Preparations made, residents watch and wait as inferno rages

This time, Pietsch said, she was fielding phone calls from concerned friends and family as they heard about evacuation notices in nearby communities.

But after surviving fires earlier this year and in 2006, she was confident the property could withstand another blaze.

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“We know what we’re doing,” she said. “If we need to, we can go down to the dam and get a motor going and get all the big sprinklers going, but we don’t need to.”

She said the CFA had been using their dam, which went down nine metres, to provide water for some of its helicopters.

Her stepdaughter Tania, who grew up on the farm and now runs sheep on it, had moved the stock when this masthead arrived.

She was watching the blaze closely but was hopeful the underbrush would burn slowly ahead of any wind change and take out the fuel load.

Meanwhile, a blaze at Gazette, south of Hamilton, had been successfully brought under control.

But there were warnings in place for Willaura. On Thursday morning, Melissa Livingston stopped in town to ask locals whether the road to Dunkeld had reopened.

She lives in Dartmoor and was hoping to make her way back after spending Christmas away from home but was told the road was closed.

Livingston, who was walking her four Pomeranians, said she suspected the road wouldn’t be open for a while. But she said she was fully prepared to camp if she needed to.

“It is what it is,” she said.

She was enjoying looking around with her dogs. Her plan was to monitor the situation from Willaura and head to Ararat if the situation became dangerous.

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