Mallacoota after the bushfire horror: 'All you can do is help now'

Extract from The Guardian

Main image: Firefighters at Mallacoota’s main wharf. Locals are hopeful the town will eventually go back to being the way it’s always been. Photograph: Rachel Mounsey/The Guardian

The navy rescued thousands of holidaymakers from the tiny Victorian coastal town. Now attention is turning to those who stayed
by Luke Henriques-Gomes

Thu 9 Jan 2020 15.19 AEDT Last modified on Thu 9 Jan 2020 16.41 AEDT

On New Year’s Eve, rumours spread that the Mallacoota golf club was among the buildings that had burnt down. In fact, the rough was charred but some holes were playable and the clubhouse was spared. This week, two men turned up wanting to get on the course.
“They came and asked and we said we couldn’t promise it was safe,” says the golf club’s Kerri Warren. “They said, ‘We’re just happy to go and hit a ball. There’s not much to do with the roads closed and the power out.’”
On New Year’s Eve, the world watched in horror as thousands of holidaymakers sheltered on the foreshore of the tiny Victorian coastal town. In dramatic scenes captured on smartphones and seen around the world, holidaymakers were told to get in the water if the raging fires got too close.
About 100 homes were destroyed in the end, according to estimates, but a wind change spared the centre of town itself. Now attention is turning to those who have stayed.

“Early on, I was a bit lost actually, I didn’t know what to do,” says Christy Bryar, who was taking refuge at the wharf when the fires came. “I’ve registered to volunteer, that way whenever anything is needed I get a phone call.”

That has meant everything from helping at the food bank to the animal hospital.
“Just extra hands,” says Bryar, who is an architect. “I don’t have the specialist skills at the moment but in the future I’ll be more help.”
Bryar lives on a 10-hectare (26-acre) property at Gipsy Point, a tiny hamlet surrounded by national parks about 15 minutes’ drive from Mallacoota.

After fire burnt through the bush. Photographer Rachel Mounsey feels things have quietened down and people are noticing the smaller things now. Photograph: Rachel Mounsey/The Guardian

Her home was destroyed in the fires that swept through East Gippsland on New Year’s Eve. Lost too was one of two 30-year-old orchards on their property. When she made it back there this week, most of the animals were gone and the land now looks “monochromatic”.
Bryar’s partner, David, is professional firefighter but is recovering from a broken collarbone and a broken foot and has not been cleared to work.
While Bryar was at Mallacoota, David went with the Country Fire Authority to Gipsy Point. “There were only two homes lost in Gipsy Point, and no lives lost, so I think he did a very good job,” she says. “But he’s feeling the weight of not being able to look after our own house.”

Locals and tourists evacuated to the beach at Mallacoota. Most holidaymakers left by air or naval ship, but some have stayed behind. Photograph: Rachel Mounsey/The Guardian

Most of the holidaymakers who were pushed to the foreshore when the fires came have also left, relocated by air or on a massive naval ship that was deployed last week. On Wednesday, the last of the evacuees reached land. But some have stayed.
“You just want to help out,” says Kelly Dubberley, a Ballarat resident who remains at the caravan park with his family. “There’s [thousands] of people evacuated, so that’s [thousands of] people not spending money in the town to get it back on its feet.”
Dubberley, a carpenter, and his wife, Stacey, who is a nurse, have found plenty to do as the recovery operation kicks into gear. When he speaks to Guardian Australia, he is off to help build a koala enclosure for the temporary animal hospital.
The power is still out in town although authorities have been handing out generators and shops in the main street are open. Some locals are coming into the caravan park to have hot showers, Dubberley says.
He is expecting to be locked in for weeks, though the Victorian roads minister, Luke Donnellan, has told ABC radio that he is aiming to reopen the main road much sooner.
Rachel Mounsey is a photographer who lives in Mallacoota. When the threat increased on New Year’s Eve, she was in the the community centre taking photos as children watched Frozen. Those gathered were told: “We’re going into bushfire survival mode.”

A family evacuates to Mallacoota’s hall. Photographer Rachel Mounsey has recalled the moment locals were told: ‘We’re going into bushfire survival mode.’ Photograph: Rachel Mounsey/The Guardian

The atmosphere in Mallacoota is starting to change again.

“I think that everyone has been running a bit on adrenaline,” Mounsey says. “Yesterday I noticed was quieter. The rain came so there was a bit of relief. I feel that people are trying to become more quiet and we’re noticing the smaller things now.”

Bryar is now staying at a friend’s place in Mallacoota. She is keen to stress that although there had been some terrifying moments, “it wasn’t all chaos and panic and armageddon”.
“I could tell when something had come out in the media because I would get this flood of messages from people panicked, from Portugal, or Canada, or the UK,” she says.
She is not downplaying the experience of those who were there. Bryar was on the wharf crouching, face down, sheltering from the embers with a friend, Vanessa, as well as Vanessa’s children and dogs, when the fire front hit.
“The kids were so still,” she says. “Whatever we asked them to do, they just did it straight away.
“We were each under a blanket. I had the two dogs under mine as well. We couldn’t hold them so they were just so brave and just calm.
“There were moments where you think, ‘This might be it’. But we had the kids there, and the dogs, and you knew you just have to keep it together.”

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Mounsey says her house is OK but she has lost a shed with tools, and “the top end of our street has all gone”. Her 12-year-old daughter evacuated on HMAS Choules last week. She has stayed with her camera to document the aftermath.

“I think that the old Mallacoota maybe has gone a little bit as far as the aesthetic goes,” she says. “It’s got a very special character this place. But I just think that looking ahead … it will just go back to back to the way it’s always been. We love this place. It’s a little secret paradise.”
Mounsey thinks that most locals will “probably stay here and get on with it”.
Dubberley and his family are anxious to get home but happy with their decision to wait it out. Last week the family spotted a young woman at the pub wearing damaged jeans.

Children wait at Mallacoota airport to be evacuated. On New Year’s Eve, the world watched as thousands of holidaymakers sheltered from fires on the beach. Photograph: Rachel Mounsey/The Guardian

“I was listening in on the conversation,” Dubberley says. “She’d actually had to borrow the pants of one of the waiters at the pub because she’d lost everything.

“I was talking about it to some of my friends on Facebook and one in New Zealand said it just tore her heart. She sent through $250 and we’re going to catch up with her today and pass on the donation.”
There’s more to do. “Basically, all you can do is help now,” he says. “We’ve got a mate who’s a commercial fisherman. We started with 25 pallets of goods, and now it’s turned into 250 pallets. The family with the boat, they’ve flown to Adelaide to pick up the boat, and now it’s on the way from Adelaide.”Bryar got back to her property this week. There was some good news: “Tina Turner” was OK.
“We lost some animals but we have two chooks that survived,” she says. “And they are laying eggs, which is extraordinary.
“We have one that we call Tina Turner, if you can imagine Tina Turner in Mad Max 3. She’s such a battler and she’s still here. Everything around them is burnt.

“They were found alive in one of the apple trees. I can’t even imagine how they managed to do that.”