After five days of firefighting in steep terrain in the Moonbi ranges north of Tamworth, three Cootamundra Rural Fire Service volunteers are glad to be back in the flat country.
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Corey Nicholson, Gil Kelly and Jake Cullen got back on Monday afternoon after working as part of a 22-member strike team from the RFS region west, which included people from Orange, Dubbo, Bathurst, and as far west as Lightning Ridge and Walgett.
The volunteers assembled in Dubbo last Thursday and went from there to fight the Moonbi fire in country so steep "you wouldn't run a mountain goat".
According to Gil Kelly, a lot of the time was spent driving the four-wheel drive tankers backwards and forwards over rough terrain to replenish water.
"The nearest water was at a homestead where there were council bulk water carriers, about 45 minutes from the fire front," Mr Kelly said.
"We had to use the water as sparsely as we could because the whole area is in drought."
Moonbi is a tiny township about 20km north of Tamworth on the Oxley Highway, which connects with Armidale.
Mr Kelly said the Moonbi community was "so thankful" for the teams being out there.
"Our lunch packs and dinners were made by the community at the Moonbi Hall and it was really sweet because in your lunch every day you'd have little thank-you cards written by kids.
"I had one from a pre-school girl called Sophie from Kootingal preschool, which I could hardly make out but after a shit day you'd get 10 minutes peace and quiet to sit down and eat your lunch and to read something like that just made your day."
When they left it the Moonbi fire had burnt out 7000 hectares of bushland but there had been no loss of property, injuries or deaths.
The country was so steep several tracks on the map were marked "down only" - they were too steep to climb.
Today another three Cootamundra volunteers, Jeff Withers, Stevie-Lee Fuller and Tom Campbell, will be returning to the Moonbi fire, and volunteer Bruce Smith returned yesterday for his third deployment north.