TRANSCRIPT
“We've all been given a blank canvas here with those who lost in these fires, and it is a shitty way to wipe a canvas clean is to have it just burnt to the ground. But in that, I don't know, it's like if you're not trained in art, you've then not given any scope of limitation. So in a way, that's how I've addressed my particular situation with this and had a chat to a few other people about it as well. We've all been given a chance. We'd be fools to try to get everything back that was once there, that now is no longer in any existence, tangible or not. Hold it in your memory if it's good, and hold it in your heart and celebrate that.”
Things like bushfires and other natural disasters change people, it's something out of our control, something you can't totally prepare for.
People like to feel prepared, it's why we have insurance and bring a jacket just in case, even if it still seems pretty warm out.
During the Black Summer bushfires five years ago, the town of Cobargo got hit badly.
But Chris Walters, the coordinator of the Cobargo community evacuation and relief centre, says it wasn't because people weren't ready.
I don't think they were unprepared. I think they were as prepared as they could be. They were prepared for a bush fire. And I know that the rural fire service had been out right out to all the farms, right out into the bush and everywhere, warning people that there was a fire coming and helping them to understand how they could prepare their properties. I know that work was done because my husband was part of that work, so they were prepared for a bushfire. They weren't prepared. No one was prepared for the ferocity of that bushfire, that particular bushfire. It was unprecedented.”
While around 80 per cent of Australians were affected by Black Summer from 2019 to 2020, many of the people and places hit directly by the fires are still feeling the impacts.
In the weeks after the fires passed through, they were forced to come to terms with what they could and couldn't get back.
“The hardest thing is you, I mean, I guess you think of the big things at that point, like the house, the furniture, because lived in Germany for a while and I bought back a whole lot of antique pieces that again, I couldn't replace either, but then it's all the other things. I wasn't born in a digital age, so half of my life is actually gone in terms of photos. There's none of my school stuff. I had all the research notes. I even had to get my degrees, had to get my tests replaced. So it's, and now once you've got a house, eventually it gets really weird again because you go, oh, did I have that before? When you're looking for something, you go, oh, maybe I had that before the fire. Yeah, I never want to go through that again, ever.”
In Mallacoota, Jann Gilbert has finally rebuilt her place; she's not in the majority.
In some ways, the non-stop media coverage and attention that surrounded the Black Summer bushfires raised awareness and funding for places hit worst.
For Mallacoota and Cobargo, which both made frequent headlines during the time, the coverage also brought with it some unwanted visitors.
When she was first able to return to the area safely, Jann says it wasn't long before what's known as disaster tourism started to happen.
“It was quite usual for this to happen. These people just came up Bastion Point Road, pulled up out there and then just saw me, saw two people on the block, and they just walked straight onto the block and proceed to walk through. Tim yelled out to them, I think I was up this end of what was left at the house then. And Tim yelled, and I heard him yell out, and I stuck my head up and I said, yes, can I help you? Oh, we just wanted to have a look. Excuse my French - I told him to fuck (beeped out) off.”
In Cobargo, Chris says a lot of tourists lacked any real sense of just how much they'd been through.
“ People had come through and they were really just sticky-beaking (aggressively curious) to see what it was like. But all our business people, our shopkeepers and everybody were really aware of that. And yeah, it was difficult, but they were able to cope because we'd had meetings about how to respond to questions about, oh, did you lose your home? And all that sort of stuff, which is pretty confronting for people who did actually lose their home, or even if they didn't, we all lost something, whether we lost our home, our garden, our livestock, our fences, or with, for me, just such a big chunk of the community. So we all lost something. So it was pretty horrific that people would just come waltzing into your shop or your place of business and start quizzing you.”
But tourists weren't the only unwelcome visitors.
Then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison had already come under public scrutiny for his response to the bushfires.
Before the fires reached Mallacoota and Cobargo over New Year, but long after they'd started burning throughout the country, the Prime Minister went on holiday in Hawaii.
