Burnt at 4, Now Firefighting 40 Years in Australia

Rob Armstrong was just four years old when he huddled under a blanket on a country road, watching 30-foot flames tear through the Victorian hills. His neighbor Dorothy Tucker had crashed their escape vehicle after a tree fell across their path, leaving no choice but to run through the wall of fire.

The January 1969 Tatyoon bushfire burned Rob, his three siblings, and Dorothy as they fled. They would have died on that road if volunteer firefighters hadn't spotted them through a brief break in the smoke.

"If he didn't yell out, the truck would have gone straight over the top of us," Rob remembers. "That's how close it was."

That moment changed everything. Rob has been a volunteer firefighter with Victoria's Country Fire Authority for 40 years now, keeping his own private fire truck ready at all times.

"A volunteer firefighter is the guy that drops everything and goes and gets on a fire truck to try to save someone else's assets, their livelihood and hopefully save their lives," he says. Despite hating every moment of fighting fires, he goes anyway.

His commitment was tested recently when the Victorian government announced a fire levy increase of up to 189 percent for farmers. For Rob, who helps put out the fires while battling the worst drought since 1914, the decision felt personal.

"I thought, 'This is just not on. I've got to do something about this'," he says. The sixth-generation farmer became an accidental protest leader, speaking up for rural communities who protect each other.

Through it all, Rob found an unexpected partner. Sunny Berry left her Melbourne corporate life during COVID to farm with him, bringing her soft heart for every orphaned lamb and injured kangaroo.

"I think if I had a dollar for every time Rob said to me, 'Oh, Sunny, no', I would be a billionaire," she laughs. Their unlikely partnership works because they're "strange in our own way and in the same ways."

Sunny's Take

Their farm now houses a menagerie including Karen, a male kangaroo who thinks he's a cow, goats with their own playground, a blind cow named Poppy, and Charlie the cranky cockatoo. While Rob tends to fires and fights for fairness, Sunny tends to creatures who need second chances.

It's a fitting balance for a man who got his own second chance on a smoke-filled road 57 years ago.

The volunteers who saved Rob's life that day showed him what community really means, and he's been paying it forward ever since.

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