Fire destroys Maindample icon

“The pub was a second home - a meeting place for everybody,” he said. “We used to do a lot of fundraising there, functions and rock and roll nights.”

Local brigades were paged at 11:50pm on Tuesday night to the fire.

“My place is about 2km away and as soon as I jumped in the car, I could see the glow,” said Mr Cheeseman. “It’s an old pub, it was built around 1860, so I knew it would be hard to save."

When firefighters arrived the building was fully involved. It took 40 firefighters around an hour to bring the blaze under control.

Nine brigades responded to the incident including Maindample, Bonnie Doon, Mansfield, Barjarg, Goughs Bay – Howes Creek, Booroolite, Lima South and Merton.

Operations Officer Ashley Mills said that firefighters did an excellent job once they arrived on scene.

“The building was so badly damaged that it was at risk from building collapse. Firefighters used a defensive attack from the outside of the building and successfully managed to keep the blaze from spreading to nearby hotel rooms.”

Mr Cheeseman said that crews also managed to stop the fire from spreading to the bottle shop.

“We had a good supply of water, with the creek nearby and the quick fill pump on scene,” he said.

The damage estimate was $500,000 – $750,000. CFA and Police investigators were on scene yesterday.

Images courtesy Google Street View.