There is no denying that Martin Bella is a battler.
From his rugby league glory days representing the Maroons, fighting for the rights of his constituents around the Mackay Regional Council table, to advocating for fellow rural landholders in his Green Shirts movement, his legacy of standing up for his beliefs is undeniable.
Now, the passionate third-generation grazier is taking on a fight closer to home.
Last week, Mr Bella was face-to-face with a scourge of fires, tearing through acres across his Koumala home along Cone Creek.
"We noticed the smoke and everything from our place (on Sunday), and then a bloke called me and we raced around and came to where it started just to get the lay of the land," he said.
"It's the damage, the time and everything like that...all that down there would have to be 15,000 acres, a lot of hard country that's not overly used, but if everyone hadn't done what they did, and it gets down into better country, it burns cane, it burns houses, that's the thing - someone is going to die... it's a matter of time.
"Imagine fire racing at you (at the break), there's no way out. If you can't sort it out there, you're gone."
The fire moved up and over the ridge on Sunday, and came at Mr Bella and co with a fury.
It powered on, buoyed by the wind, with residents and fire brigades working to contain it and back burning, all the while on tenterhooks - ready for the worst if the wind were to change.
"It was like being in a three-sided amphitheatre with fire on all sides. The smoke in the bottom was hideous and the wind came from every direction...we have lost a heap of country, so there will be some hungry cows in the next few weeks," Mr Bella said.
"One of the blocks on Cone Creek....we've had big fires come through and manage to stop them. That country in there hadn't been burnt for 20 years plus, and the problem is if it burned, especially if the wind was blowing that way, all those little blocks would have gone.
"The fire started behind the hill...the fire was running along the top of that ridge and all these fellas were back burning...(The fires) didn't light up until I was on the other side of it but (it was touch and go).
"We were getting the fire coming from one direction...so we had to get a break there...there were blokes running backwards and forwards between. Everyone was bloody good."
Mr Bella and his neighbours spent two solid days fighting the blaze into the night.
"On the first night, I set the alarm....laid back for an hour and it'd go off and I'd do a quick tour...I did three of them," he said.
"On the third day...we were patrolling...and the guys down below us had...two or three days too just trying to pull it up.
"We're allowed a 10-metre break either side of a boundary and a five-metre break as a fire break through the middle. Mate, five metres when flames are 10-15 metres high, I don't know about your a*****e but mine tightens up."
Mr Bella is down a $700 LandCruiser snorkel, a dozer track adjuster, two four-wheeler tyres, and a day's harvesting.
"The mill's behind and we're now way behind the mill, so hopefully (this) Monday and Tuesday we'll catch up a little bit. (Another neighbour) Shane has missed half a week's work," he said.
"At the end of the day, one of the (fire brigade workers) said he didn't know whether to go home and have a beer or a cry. I understood how he felt."
Mr Bella said the area has been targeted regularly by arsonists.
"The road that parallels the highway there from Mount Christian station to Riley's Road, that was lit up in three places there a couple of weeks ago. It was lit up in exactly the same place a couple of years before that, so it's a regular," he said.
Three years ago, Mr Bella ran into two men leaving the scene of another blaze at Cone Creek, men he knows personally and who are also known to police.
"He had the gate hooked up to his four-wheeler...I caught him, this ute came out, I saw two sets of lights, he came past me and I recognised him because he had a big blue fisherman's tub on the back," he said.
"The next morning, Fred Axiak found a fire behind his place. So what do you think the other bloke was doing?
"I drove home one day, middle of the day...20 minutes later, there's a fire twice the size of a four-wheel drive that's just been lit.
"Fred down Riley's Road lost 1500 tonnes of cane, he got it off but it burnt."
The last week has seen fires tear through the state from Mount Isa to Tara, with 11 crews, including back-up from Townsville working to contain the blazes at Lake Moondarra late last week.
Several warnings remain in place at Tara, with the fires' devastation total reaching 40 houses 34 sheds, eight mobile properties, and 18,651 hectares as of this afternoon.
Multiple ground crews and aircraft are still on scene.
Koumala was hit by two blazes last week - one at Cone Creek, and the other from a truck that caught alight and spread to nearby vegetation, closing the Bruce Highway.