The poor timing, along with attempts by his office to deny that he was there at all, turned the getaway into a public relations nightmare.
Ahead of his return to Australia, Scott Morrison gave an interview to 2GB Radio.
He said while he was sorry for any pain caused, he wasn't personally fighting the fires.
“They'll be pleased I'm coming back, I'm sure, but they know that, you know I don't hold a hose mate and I don't sit in the control room. That's the brave people who do that are doing that job, but I know that Australians would want me back at this time, after these fatalities, and so I'll happily come back and do that.”
The Prime Minister said he would usually holiday on the south coast, which at the time was, of course, on fire.
He said all he was doing was trying to treat his family, and like many parents at that time of year, he just wanted to spend time with them.
So if Scott Morrison wasn't holding the hose, who was?
While the Prime Minister was on a beach in Hawaii, nearly 65,000 volunteers were taking time out of their holidays to fight the fires.
While his office was still denying that he was even in Hawaii, two volunteers, Geoffrey Keaton and Andrew O'Dwyer, were killed when a tree fell in front of their vehicle and caused them to crash.
Both were in their 30s, and both were fathers to young children.
They were the first of the 33 people killed in bushfires that summer.
At least 13 were 'holding the hose', with nine firefighters killed on duty and four just trying to defend their homes.
“You know if it had been John Howard, Tony Abbott, even Bob Hawke probably, even Julia Gillard, they wouldn't have done that. It's like, just turn your back on 'em, I'm going on holiday, I'm going to Hawaii while the country's burnin'. You just don't run out on the country like that. Not as a political leader. Leader of the country supposedly, you just don't do that.”
For those living in the affected areas, the decision to holiday while Australia burned was emblematic of what many felt was inconsistent and short-lived support from politicians.
So when Scott Morrison later decided to visit Cobargo, where hundreds of homes were lost and the main street was burnt down, some say he got the welcome he deserved.
VOICE 1:"How about the money for our forgotten corner of New South Wales Mr Prime Minister? How come we only had four trucks to defend our town? Cause our town doesn't have a lot of money but we have hearts of gold Mr Prime Minister."
VOICE 2: "It's really ride mate it really is. Nah you're an idiot mate."
VOICE 3: " You won't be getting any votes down here mate, no one votes Liberal around here mate. Nobody! No Liberal votes, you are out son, you are out!"
VOICE 1: "What about the people who are dead now Mr Prime Minister? What about the people who have nowhere to live?"
VOICE 3: "You're not welcome you f***wit!”
That visit made headlines as when Mr Morrison was being heckled by angry residents, he approached a young pregnant woman, reaching out and grabbing her hand.
SCOTT MORRISON: "How are you?"
LOCAL: "I'm only shaking your hand if we get more funding for the RFS, so many people have lost their homes. We need more help.”
As the young woman tells the Prime Minister the town needs more help, the video shows Mr Morrison letting go of her hand and walking away, quite literally turning his back as a local councillor shushes her and pulls her aside.
It wasn't a good look for the Prime Minister, but Debra Summers, a local civil celebrant and the Vice-President of the Cobargo Community Bushfire Recovery Fund, says what happened that day wasn't all bad.
“We did identify quickly early on with some of the main groups that his sort of Ill-advised, drop into town, empty handed, wanting to claim a bit of spotlight was a bit of a gift because it did put us in the world, the global spotlight. So we were able to put it out there and let people know that we are in need. And so things like the fund, we attracted some funding from overseas and we really wanted to let government and local agencies and things know that this is real, this is what's happening here. And you've got the global eyes on you, not just national eyes. We've got people contacting us all the time, so you better support us.”
Debra Summers and her family have lived in Cobargo for almost 22 years now.
As a civil celebrant, Debra knows the community, she's been with many of them on some of the most important days of their lives.
When the fires came through, she knew she had the skills and connections to work with people in the recovery efforts.
