Council officer in Aussie inferno

The fires claimed more than a million hectares.

More than 60 Kiwi firefighters, including several from Canterbury, are home again after fighting Australian bushfires which claimed hundreds of Canberra homes and more than a million hectares of Victorian bush and farmland this summer.

Paul Devlin, a City Council park ranger and rural fire officer who travelled to Australia, says the fires were of a magnitude not seen in Australia since the 1930s. "All that could be done was to try and steer them away from villages and important conservation areas."