mmg.com.au

The grass fire that has ravaged a large part of the Conargo and Jerilderie Shires came just 1km from devastating Don and Ann Bull’s ‘Mungarra’ property this week.

Their property shares a southern boundary with ‘Euroka’, where the fire was started, and ‘Wononga’, which copped a lot of the damage.

Mr Bull said, thankfully, the fire did not quite breach the 8km stretch of shared boundary, leaving his property untouched.

But that didn’t stop Mr Bull joining with dozens of other regional firefighters to help get the blaze under control during the week.

‘‘It’s a big enough disaster now, but we were lucky with the wind change (on Tuesday night),’’ he said.

Mr Bull was part of a team of four men who worked Monday from 7.30pm until 1.30am, and then started again at 5.30am Tuesday and worked through until 6pm.

Mr Bull was having a break from the efforts when he spoke to the Pastoral Times on Wednesday.

While the fire was mostly under control by Wednesday afternoon, Mr Bull said it had the potential even more disastrous.

‘‘It’s a big one,’’ he said.

‘‘It has remnants of 1987 about it. Once the wind got it (the fire) it just went.

‘‘It’s all pretty scary stuff.

‘‘The fire started on Euroka from a lightning strike about 8pm, and we had it under control by midnight.

‘‘But by (Tuesday) morning the north west winds narrowed it back and it got into the big red gums.

‘‘Powerlines and fences have been burned down, and while there were some stock losses, I believe the number is minimal.’’

Mr Bull said the red gums that were burned as a result of the raging fire may take months to be extinguished completely.