Community
4 February, 2026
Cobden airstrip plays critical role
WHEN skyrocketing temperatures and high winds resulted in bushfires making their way across the district, firefighting crews at the Cobden airstrip were put to work.
On Tuesday, January 27, Country Fire Authority (CFA) and State Emergency Service (SES) teams were called out to the Cobden airport to assist in filling planes with water bound for the Lismore and Leslie Manor fires.
Cobden CFA captain Dale Robertson said it was all hands on deck to keep the planes loaded and moving during the critical time.
“We’ve had this happen before when we had the St Patrick’s Day fires so it’s pretty unique,” he said.
“It was pretty full on and hectic to get set up when there’s a plane flying over you to get everything ready to load it up as soon as it’s on the ground.
“It’s pretty important, the communication between the pilot and reloaders, as soon as they hit the ground.
“We can fill and load an aircraft with 3000 litres of water in three or four minutes.
“It was not quite a 20-minute turnaround from when they reload to when they come back.”
Mr Robertson said it was good to work together with the SES and put their training to use.
“We get notified through the district just to respond and we’ve been trained up with the SES as well,” he said.
“It’s a multi-agency event which we can do.
“We’ve got a good relationship with the SES.
“We’ve got a few joint members between both brigades with the Cobden brigade and the SES, we’re with them all the time at road rescues around our area and it’s a small town too, so we know everyone.
“It’s good, we actually had crew members on the Carlisle River fire in the Gellibrand area on the day of the fires and we had a truck go up to the Leslie Manor fire, so we were really stretched for numbers back here, but we managed to get a crew together here and managed to do what we had to do.”
After all was said and done, Mr Robertson said the crew were contacted by the Hamilton base air desk letting them know they did a great job with the aircraft efforts.
“Hopefully we’ll get more use out of the airstrip,” he said.