The Member for New England used the visit to also push a campaign to encourage Australian governments into a massive dam-construction program to prepare regional Australia for the next bushfire emergency.

Mr Joyce, visiting radio 2cbd last week, described his own direct experience of the season's bushfires as "terrifying" and said there were days last year he didn't know if his house would survive.

"One of the things I know that was (a problem) trucks had to go too far to find water," he said.

"I was in that situation. You have to find a river you have to upload it, you got to go off the fire front to get water. And that's inefficient."

He said Federal government should aim to subsidise a construction program in order to build a dam for each property and in national parks.

Asked if he thought the Federal government's $1000 disaster recovery payment is sufficient, he first pointed to other options for bushfire-affected families to get help before conceding the aid probably isn't enough.

"Nothing is ever enough; it's to assist not to cure, it's a mitigant not the total solution," he said.

But the famously conservative Nationals member and former Deputy Prime Minister, who traveled to Glen Innes to inspect a new radio tower, an upgrade mired in bureaucracy for years, also admitted to a community radio station volunteer a surprising love of the British band Radiohead.

Possibly most famous for their 1992 song "Creep", Radiohead often features anti-corporate or even-anti-capitalist themes and odd experimental music.

Their most popular album, OK Computer, famously features the song Fitter Happier, which is simply a series of corporate slogans read by a computer voice.

Asked if he sometimes feels like "a pig in a cage on antibiotics", as the song says, Barnaby Joyce demurred.

Radiohead makes him "melancholic", he said.

"It takes me to a different place and there's one thing about politics; at times you like to go to a different place," he said.

"Vicki reckons (Radiohead) is depressing; maybe it is."

What should we read into a love of 90s British alternative rock?

"Don't think I'm a book you've read.

"I find so many times people have an opinion on me and I find it interesting but it's not actually me."

"What happens in politics is they see you in five second or thirty second grabs.

"And by reason of it being a five second or thirty second grab you've got to make it salty otherwise it doesn't sell - but that's not who you are.

"Everybody is a lot more complicated than a thirty second grab."

MORE NEWS: