Firewood from a Victorian state forest is free. You may only take it in two seasons a year, only from areas the state designates one season at a time, and only wood that is already on the ground — and this spring, for the first time, none of those areas is in the Wombat.
This page is the spring 2026 list as Forest Fire Management Victoria published it, sorted by how far each area is from Daylesford, with the rules and the day’s fire restrictions beside it. The nearest one you may use is not in our own district: Hepburn Shire is on the list of shires allowed into the Central Victorian goldfields forests, and that is what puts Castlemaine within reach.
How much you may take
2 m³
Per person, per day
about 1.9 trailer loads
16 m³
Per household — financial year
about 14.8 trailer loads
A trailer about 1.8 m by 1.2 m, stacked level to 50 cm, holds roughly 1.1 m³ — the land manager’s own worked example, and the arithmetic behind the load figures here.
Most of what you will find is green and needs eight to twelve months to dry before it burns properly. Wood cut this spring is next winter’s wood, not this one’s.
Cubic metres, in trailer loads
The allowance is written in cubic metres, which is not a thing anybody owns a picture of. Type a volume and this says how many trailer loads it is.
Type a volume to see it in trailer loads.