“I love this little village. I'm deeply, deeply connected to it and I've been really fully embraced into it. You get the old adage with little country towns that you've got to have a grandma buried up in the cemetery and whatever. Well, I've done heaps of funerals up in the cemetery and other ceremonies. So I've become connected and brought into the community family with trust and respect and through being involved in volunteer stuff. So it comes from a place of just being deeply connected to this place, wanting to see it flourish again, living and holding the stories of grief and trauma that have happened since the fires through my work and also my community connection.”
As Chris said, everyone lost something that summer.
Jamie Robinson, who lost his house near Cobargo just weeks after finishing the build, says amongst all the loss, a lot of people gained perspective on what really mattered to them.
“And it was pretty cool here for the first while after the fire. So there was a lot of connection with community and I witnessed a lot of people that beforehand probably didn't really talk to each other, were mending fences that were imaginary anyway when you look back at the grand scheme of it. And then to move on in a more homogeneous state for a community to be in, but all communities at some point and there's always pockets of secular, the groups and all that sort of thing, which is all cool. But I don't know, I guess as a community who has been such through, well you can only deem it as magnanimous and terrible and events. We do have that common element there and not all of us have handled that situation the same way. And I guess the best that we can do as people is offer that compassion.”
Back in Mallacoota, people in the community say they're not sure the government has learnt much from what went wrong that year.
Documentary makers Mary O'Malley and Larry Gray spent a lot of time with the community after the fires, working to document the story of Mallacoota and the people who live there.
“I think communities have learned a lot. I don't think governments have sadly, well, some aspects of government, like local council, of course. I think there's some really, really good people at that local level. But the further away it gets from the communities, the worst it is. It's. But I think people have learned, I've learned an awful lot.”
After the fires, community members felt that many of their needs weren't being met by government support or programs, so they decided to take it into their own hands.
Larry, who grew up in Mallacoota, says being such a remote community, the place has a history of handling things on its own.
“There was no bitumen road. It was just dirt roads. There was people used to handle their own law. There was no police in town. There was not much crime bit, but mostly it was handled by the locals.”
After a few meetings, a proposal was presented to locals, to form the Mallacoota and District Recovery Association, or MADRA.
It got overwhelming support.
With oversight from the Victorian Electoral Commission, the committee, the first of its kind in Victoria, held elections and got to work.
Carol Hopkins, President of MADRA, says there has been a lot of learning done, but that the people with the power to fix things aren't always driving the change.
She says a lot was also learned after the Black Saturday fires in 2009, but that it's not helpful if no one is listening.
“But I think that what I would say is yes, we have learned, and yes, a lot of effort has gone into collecting learnings, but sometimes that stops prior to the point of being able to actually change the things that drive what's needed. And so yes, the learning has been collected and gathered and produced and published and thought about in great detail actually. But that doesn't necessarily change the structures that drive things. And that's probably why the learnings from 2009 and the learnings from 2019 essentially remained the same. So if you took identifying stuff out of a whole set of those documents, I'm not sure that you could tell which year you're reading the learnings from.”
For many in more regional communities, the sheer distance from the cities where state and federal governments are based means people often feel like their needs as a group aren't fully understood by politicians.
Before the creation of MADRA, Carol says the community didn't always feel heard, so when the fire hit, their specific needs weren't always considered when decisions about disaster recovery were made.
“I think that we have a better understanding of ourselves as a community. We have a sort of collective about why we live here, what we love about living here, what that actually means, what it means that we do want and what it means that we don't want. And I think that all of that, and we really did pull together brilliantly as a community to support each other and to advocate for ourselves and to be clear about what we wanted and get that written into a recovery plan and give people a voice about what was in the recovery plan. And we're still trying to implement the recovery plan. So yes, it's been very successful. Have we achieved all our goals? Well, no, not with a rebuild rate of 30%.”
A rebuild rate of 30 per cent.
