A fire which destroyed a barn and its contents - 60 big bales of hay - near Roxburgh on Friday night is being treated as suspicious after a car was seen speeding away from the site about the same time as the blaze began.
Fire crews from Roxburgh and Millers Flat volunteer brigades spent more than five hours at the scene and water tankers were sent from Clyde and Lawrence. The 10m-by-10m corrugated iron barn was near Lake Roxburgh village, about 40m from State Highway 8.
''It was well alight when we got there and we had to get machinery in, a grabber thing and then a digger, to try and grab the hay out, until the shed started caving in,'' fire officer in charge, Station Officer Mark Sincock, of Roxburgh said.
''There was no water nearby so that made things difficult. We had to take all the hay out and spread it all apart, so we could keep dampening it down and make sure it wasn't still smouldering.''
The emergency call came soon after 9pm and fire crews were on site until 2.30am, he said. Constable Lance Davies, of Roxburgh, said the fire was being treated as suspicious after a late-model lime green Ford Falcon, was seen ''leaving the area at speed''.
''It's a quite distinctive vehicle and it was heading southward so we'd like to hear if anyone has any information about the incident or the vehicle, in confidence, or we'd also like to talk to the people from the vehicle, so we can rule them out of our inquiry if there's no connection.''
The bales, worth about $2400, were two years old so spontaneous combustion had been ruled out as that usually only happened with new hay, he said.
Barn owner Robert Watson said the small hay barn was his ''back-up'' for winter feed. His other barn was up a hill and when it snowed, he needed hay on a lower part of his property for easy access.
He was ''yapping on the phone when I smelled smoke'' on Friday night.
''I looked south but it was dead calm and I couldn't see anything, so I carried on yapping on the phone and then the smoke got thicker. Then I saw flames coming out both ends of the shed.''
He recently mowed around the shed and on the roadside to keep the fire risk down. It was fortunate there had been more than 7cm of rain recently and the vegetation was no longer tinder dry.
''It could've been a lot worse ... but something like this, if it's been deliberately lit ... it does make you lose faith in humans,'' Mr Watson said.
