Not being there when Victoria’s huge St Patrick's Day fire tore through his south-west farm was a “blessing” for Daniel Gilmour.
In what some would describe as luck, Mr Gilmour and his wife Clare Quirk and children Jack and Annabel, were on holiday in Queensland when the fire ignited at nearby Terang and ran through thousands of hectares of farming and forestry land.
Mr Gilmour said if they had been home, he would have been alerted by a CFA pager message calling him to the local fire station.
That would have unknowingly left his family in the path of the fire.
As it was the first he heard was a call from a mate at about 9pm on March 17 saying that a fire was about to rip through his farm.
At 2am came the call he dreaded - “we can’t see your house but it doesn’t look good, expect the worst”.
Mr Gilmour’s father, Brad and brother Cameron had made their way to the front gate of Daniel’s home to find the avenue of eucalyptus and pine trees leading to the house fully alight and blocking entry to the house.
Unbelievably, the house was relatively untouched when the pair finally found their way to it.
Apart from a few spot fires caused by bark chips around the verandah posts that had ignited, and a house full of smoke and ash, the house was safe.
Not so the rest of the farm. Gone was a shearing shed, several storage sheds, a small number of livestock, kilometres of fencing and - most costly of all - hectares of recently renovated and improved pastures.
Another saving grace was that his parents’ farm had been left untouched by a fire that burned on a relatively narrow front. The difference between disaster and safety was narrow.
The first offers of what became overwhelming support came at 7am on March 18.
Mr Gilmour said the offers came early and continued to arrive for months afterwards - and are still continuing.
The family business is run in conjunction with his parents, Brad and Marg.
At the time of the fire the Gilmours were carrying about 100 Angus heifers as well as 600 dairy heifers on agistment.
Almost 25km of fencing was destroyed, fodder reserves of around 800 tonnes was gone and 350 hectares of 530ha of pasture was destroyed.
Mr Gilmour said the loss of pasture was particularly devastating.
“When I came home to the farm five years ago the pasture was a key focus for me. I had a plan to make improvements,” he said.
Mr Gilmour’s training and previous employment as a farm business economist with the Department of Agriculture perhaps gave him the tools to start the decision making needed to stage a recovery.
“I had a network that gave me good advice on pastures,” he said.
“We also got some great advice from a friend who suggested we agist as many of the ‘low maintenance’ stock away from home while keeping the high maintenance stock close by. We did this and it allowed us to focus on rebuilding the farm rather than feeding stock.
“Getting the pasture back was the key thing, fencing could wait - and I decided to oversow all the affected pasture immediately.
“We had been able to sell all our young stock in spring and early summer, so we had money in the bank and decided to spend it.”
Stock containment areas were used while the new pastures were sown.
More than seven tonnes of grass seed was sourced and fast tracked to the farm to take advantage of solid rains following the fire.
Mr Gilmour said within two weeks they were able to sow around 300ha.
“That was one of the best things we did post the fires,” he said.
Mr Gilmour had experienced the devastation working on recovery of the Black Saturday fires in 2009.
“Not that I knew what to expect, but it wasn’t new to me and because of that I wasn’t overwhelmed by the landscape that we saw when we got home,” he said.
“We also had awesome support from the local community and people showing up to help day after day - including random strangers.
“BlazeAid and a team of fencers from the Uniting Church were fantastic.
“My mate came every day for the first fortnight after the fire and was my second in charge dealing with the helpers. That left me to deal with everything else.”
Including repairs and renovations and lost income over the next couple of years, the cost of the fire was well over $500,000.
Mr Gilmour’s advice for people affected by this type of disaster was: “don’t be too hard on yourself” about how long it takes to recover.
“The impact is more than just physical recovery of the farm. The mental recovery is taking just as long,” he said.
“In the days and weeks following the fire, the pressure can be pretty extreme, and you do the best you can while making the best decisions you can. Months down the track you shouldn’t be beating yourself up if the decision wasn’t 100 per cent right.”
“If your business suffers a major shock, like a fire, and you’re already struggling financially, it’s the kind of event that might break you. Being profitable is the best insurance against such disasters.”
He said the recovery to this stage would not have been possible without the support of the community.
“We have never felt as much a part of the community as we did following the fires,” he said.
“Many of our neighbours, particularly dairy farmers, have been impacted more because of the time of year the fire hit. Many were on the point of calving and the loss of feed and fodder was extremely difficult.”
Mr Gilmour said the sheer volume of work and decision making was challenging physically and mentally.
In the period post the fires the couple tried to maintain some normal activities - like kid’s swimming lessons - which helped.
He said the recovery seemed to be tracking well until about six weeks after the fire when Clare’s father had a heart attack and died.
“That made things really tough mentally.”
Coincidently he was contacted by a psychologist employed by the shire to check on people after the fire.
“I wasn’t sleeping, despite feeling physically tired. He came and visited and after being able to fully debrief about everything, I was able to sleep again,” Mr Gilmour said.
“It helped me keep myself mentally health and I continued to contact him after ‘challenging’ days for the next two or three months.”
The fire has also galvanised a more robust emergency plan.
“We always had a plan but now we will be more physically prepared with clothes, food, etc,” he said.