That means that of the 123 houses that burnt down in Mallacoota, only around 35 have been rebuilt, with some, after all this time, only just starting to build their home.
Carol says while you'd think after five years, more would have been done, people just don't understand how long it takes, and how many barriers there are.
“For example, some people's blocks of land once they'd been burned, were then reclassified as flame zone or bushfire alert level 40, which means that all of a sudden what they can rebuild is vastly different. The budget for rebuilding is enormously difficult, and that became enormously difficult with covid and all the things that have happened in the world anyway. Plus, for us, you add on remoteness, we don't lost 123 homes. So that's a lot of the available housing in a town of a thousand permanent residents. And that means there's not accommodation for workers to come to town. There's not accommodation for staff, for new people to come and do rebuilding tasks and other stuff like that. So I guess they're the wicked problems. And every solution presents more problems in a lot of ways. So it's tricky and it's difficult and slow.”
Not many people would describe Mallacoota as lucky, but Carol did.
She says while a lot of infrastructure was lost, losing the main street, like Cobargo did, would have made it a whole lot worse.
“The rebuild rate is minuscule. We know that a very, very few, and I think the numbers around 50 houses have been rebuilt out of that stock. There are lots of reasons for that. We've got to remember the people who didn't want to go back, the people who decided to leave the area, then the people who thought the insurance issues were too great and they didn't want to hassle anymore. And then there's the lady who last week moved into her home finally after being burned out, which I think is incredible. And that's a single woman my age. So she's in her seventies, and she's finally moved into, her house isn't finished, but she got a bit sick of it, so she moved in.”
Mick Brosnan is in charge of housing and homelessness at the Social Justice Advocates of the Sapphire Coast.
He says there were many reasons for people not being back in their homes yet.
While some moved away from the area completely, others simply can't afford to rebuild, and if they could, they can't afford the increased insurance premiums.
Mick says another thing is the emotional difficulty of getting the support.
“One of the dilemmas is that you have a fire or something like that disaster. And the people have to tell their story to so many people. Even in the same hall, they have to go to Red Cross, then they have to go to council, then they have to, and they repeat the story just so often. That's quite hard and harrowing and it's something on the Disaster Relief fund we're trying to avoid. We're trying to get, so that one group may be Red Cross can interview people and they're given the right over the privacy to disseminate the information that's required to the other organizations so people don't have to go through that trauma all the time.”
Jack Gray is the youth convener for the Social Justice Advocates, at just 21, he's worked with the group for around seven years.
He says the trauma of the fires was generational.
“Oftentimes the young people aren't the most traumatised from this. It was the parents, it was the grandparents, it was the family friends, it was your mates' parents.”
He says while younger people weren't always hit the hardest initially, seeing the pain their parents and mentors were going through often passed over to them.
“There's a lot of trauma related to it and a lot of even generational trauma. There was a lot of young people that saw how affected their parents might've been, or grandparents or anything like that, or community members, because in small towns like this, the community strength is really, really big. So a lot of young people were got secondhand trauma from that. Even a lot of people came back from the cities and things like that and saw the devastation or saw the aftermath on the family's mental health, and that impacted them from that as well.”
For those still living in Cobargo, but not yet in their houses, the options are limited.
“And when the fires came, all the focus then tended to be on trying to help people get back onto their properties because people were totally lost. They'd moved to motels, they'd moved to these recovery centers. The trauma was palpable and the aim was to try and get people back onto their properties. So we've reconfigured our caravan program to get caravans out to properties so they could live in caravans. And to that end, in about two years, we put about 85 caravans out onto properties, remembering that there are about 464 houses lost, approx.”
Mick and Jack, both still working tirelessly to get people back into secure accommodation, say without a steady place to live, it's difficult to heal the trauma of what happened.
