Both reasons are the same – conditions in the region are just too dry. Permits are still required to burn, which can be obtained by contacting your local brigade permit officer or the Cudgegong Fire Control Centre on (02) 6372 4434 during business hours. 

“We’ve extended the fire season because of the dryness out there, even though we have had some rain and some places are greener than others. But there are some that are just so dry,” Cudgegong RFS District acting manager, Andrew Williams, said. “We’ve had a lot of feedback from our group officers and captains and also other agencies and they all thought it was a good idea to extend to try and prevent any ignitions. A good example would be Goolma, they haven’t had much rain out there, so if something was to start it could take a bit of a run and even though it’s cooling down it could happen quite easily. The wind we’ve had in the past few weeks also dries things out, we may have had rain but it evaporates quite quickly and dries the fuel load out. Which is what we look at because that’s what catches fire.”

The boom and bust nature of the rainfall is illustrated in the figures at the Mudgee Airport weather station for March. Which even though it’s received close to the average for the month (55mm) that’s mostly come from two wet periods 20 days apart (22.6mm on the 6^th and 28.8mm on the 26th).

Mr Williams said that the public is heeding the fire safety message. Also that quick work from local volunteers has helped keep major incidents down.

“It has been a busy year for us with lots of little things that we’ve gotten onto quickly due to the brigades being ready for it, there was a lot of potential for something quite bad to come from them,” he said.