All fired up to protect Lara

Andrew Mathieson
GENERATIONS of one family can lay claim to almost single-handedly protecting Lara from the scourge of fire.
At the top of the family tree is Neil Branch, the second oldest of six firefighting brothers and a man who has racked up more than 60 years serving Lara Fire Brigade.
He’s almost been the one constant and familiar face since the brigade began in 1945, growing from less than a handful of volunteers to more than 50.
The 80-year-old still recounts the days when the local greengrocer supplied a ute to willing town folk and district farmers to carry wet bags and knapsacks to douse outbreaks of fire.
“The girl at the post office had a list of numbers to ring and that was our fire call,” Neil remembers.
“She mainly used to ring farmers in those days for them to either move on, get some help or get a vehicle.”
A cheeky Neil was just finishing primary school when he first drove a truck, so much so that the Lara cop later rubber-stamped his driving licence and whimsically remarked: “Now, Neil, we know you’ve been driving since you were 12!”
The kid was excused after carrying water for his dad, who was instrumental in setting up the Lara brigade’s headquarters.
“My father went to Box Hill and picked up an old Nissen hut during the war, bought it back and put it on the land at Patulous Road, but it’s gone now,” Neil remembers.
The Branch family history even pre-dates Neil’s own living memory, back to his great-great grandfather demolishing the home for the brigade’s first site.
“Dad probably never had an option but to be involved,” Neil’s daughter Sheryl chips in, “it’s just in the blood.”
Neil still proudly wears the uniform, shows off the commemorative medals and displays the family’s firefighting history in frames on walls and stacked in boxes.
Neil struggles to add up the thousands of fire call-outs – most before any records were kept – but 385 were recorded in his last year of active firefighting.
“You wouldn’t get home sometimes – you’d just go to another fire,” Neil says.
“You might have a break of a few days, then you get six the next day.
“There were three nights in a row I didn’t sleep.”
Lara’s 1969 tragic fire still sears Neil’s memory.
The Lara CFA commemorated the 40th anniversary of the fires on Sunday, remembering the loss of 18 lives and more than 200 homes.
Neil recollects that barely a handful of local firefighters were on hand to wage a hopeless battle against Mother Nature.
“There was no fire brigade,” he grimaces.
“There was no manpower, no vehicles – my brother commandeered vehicles.
“He had a trucking business – he still lives next door to us – and he had bowsers. He used to keep all the odd trucks that had come to the fires going.”
Neil says he never panicked in the face of any blaze, no matter how big, until he lost contact with his family during that fateful day January 8.
Wife Nancy and some of their children were trapped. Fires were spotting into paddocks behind them at Nancy’s mum’s house.
Crops were burning out of control and the wind had picked up.
“We were just surrounded by fire,” Nancy recalls.
“We couldn’t move and we couldn’t breathe – that’s what knocked me about.
“It was a terrifying day, absolutely terrifying.”
Only courageous neighbours pulled Nancy and the children to safety.
Hours earlier she was caught in a blaze on her way to afternoon tea.
Nancy still struggles to explain her fear of the fire creeping toward Lara.
“I was driving down the road that heads to the You Yangs and there was this big, black ball,” she explains.
“I thought ‘What the Dickens is that?’.
“This great ball, well, I’d never seen anything like it before.”