“That's the greatest impact you can have the physical, but the mental aspect, if we smell smoke again this year, it's going to really cause crisis for a lot of people. Anxiety beyond belief. Remember this place was red and black and red and for weeks smoke was impacting people for months. Months. So yeah, if you meet people now you've met Jamie. It is right here, the front of the brain still for many people, and it's just in the background for so many.”
Jamie still lives in one of those caravans donated by the Social Justice Advocates.
He knows it isn't the most ideal situation to be in, but as he rebuilds his home, he also says things could be a lot worse for him.
“ I'm so very glad to be able to have a caravan over there and a living pod, which is serves in an emergency situation, but at the moment that's still providing shower, cooking, facilities, refrigeration, those sort of things, which is just bloody awesome. But because it is such a, I'm not sure it's a slap dash accommodation, I guess I could say that it still at times leaves you in that position of fight or flight as opposed to being nice and serene and secure and feeling safe in this space. You two are in here, it's an environment that is safe and conducive to being better within. But I still consider myself one of the lucky ones to effectively still have secure accommodation whilst working on something. Well, and I guess it's only, in my opinion, the place I'm working on at the moment, it's not half bad.”
The view from Jamie's property, the view where five years ago he saw flames fast approaching, is a sufficient example of why, after everything Cobargo went through, he, and anyone really, would choose to live in a place like this.
Another reason, he says, is the strength of the community.
“No, we are in an indomitable community, we just need to be aware of it. Yeah, that's what I see with this community and potentially all smaller communities or communities that go through such things like these fires that were bigger than their personal things. And I think that's been a big grounding element for quite a few people is that this is bigger than them. It was bigger than the community.”
It takes a certain type of person to take charge when disaster strikes, in cities or larger communities, that person is usually already in a leadership role of some sort.
In Cobargo, while so many people were playing a role in the recovery and relief efforts, a few people stepped forward to make sure the work was maintained.
Chris Walters was one of those people.
“So there were many people at that point helping out. But after a week or a couple of weeks, people had to go back to their own lives. They had to go back to their own properties and they had to get back to their own lives. And another lady and myself who had been helping out said to each other, well, this whole thing needs some coordination and we need to make sure that this continues. So we kind of looked at each other and went, yep, we can do that. So that's what we did. So that's how the Bushfire Relief Centre, as it became known, started with just my colleague and I sort of saying, well, somebody needs to do it, and we're the last men standing and we've got the skills and we've got the time so we can do it.”
The centre, which was opened in the immediate aftermath of the fires, was only closed earlier this year.
“And there are still people who need help. They need psychological help, they need financial help that will go on for some time. All the studies tell us that when there's a natural disaster, it takes about 10 years for the community and for some people to recover. And some people, of course never do recover. But yeah, it's a very long-term process. And we're only about halfway through now. Yeah. But there's been progress. I mean, from the day that the fires hit when everybody was walking around, they'll just totally shell-shocked to now. And it's evidenced by the fact that I asked a couple of people if they would come and talk to you, and they said, no, we're fine. It's in the past, we're moving on. So that's really positive.”
For people like Carol in Mallacoota, the ability for locals to have a greater say in how things are managed makes a huge difference.
While she wouldn't change the way they've handled it, she says more consistent support is needed to keep organisations like MADRA doing what they do.
“I don't think as a town we would ever do it differently. If we had to do it again, there's no way we would be happy to let our destiny be imposed upon us by state or federal governments or somebody, whoever else from wherever else. And it's also exhausting. So we've had huge volunteer participation. I think we've got a very, very high volunteer participation rate in this town, but we are certainly burning out now.”
Most of the people SBS spoke to in Mallacoota and Cobargo say they have no doubt this will happen again, many said they think it will happen soon.
With 2024 now confirmed as the world's hottest year on record, some reports say insurance premiums and building standards are only going to get more expensive as natural disasters increase both in frequency and severity.
In the next episode, we look at how communities hit by the fires are thinking about the future, and what they say needs to be done differently the next time fire comes.
