Jade Jungwirth
For more than half a century, Elphinstone farmer and CFA volunteer Gary Pollard has lived with one ear tuned to the CFA listening set.
Even now, after 51 years with the CFA, he still instinctively listens for smoke reports, tower calls, and changes in the wind that could impact the surrounding community.
“You just sort of know- on the bad days, you know something is going to happen somewhere. It was just a matter of where.”
At 67, Gary has spent a lifetime farming the district his family has called home for generations. Sitting outside the family property at Elphinstone, surrounded by dogs, sheep paddocks, and his wife Heather’s carefully tended garden, he reflects on a life shaped equally by community service and hard work on the land.
Gary joined the CFA at 16. Like many country brigade members, he learned from the ground up.
“Most farmers join because they know if they have a fire, the CFA turns up,” he said.
“And if someone else has a fire, you go and help them. It’s about the community.”
The Pollard family’s ties to the district stretch back generations. Gary believes his grandfather may have been among the original members of the Elphinstone brigade when it formed around the 1920s — back when firefighting was done on horseback.
“There was a lot of Pollards out here – you’ve only got to look at cricket records or anything like that.”
Growing up, Gary spent weekends playing cricket and afternoons helping on the family farm.
“It was great. I wouldn’t swap it for anything,” he said.
After leaving school, he completed one of Victoria’s first agricultural apprenticeships out of Bendigo, working alongside his father on the family farm.
But at 29, life changed abruptly. His father was diagnosed with cancer and given three years to live. He died just three months later.
“It all happened pretty quick. All of a sudden I went from being told what we were going to do for the day to having to organise what I was going to do for the day,” Gary said.
“That was a big learning curve.”
He continued building the family operation with the help of his mum, a farm apprentice, and casual workers.
“Most of our work was in the orchard growing apples and pears, but back in the ’80s, we had a lot of sheep – we got up to five and a half thousand, which was a fairly big operation,” he said.
“They were scattered all over the place, too. Back then, there was a lot of droving on roads; it was normal- you didn’t know any different. Geez, you go down there now, and you’ll get run over by 25 cars.”
Gary can recall droving sheep from Pollards Road to Faraday on the former Calder Highway in the late ’70s, and not meeting a single car.
At its peak, the family’s farmers market business stretched across Victoria, selling produce at up to 15 markets a month, and then COVID unexpectedly brought a boom.
“We couldn’t physically get enough fruit into the vehicles,” Gary says.
“We had bags of apples sitting on the front seat, the back seat, everywhere.”
He and wife Heather even maintained a long-running competition over who could sell the most at market each weekend — with the loser supposedly required to do a “nudie run around the dam.”
“It never happened- but we got a lot of mileage out of it!”
The couple married in 1997 after years of knowing each other through family and school connections. Their first date was at the Guildford pub.
“The rest is history.”
Heather was born on an orchard and married an orchardist- so Gary said she definitely knew what she was getting herself in for.
Though orchard life came to an end three years ago, Gary and Heather still run sheep at Redsdale with the help of his working dogs — though he admits they’re getting less exercise these days.
When the Pollards sold their orchard business three-and-a-half years ago, it marked the end of the last Pollard orchardists in the area.
“When we sell the farm at Redsdale, well, same thing. When we decide to hang up the boots, that’ll be it.”
Over the decades, Gary has attended major fires, including Ash Wednesday and Black Saturday.
He still vividly remembers driving the old Austin tanker towards Macedon during Ash Wednesday in 1983.
“It was stinking hot, and the old Austin only did about 80 kilometres an hour, no air-conditioning,” he said.
“If you pushed them too hard, they’d vapourise!”
Despite the intensity of the work, Gary said experience changes the way firefighters understand danger.“
To put out a fire, you’ve got to know a bit about fire behaviour – you can sort of see what’s going to happen before it happens.”
And the all important questions:
What hobbies have you enjoyed? Cricket. I was lucky enough to represent Castlemaine in Country Week a few times. When we can, we go up the river near Moulamein with the dogs and do some fishing.
Who are your three dream dinner guests? Jane Bunn, Peta Credlin and Kevin Sheedy.
What are your philosophies in life? Work hard. Listen to people. They’re probably trying to tell you something for a reason, it’s probably something they’ve gone through and learned from and they’re trying to pass on to you.
What books do enjoy reading? I read a good one based on the Kinglake fires in 2009. It was the true recollection of a police officer who was based in on that day called Kinglake 350. It was really good. Every firefighter should read that book.
Finally, what do you love most about the place you call home? It’s rural. I used to say quiet, but it’s not so quiet these days. Back when I went to state school the overpass was put in and virtually cut the town in half and the freeway has virtually cut it in half again. Back then, everyone knew one another. Same as any country town.