Fire brigade volunteer still going strong after 60 years

At 78, Dixie Fire Brigade volunteer Daryl Crawford is still going strong and helping to keep his community safe.

After more than 60 years as a CFA volunteer, Mr Crawford can reflect on tough times when he led strike teams during massive local blazes and good times when he helped to save properties and people. Now first lieutenant, Mr Crawford has taken on virtually every role in the brigade and for more than a decade, he and wife Val housed the local fire truck on their Dixie farm.

Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria CEO Adam Barnett said volunteers like Mr Crawford provide the backbone of rural brigades and pass on their knowledge and expertise to the next generation. “Volunteers like Daryl are the heart and soul of their communities and the CFA,” Mr Barnett said. “They are critical to emergency management in Victoria, especially in country communities where families often continue their commitments through successive generations.”

Mr Crawford joined the brigade at 17. “Back in those days, things were simple,” he said. “Everyone was in the fire brigade; farmers had to band together to protect their properties. “They’d burn the roadsides at night and get us young blokes in to hold the hose and put it out…that’s how we trained.”

Mr Crawford led crews through the two biggest fires to hit the region over the past 60 years, Ash Wednesday in 1983 and the St Patrick’s Day fires of 2018. Today Dixie is a separate entity, well serviced by a strong band of volunteers, but in 1983 it was combined with the Terang brigade. “We knew it was going to be a bad day so we were on duty minding the radio at Terang, where our truck was kept at the time,” Daryl said. “There was a roaring north wind and we knew if a fire started it was going to take off. Normally if we hear there’s a fire, you’ll see smoke coming up, but the wind was so strong that day you didn’t see anything.”

Mr Crawford has responded to hundreds of fires over the decades, including being on the spot when a windmill spark started a blaze that could have been disastrous on a hot and windy day.

The St Patricks Day fires in 2018 took the veteran by surprise, even when he responded to a call for a grassfire near the Terang power station. “It was a windy night but you don’t expect fires to start at night,” he said. “I was driving and we came out of the trees; it looked like Terang was on fire right through to Camperdown.”

“We went down Depot Road and then the wind swirled and we were in the fire. I hit the accelerator as hard as I could to get the poor buggers out of the flames.”

Daryl and Val’s farm had hosted the Dixie fire truck for about a decade before the local fire shed was built in 2001. “We had the best turnout times in the district because we lived with it,” he joked.

In 2018 the home was full of locals while the volunteers tackled the fire front. “People came here because we’re on a hill,” Mrs Crawford said. “One woman wanted to go to Warrnambool and I said you’ll die if you go. Another wanted to go to Terang and I said the same thing,” she said.

“We didn’t have power, but one bloke had a 1000-litre pack on the back of his truck so we had water and everyone felt safe.”

The fire burnt to the bottom part of the farm. During the night, the Dixie crew twice went to one house to put out a threatening fire. “The owner later embraced me and had tears in his eyes and called me his hero because I’d helped to save his house,” Mr Crawford said.

“People say why do you do it – that’s why.”