Ocean Farms residents wait for a miracle as tough fire conditions bring flames to their doorstep

Mr Burke said changing winds, virgin bushland, and paddocks with a high fuel load surrounding Ocean Farms made fighting the flames extremely difficult for crews.

The lack of road access to parts of the area was also a challenge, he said, forcing firefighters to take vehicles off-road through dirt tracks and bushland.

“The country at the back is shocking, it’s soft black sand and it’s hard for four-wheel-drives to get anywhere,” he said.

The bushfire, which started near the intersection of Mogumber Road an Brand Highway in Red Gully, has been burning since Saturday across the greater Shire of Gingin.

Up to 200 firefighters and 13 aircraft were called on Tuesday to battle the flames, which razed through 9000 hectares of land and forced nearly 300 residents to evacuate their homes.

As of 5pm on Tuesday, the flames were moving at about 3 kilometres per hour in the direction of Ocean Farms, fanned by gusts of easterly and north-easterly winds, putting homes at risk.

Footage captured by locals east of Lancelin showed dark plumes of smoke rising thick into the afternoon air behind the sand dunes as the fire inched closer to Ocean Farms.

Rachael Hains-Wesson and her family were among 270 residents evacuated from Ocean Farms.

The Sydneysider had travelled to WA from New South Wales for the beachside trip of a lifetime with her family, but she is now facing the prospect of losing her dream holiday home instead.

Dr Hains-Wesson and her husband bought a home in Oceans Farms at the height of the pandemic and were visiting the property for the time when the fire struck.

“We looked in the horizon and I said to my husband, that smoke has gotten a lot darker and is looking a lot closer to where we are,” Dr Hains-Wesson said.

“My husband started to say ‘this is serious, you need to pack your stuff, I’m getting the car and you need to come’. All of a sudden we got a text saying you need to leave now your life is at risk.”

It was after scrambling to find the family cat and jump in the car on the way to Guilderton that the family realised the extent of the emergency.

“As we were driving about 10 kilometres outside of Lancelin my son in the back goes ‘Mum, I can see the fire from here and it’s huge’,” she said.

“We stopped the car, looked out and no joke, we could see across the horizon just huge flames, heaps of smoke and I thought how are we going to contain something like this? It’s massive.”

Away from the path of the fire, Matthew Penrose felt optimistic firefighters would get the blaze under control but packed his four-wheel-drive with essentials just in case.

“We’ve got the pool ready for the helicopters and stuff to go. The truck’s packed so if we need to we’ll get out of here. We’ll just keep an eye on it,” he said.

“We’ve had sprinklers going and the tanks going, we’ve flooded everything, all our veggies, our mango trees.”

Mr Penrose said he planned to head straight out to the beach in his car if the flames got too close.

The Bureau of Meteorology is predicting extremely hot and dry conditions for the week, which are expected to fuel the unpredictability of a fire threat in the area.

Department of Fire and Emergency Services Deputy Commissioner Craig Waters said climate change had caused fires to burn with the same intensity into the evenings, whereas before firefighters would get a lull or reprieve with cooling conditions.

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