We're in Mount St Mary's Lane, a dirt road four kilometres out of Kyneton, on the edge of bushland looking across a valley.

You can almost see Mr Magrath, captain of the Kyneton Country Fire Authority station, making the mental calculations necessary if fire were roaring through.

"This wind today is about 40km/h," he said. "If it was 40 degrees with this wind, if just a cigarette, or anything, got it started, we wouldn't catch it 'til the bitumen back there. With the amount of heat you'd get out of there, you wouldn't park your truck here. We wouldn't send volunteers in here."

And don't let the green grass fool you. "We've had enough winter rain to allow the grass to grow on the forest floor, but have a look over there," he said, pointing down the hillside to an almost empty dam.

"There's been no run-off. You can see the grass is already starting to yellow, and if there was a fire here, there's not enough water in that dam. We'd be carting water from town to fight it."

The station's previous captain, Roger Walker, said there are only two factors to worry about each fire season — the weather and people.

"It's very dry," he said. "I've never seen anything quite like it."

But what about the people? Despite all the efforts to teach fire safety, Mr Magrath worries the message isn't getting through.

In the Kyneton and Bendigo region, it's led to a zero-tolerance approach to lighting fires without the right permits. In the old, wetter days you might get away with a warning, but now expect to be prosecuted.

The influx of city people ignorant of fire danger has also created problems. Last Christmas Day afternoon, members of the Kyneton force — all volunteers — were summoned from their turkey and pudding to fight a fire started by a Melbourne man who owns a block of land south of the town.

"It had rained the day before and the ground was a little bit wet in the morning," recalls Mr Magrath.