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A father and son from Victoria were forced to drive past dozens of spot fires to reach their home, under threat from the region's out-of-control blazes.
Jacob Haddrill was told his property was threatened by one of breakouts that have already burnt four properties in the state's northeast.
With his son he had to drive 170km from Melbourne to home, contending with an intense fire line and hundreds of spot fires.
Mr Haddrill lost tens of thousands of dollars of feed and fencing, although his house and cattle were spared.
"Mainly all we could see was burnt, mainly fences. There's probably tens of thousands of dollars' worth of fencing damage alone," he told The Age.
"We came out of it pretty good, we've been lucky."
Three of his neighbours were not so fortunate.
"You could just see everyone's place alight. It's surreal," he says.
"It looked like lava … all the cracks and all that."