Victorian bushfires remembered: Resilience in recovery

Editorial: Jesse Wray-McCann and Clare O’Donnell

Photography: Jesse Wray-McCann and supplied

Hundreds, including Sen Const Taylor, huddled together on that frightening New Year’s Eve in 2019, having been forced down to the water, and even on to boats, as the firestorm surrounded them and ravaged its way through the East Gippsland town.

Now, as Sen Const Taylor walks along the wooden planks of the wharf, it’s a very different scene on a calm day with very few people around.

But someone catches her eye.

She approaches a woman she knows well, silently sitting on the edge of the wharf and looking out at Mallacoota Inlet.

As soon as Sen Const Taylor asks if she is OK, the woman begins to break down.

Sen Const Taylor comforts the woman, who, even months on from the fires, is still haunted by what she went through.

The poignant moment is captured on the front cover of this magazine.

The woman's story is just one of many of people dealing with the troubling mental scars that remain after the fires in East Gippsland and Victoria’s north east.

Sen Const Taylor recalls everyone in the town enduring more than 24 hours of distress, not knowing exactly when or if the unpredictable fire might come upon them.

On the morning of 31 December 2019, after hundreds of people had already spent a sleepless night down on the wharf, the sky went black as smoke blocked out the sun.

It then turned an ominous red as the fires bore down on the town, which had been cut off from the rest of the world.

That’s when Sen Const Taylor heard a chilling call over the police radio for all officers in the area to get to their safe places.

“I put myself down at the wharf,” Sen Const Taylor said.

“I remember the embers because they were burning holes in our blankets.

“I was sitting in the edge of the water and I had my sister and my husband and my friends near me, and I went, ‘OK, there’s going to be a moment there when we’re going to have to just jump into the water’.”

Further around the foreshore, a group of people were forced to dig trenches, lay down and press their faces into the sand to stay safe from the flames.

“I can’t imagine what it would have been like to be stuck there,” Sen Const Taylor said.

“I still think it’s going to be a very long time before we get back to anywhere close to what we were.

“The mental health of people is still too raw.”

Compounding the mental recovery process has been the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

In each town affected by the bushfires, people speak of how the pandemic and its restrictions have made it difficult to come together as a community for any kind of cathartic debrief.

Corryong Sergeant Liam McMahon said their little town in Victoria’s north east had unfortunately experienced a small number of suicides following the fires.

“We’ve been really hampered by the COVID-19 restrictions and it has delayed a lot of the healing that has needed to happen,” Sgt McMahon said.

“After the suicides, we formed some committees pretty quickly with Bushfire Recovery Victoria (BRV) to look at the preventative side of things, as well as getting welfare services in to help.

“There have been important little community events start to take place and, in about 12 months down the track, we’ll be doing a lot better.

“There is a lot of hope and lot of resilience.”

BRV’s constant presence in each fire-hit community – alongside other charitable organisations and benevolent businesses – has provided crucial practical, financial and psychological services and support.

In Mallacoota, cranes installing modular homes to replace people’s destroyed houses were a daily occurrence over the recent summer months.

Police, too, have played an important role in the recovery of their communities.

In Buchan, local pub owner Greg Brick has hailed the small town’s lone police officer, Leading Senior Constable Ray Moreland, as part of the glue that has kept the community together.

“Ray has a lot of empathy. He knows everyone,” Mr Brick said.

“When you're the local policeman, they’ve got to become the natural leader in town.

“We had some people go to water after the fires and Ray was magnificent.

“It’s not about the usual police work they do, then. It’s a different type of police work.”

Mr Brick even jokes about putting Ldg Sen Const Moreland on the pub’s payroll, such has been the importance of the officer’s listening ear with patrons.

In Cann River, during the days after fires surrounded the small town, the simple act of police from Melbourne playing footy with local kids helped strengthen the sense of community and kickstart the recovery process.

Orbost Sergeant Jo Geddes made the most of her unique dual position as a part-time police officer and part-time dairy farmer to coordinate the delivery of cattle feed to desperate farmers.

“We had a lot of dealings with very emotional older men who normally would be stoic people and wouldn’t be upset by much, but they were absolutely destroyed,” Sgt Geddes said.

“They’re quite emotionally attached to their animals. They want the best for them and to not be able to feed them was quite a stressor at the time.”

Back in Mallacoota, Sen Const Taylor not only thinks back on the events of that New Year’s Eve, she also looks ahead optimistically at signs of the town’s recovery.

One of her most cherished parts of Mallacoota now is a field of xanthorrhoea plants – also known as grass trees – which are in full bloom beside the road out of town.

“They only flower after a fire and they’re amazing,” she said.

“I don’t think we’ll ever see that again in our lifetime.”

For Sen Const Taylor, the grass trees perhaps serve as a symbol for the once-in-a-lifetime display of strength from the people of her town.

“I love this community because they’re so resilient,” she said.

“A lot of people are still struggling with things, but we banded together, we looked after each other and it was a fantastic feeling post-fire that everyone was helping each other get through.

“I love the place, I love the community policing and I’ll be here until I die.”

Images From the ashes 01 Xanthorrhoea plants have sprouted up around Mallacoota following the fires. 02 Sen Const Judy Taylor and the rest of Mallacoota have shown great resilience following the fires. 03 Orbost sergeants Andrea Craigie and Jo Geddes survey the recovery of the fire-affected foreshore at Cape Conran. 04 Sen Const Taylor and her family sheltered at the water's edge as the flames descended on Mallacoota.