The mood is jovial, as the jets of water are punctuated by bursts of laughter from the 17 brigade members at training.

The brigade's captain, Luke Masters, watches on, smiling.

"Considering we're in summer, I'm relaxed about the fire season," Mr Masters says, before the smile on that boyish face of his hardens, as he adds, "But knowing we can't become complacent."

That knowledge of the perils of complacency comes from recent memory, from the tense experiences and frighteningly close calls of last summer.

Martinsville is cradled at the feet of the Watagan Mountains, their steep, bush-covered slopes curling around the little community like an amphitheatre. Many of its residents live amid trees, enjoying a bush escape. It is a stunning, beautiful setting - unless it is on fire.

And from October 2019 to early this year, in the midst of drought and dreadful heat, the bush around here burst into flames, time and again, threatening to devour properties and even lives.

So time and again, the Martinsville brigade members of the NSW Rural Fire Service faced the flames. The brigade clocked up 2435 "incident hours" for the year, compared with the usual tally of about 350.

The flames didn't relent, but neither did the volunteer members of the Martinsville Rural Fire Brigade.

"We learnt that we could turn out and keep turning out and support each other through what was pretty well hell for the four, five months we went through it," Mr Masters said.

"They handled it really well, considering the experience we didn't have in the brigade. It's now grown."

One of those who had a baptism of fire was Craig Browne. He is usually a board game designer. One of his most recent creations has been a game based on the popular TV program Hard Quiz. But for months, there was no time for games, as he fought the fires around the village he has called home for about 17 years.

"For many of us, it was really our first live fires," he said. While Mr Browne had been in the brigade for almost three years at that point, most of his experience had revolved around hazard reduction burns. Suddenly he was battling to save homes from flames as high as the trees.

"That's a big learning experience for people like me, where you'd only been on much smaller jobs, and ones where you didn't feel the absolute threat."

The brigade won the battles against the fires, and the cruel summer was sweetening into kinder autumn weather, when, like some curse, the flames were replaced by a pandemic.

"We went from flat out to Bang! Stop!," recalled Luke Masters. "Because of COVID. We weren't allowed to meet at the station."

For an exhausted Luke Masters, at least the COVID-related restrictions meant he, and other brigade members, had to take a break.

"I never knew how buggered I was. When COVID hit and it all came to a stop, I didn't know what to feel."

Yet COVID also brought a host of challenges. During the fire season, and just after it, eight new members signed on. That boosted the brigade's numbers to 54. There was no time for training the recruits during the season but then, just as everything settled down, the pandemic hit.

Long-time resident Pat Tierney joined during summer. The social worker prepared to train with the others, only to find she had to do a lot of her learning via the computer screen.

"We kind of managed," Ms Tierney said. "There was a lot of stuff done on Zoom.

"I think they did a really good job of managing training even around all the restrictions.

"Even though it was disrupted, we still managed to get enough done to be able to be assessed and get through BF (Bush Firefighter), so that was good."

Husband and wife Paul and Tanya Crawford had joined before the last season, but when they saw flames igniting the ridge line near their family home, that galvanised their desire to be part of the firefighting effort.

As Paul Crawford, a humanitarian aid worker, says, "That's when the idea of what this is about became very much a reality."

"You live in a community like this," Dr Crawford says. "You expect your neighbours to come and fight a fire on your property, you should do the same thing back."

However, the pandemic then disrupted the Crawfords' firefighter training. What's more, Tanya Crawford had to fit her online learning around her job as a psychologist.

"I was an essential worker during COVID and was working at the John Hunter Hospital on shift work," she says.

It wasn't just the recruits missing the training during the lockdown. Craig Browne, who also serves as the brigade's community engagement officer, was concerned he was forgetting what he had learnt.

"As someone with only a few years' experience, it doesn't take long before you start to worry about, 'Will I be able to do the right thing at the right time?'," he says. "Just having to practice constantly is really important."

The brigade was allowed back to the station for their monthly training sessions in Spring, just as the weather was warming.

"Fortunately by the time we were really needing to do assessments we were able to do some hands-on stuff," says Pat Tierney. "It's so much better if you can be doing group stuff."

On this balmy Tuesday evening, members are practising CPR on new mannequins. The training mannequins are among a range of equipment bought with $10,000 donated to the brigade, as part of the $51 million given to the RFS and Brigades Donations Fund from the bushfire relief appeal set up by comedian Celeste Barber.

The Martinsville community has also contributed to its local brigade. At the back of the headquarters is a recently installed 72,000-litre water tank, donated by property owner Trish Richards. The need for more water storage was made clear during last summer.

"Ironically, even though we're a brigade, we didn't have near enough water," says Mr Browne.

When Ms Richards heard the station had only a couple of thousand litres storage, she thought, "That's crazy", and offered to donate a larger tank.

"It just occurred to me, 'Why not donate to the fire brigade?', because if and when anything happens, I'm going to be dependent on it," she said.

As the training continues, Luke Masters scans the Watagan Mountains, their edge darkening as the sun sets. There's no sign of smoke, nor are there any heavy clouds, even though there has been rain in recent weeks and more is forecast. And that can create a potential hazard.

"We're getting the rain, so the fuel is growing," Mr Masters explains. "It's pretty while it's green, but as soon as we get those hot days, westerlies, and it dries out, that becomes fuel.

"And people become complacent in the rain, thinking, 'It's going to be a wet season. All good'. If we get three or four days straight of 35 degrees above and low humidity, we're in trouble."

And, as Craig Browne knows, fortunes can change as quickly as the weather.

"I was definitely feeling so much more relaxed till that Saturday and Sunday [a couple of weeks ago], when we had that slight haziness, big wind, and 32 degrees at 10am," he says. "You suddenly go, 'Okay, this is what it was like last time'."

The lesson many residents took from last summer, Luke Masters says, is that they were not prepared for a bushfire. About 20 local properties have registered for the RFS to do a fire readiness inspection, compared with just a couple the previous year.

Even so, Luke Masters says, every home should be better prepared for a bushfire, to protect themselves and their property, by formulating a plan.

"Every property should be doing something. Understanding the risk. Understanding how you'll manage it, and if you can't manage it, deciding to leave early and when that trigger point is," he says.

So far this season, the Martinsville brigade has been called out to only one bushfire.

"At this stage it's quieter, but people still need to be prepared or we're in trouble. Or they're in trouble," Mr Masters says.

In the meantime, Pat Tierney will continue training with her fellow firefighters, preparing for whatever the season throws at her little community, and all the while she will keep an eye on the weather.

"I think I'm very excited we've got a La Nina happening," she says. "I've got an expectation that we're certainly not going to face anything like last year. I think it might be a pretty quiet year - fingers crossed, touch wood, all that sort of stuff."

Read more: Martinsville rises in the face of flames

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