of Jericho, dislodged one wall of the Stratford homestead last week.

It’s the fifth year in a row that a bushfire has started on the property, which Stratford owner Robyn Adams puts down to an iron ridge that attracts lightning.

“It’s tough wattle country and lightly stocked,” she said.

“The smaller desert blocks don’t have people living on them full-time and this happens.

“The heat dried out a lot of the top fuel and made it ready to go then when the wind gets behind the wattle, it’s like rocket fuel.”

She estimated that a third to a half of Park Gate had been burnt out.

According to Rural Fire Service area director Winston Williams, a total of nine fires sprang up in the wake of dry storms around Jericho, Alpha, Springsure, Taroom and the Blackdown Tablelands.

One of concern was at Cudmore National Park, north of Alpha, which had burnt 12,000ha or 60 percent of the park, and was still being monitored by National Parks staff.

“It was a very concerning situation because of the climatic conditions,” he said.

“The temperatures were not ideal for landholders to be working in and the winds were very variable.

“People tell me they weren’t expecting the fires to burn so fiercely, as they thought they didn’t have enough fuel, but what fuel there is, is so dry, and the soil moisture is very low too.”

Mr Williams said dry storms were continuing to be a problem and he had counted over 50 fires started by lightning strikes in the past three months.

He said he had remained on call throughout the Christmas-New Year period and expected that would remain the case until it rained.

He added that the South West RFS were monitoring fires in the Carnarvon region.