Shed fire in Dutton Street, Yass

Owner Al Phemister was working inside the shed early in the afternoon and was called out to a job at 2.21pm. Soon after, at 2.43pm, he received a call with news that his shed was going up in flames.

“When I got here, the doors of the shed were shut and a lot of the fire was in the central area and back corner of the shed,” he explained.

“There was just a lot of material in that part of the shed so it was just all absolutely destroyed.”

Mr Phemister revealed that the origin of the fire remains unknown and that it will be labelled by the authorities as “accidental”.

Along with a huge array of tools, knick knacks and family treasures, as a renowned artist Mr Phemister also had a number of impressive sculptures that were destroyed.

“There were $25,000 worth of sculptures here, ready to leave this week, plus other unfinished projects and they’ve all been lost.

“But I’ve also found things that I’d forgotten were even there, things like my daughter's old tricycle, so finding those treasures wrecked has been hard.”

Mr Phemister was good friends with community identity Kim Nelson, who died earlier this year, so he has decided to look at the fire with a certain perspective.

“We’re looking at it a little more pragmatically in that it’s just that my stuff got burnt. It’s kind of devastating in some ways but it could have been a whole lot worse.”

Yesterday Mr Phemister, along with support from friends and family, was going through the slow process of documenting everything that was lost in the blaze, all for the purposes of insurance.

“We’ve had an assessor in this morning, and things look positive but they might investigate because it’s a fire and that’s just the process they go through, but we’re definitely hoping to hear good news.”

He said the shed has been his office for so long that it will be hard to adjust.

“A couple of times I’ve thought ‘I’ll just get my..’ or ‘I used to have a …’, but then I remember what’s happened.”

Despite the considerable setback, he said he and his family won’t be sitting on their hands sulking. They’ll be working hard, getting their hands dirty and looking towards the future.

“The plan now is to clean up all the rubbish, document what we need to, and builders are due in a week or two hopefully, to organise quotes to rebuild and start again.”