After months of drought, bushfires and coronavirus restrictions, regional New South Wales is finally expecting some relief from Monday when the state’s ban on recreation is lifted.
Corrinne East’s family has owned and operated holiday parks and camping grounds on the South Coast of NSW for four generations. She says there has never been a time as challenging as the past six months.
“We’d literally just started to feel like we could breathe again after the bushfires, and then COVID-19 hit,” she tells SBS News. “It was a real kick in the guts”.
Today, Corrinne’s family runs three parks in Batemans Bay, Narooma and Moruya Heads, all three of which had to be evacuated at the start of January.
Corrinne East (pictured right) and her sister Teaghan Abbott, mother Dianne East and father Phillip East. Source: Supplied
“It was very traumatic. We had a staff member lose their house, we had staff members who were fighting for their homes right from that first night and lost friends in the Cobargo area,” she says.
Then, on 3 January, Corrinne and her sister made the painful decision to leave their Narooma park and seek shelter while their husbands stayed behind to protect the property.
“We were talking to the captain of the rural fire brigade down at Narooma and he just said ‘look, the kids don’t need to see what’s coming’,” she says.
“We didn’t have fuel, so we were draining lawn mowers and work utes and all sorts of things to try and get some petrol.”
With nowhere to go, they stopped in a Cooma McDonalds to make a plan. There, they started chatting to a stranger who organised for a family in Michelago to welcome all seven of them into their home until they could return to Narooma.
Just over week later, Corrinne got the green light to reopen her camping grounds, welcoming just one couple to one of their parks on 11 January.
“January wasn’t great, the last couple of weeks in February started to pick up because the community really wanted to come down and support the South Cast, and then, of course, it was very early March that the coronavirus started impacting,” she says.
“People started ringing up and getting a little bit hesitant, then we actually had people ringing up to cancel in tears because they were so compassionate about coming to help us out after the bushfires.”
Then on 26 March, Corrinne and countless other regional tourism operators received notice that they would have to close altogether.
A bushfire cloud approaches Corrinne East's holiday park in Moruya Heads. Source: Supplied
As tourism to the regions reopens, Corrinne says she is excited but knows it will be a long time before life returns to ‘business as usual’.
“The money we’ve lost is pretty scary - it’s huge - and we’re never going to be able to replace what we lost in January, February, March and April,” she says.
“We really do hope people remember the bushfires and the fact that we’ve been doing it really tough for months and all flood back and come and visit us.”
‘This is a first’
Last year, regional NSW communities welcomed 27.2 million domestic overnight visitors, with April through June alone seeing 19.5 million visitors pass through the regions.
By the end of the year, overnight visitors had spent $14.3 billion in regional NSW communities during their stays.
When Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced a ban on recreational travel to regional NSW in March, many businesses saw their revenue slashed to all but zero.
In Port Macquarie, where fires raged for 210 days starting last July, John Cassegrain and his family have been making wine for 35 years.
The past year has seen drought, bushfires and the coronavirus restrictions combine to reduce Cassegrain Wines’ revenue by 90 per cent.
“We’re used to drought, we’re used to floods, we’re used to hail, but to have drought and bushfires in one year - two natural disasters - and then COVID-19 putting the whole world economy in turmoil? This is a first,” John says.
Despite the drought, John says Cassegrain Wines was on track to enjoy its best November ever, but everything changed when the fire reached the property.
Alex, John and Philippe Cassegrain of Port Macquarie's Cassegrain Wines. Source: Supplied
“It was pretty frightening. We spent a lot of time helping our neighbours, we had fire trucks and water trucks just to water down the winery building,” he says.
“We had to completely close the winery for a few days, and then as the rest of the state suffered during December and January it just had an enormous impact on visitation to the region and our cellar door sales.”
Then, when the coronavirus hit in March, John was no longer able to offer tastings at the winery, pushing cellar door sales even further down.
His family had already started feeling the impact of COVID-19 two months earlier when it saw many of their scheduled exports to Asia cancelled.
“Our number one export market is Japan and our number one customer there is the Bullet Train. They’ve been buying our wine for more than 20 years, buying one container every three or four weeks until now” John says.
“We’re spending a lot of time at the moment assessing what our future will look like, and we don’t think we will see the export market recover for at least a couple of years.”
The past 12 months has seen their property scorched, their sales slashed and some of their grape crops run dry.
John's family has been making wine in Port Macquarie for 30 years, but 2020 has been the most challenging to date. Source: Supplied
But John says Monday’s reopening of regional tourism is something all of Port Macquarie has to celebrate.
“It’s going to be a fantastic time for many people to rediscover regional Australia when they might not have been to our neck of the woods for quite some years,” he says.
“And I think that they might be pretty impressed when they see what we have here.”
People in Australia must stay at least 1.5 metres away from others. Check your state’s restrictions on gathering limits.
Testing for coronavirus is now widely available across Australia. If you are experiencing cold or flu symptoms, arrange a test by calling your doctor or contact the Coronavirus Health Information Hotline on 1800 020 080.
The federal government's coronavirus tracing app COVIDSafe is available for download from your phone's app store.
SBS is committed to informing Australia’s diverse communities about the latest COVID-19 developments. News and information is available in 63 languages at
