Bruce Janes, of Loburn, and his crew of 21 firefighters from New Zealand arrived in New South Wales yesterday ahead of their mission to help fight the bush fires that continue to devastate the country.
As they push their trolleys through the airport, people can be heard clapping in the background.
The Minister of Internal Affairs, Tracey Martin, was among those at Auckland International Airport yesterday to farewell the team and bid them good luck.
A message of support and a photo of the group were also shared online.
This latest group of firefighters takes the number of Kiwi crew members sent across the Tasman to help to 179 since October.
The group will act as a burning crew, Mr Janes said.
"We will be lighting up the vegetation ahead of the fire to rob it of fuel.
"It is a bit of a riskier undertaking because you're adding more fire to fire so they have asked for a crew with a high experience level of burning."
He said he is feeling nervous about heading across the Tasman this time, in spite of doing 10 deployments to Australia throughout his career.
"It's just the scale of this one and the fire behaviour we are going to be running into.
"Very dangerous, the most dangerous fire we will have tackled and we are gonna be right in the thick of it."
