 It's a change behaviour program based around looking at your own personal circumstances, your own local environment. This program really gives you insight as to what the likely fire event will be in your neighbourhood, what you can expect, what to do specifically to prepare yourself and for your family and also specifically for your property. It also helps you connect with your neighbours and those people around you and share perhaps what your intentions are, what your plans are and then to understand what else the people around you are doing. The benefits of the program far outweigh the commitment that's put in. I think Fireguards is an excellent program because it's set in the local community. So the CFA facility comes to you. You can invite as many people as you like within your small community and it allows for both partners to come, so husbands and wives to come along and learn and make the same decisions together about what their plans are going to be and understanding the types of things you need to do to protect yourself. I think it's absolutely brilliant. I think anything at all that involves a forum with something like this is extremely good. It's informal. People throw ideas at one another, the convener will throw questions and challenge people in relation to decisions that they might have made. I think the main reason for us was to try and find some correct information which is what I feel we get from the CFA. I mean I know it varies from time to time as they find out more and more things but nevertheless you feel you're being kept up to date with what's important. I've had a number of community fireguard groups that come together for the first time for their first meeting and they're used to waving to one another in the street and they consider themselves to be friendly but then to come together and actually meet up, understand that their kids go to the same school or that they have same sort of friends and takes that little bit further than just coming together for a bit of information about doing a fire preparedness plan. That's one of the greatest benefits I think community fireguard I've seen over the 10 years has provided is it brings the neighbourhood together when quite often we're too busy and then what I've seen is those relationships continue. Communication around fireguard issues and home preparation happens throughout the year. It's not just confined to the annual meetings that we've been having. From a community point of view this is good. It's too easy in an area like this where unless you go searching you can't see your next door neighbour's house. It's very easy I think for people to insulate themselves in their own little world etc. without any community contact at all. And so from my point of view it's good because I know everybody in the neighbourhood etc. on first name terms. There are so many things you can draw in here that it's fairly easy to connect with this community but no definitely it'd be one of the things that's helped us to. Within the group people already have or carry a little bit of knowledge already so it's also having them recognise they already carry some knowledge and some understanding. The person who's coming in from the CFA isn't the expert that the group actually learn together and that's the key with any kind of adult learning change behaviour program is that they learn together. You are providing with some facts and some information but that's shared and essentially then they can bounce off what their perceptions or understanding or knowledge is and then you build from there. We know through just by sharing stories and sharing similar circumstances there's a bit of a validation in what they hear and how they feel and having part of that connectedness as I spoke about before they're coming together with people that they know and they're comfortable with. It was very much a two-way conversation. We felt very comfortable asking questions. As I said there was opportunity to walk around properties and ask specific questions about what you should and shouldn't do with that particular property. I think it takes the pressure off a little bit if you're in a group. It allows all personalities to become comfortable rather than I think one-on-one can be a little bit intimidating and I'm not sure you always learn that well. I think that often you learn from others asking questions and others giving their experience. I think group learning is terrific because what I find is that people will ask questions that you've and get answers for for questions that you'd never thought to ask. There were some indicators coming out of the 2006 fires that people prepare for fires and prepare physically so they get the house ready, they get their plan together, they have their equipment already and so physically they're switched on for it but psychologically when the fire occurs or when they're impacted by fire or if they leave the area because of the fire they really haven't emotionally or psychologically prepared for that. Those community fire guard groups impacted in 2009 really helped them understand what they'd experienced and what they were possibly going through and even through their memories what was occurring. Just to get a sense of what you're going to be facing I think and preparing yourself for that, understanding that. It's definitely very important. It's like you've got a bit of experience so you can apply that to your current situation so absolutely trying to be mentally prepared although I'm not sure that you can really understand what it's going to be like but knowing that it's going to be noisy and it's going to be dark and you're not going to be able to hear, use your senses and those sorts of things. If you've got an awareness of what to expect in a fire or any other situation then it's going to help you to be resilient and say to yourself when something happens okay. I was warned about that it is difficult, it is 24 hours of fighting a fire if I'm going to stay and defend etc. Knowledge and experience will help to help to make people resilient. The CFG group and also the courses impress on people just how important it is to be prepared mentally. It's something over the years we've realised ourselves particularly as we've aged we've realised that we probably are mentally as well as physically they're able to cope and that's why strongly our first plan is to leave early. We actually decided to do a practice leave according to what we'd written down and you know according to what we thought and so we actually did a practice of packing up and leaving and it was very interesting it was all sorts of snags came up and things took us longer than we thought. Self-alliance is probably the key and it's a little bit about what that resilience is about understanding that quite often in these events you may be alone or especially if you're in a fire in the fire event itself so if your choice is to stay and defend quite often you may not get assistance from from emergency services. The event may not necessarily be to the scale that they're expecting but essentially they have an understanding of what's occurring or what's going on and they can in some way predict or foresee what is occurring around them and so in terms of resilience we talk about the post post event or the recovery they're far more capable at recovering or their resilience is far greater because they've understood what's coming they knew what the the environment was like and what their risk was and they are prepared and they'd sort of practice their place for what they would do. I definitely don't want to be here and and try and defend my property that my plan would definitely be to to to leave early with my children. I feel a lot more confident about making the right decisions for myself and my family as a result of attending a fire guard call group and and the continuing information that comes from that on an annual basis. It's about mental resilience for me it's about feeling like I've got the knowledge and the plan in place should a fire event occur. You definitely need to have more than one plan I'm a great believer in the in in having a fall back position so that any planning that you've made if it doesn't work or if your plan doesn't work then you really need that fall back position and quite obviously a fire plan is going to be a personal thing that in fact is peculiar to your own set of circumstances in your own home is distinct from what the guy next door might well have planned. In the fire guard group and with the CFA meetings in general they always make that quite clear that you can't expect to fire truck at your door I say to people have you got a plan and and sometimes I say to them and and have you written it down and explain to them why we found it so useful to have have it written down. I love living here and I wouldn't move but you have to understand the risk and and the risk to your to your small little piece of that beautiful of the beautiful place we live in.