31 December 2019 is a date forever etched in the collective memory of the New South Wales south coast. From across the Victorian border in Mallacoota to Malua Bay, from Cobargo to Conjola, unprecedented bushfires tore through communities during one of the most destructive days in Australian history. Lives were lost, homes razed and townships devastated.
Guardian Australia visited six communities still scarred by the New Year’s Eve bushfires. People spoke of loss and suffering, of compassion and support, of recovery and reconstruction. These are their stories.
‘What stands out is the camaraderie’
June and Richard Tarlinton – dairy farmers, Wandella
The Tarlinton family have been on the land in Wandella, near Cobargo, since 1829. They have been dairy farmers for generations – today, they have 320 jersey cows, which are milked twice daily. Sixty-eight years ago, when Richard Tarlinton was six weeks old, a major fire swept through the area. He has no memory of the event, but locally it served as the reference point for fire danger. Until 31 December 2019.
In the early hours of New Year’s Eve, with the fire raging towards them, the Tarlintons separated – Richard remained to defend the family home, while June and her son-in-law, James, went to the dairy, a kilometre away, to defend it. “It was just a red inferno,” Richard says. The front came right through their 700-acre property. June recalls: “James said to me, ‘I think we’ve made the wrong decision. I think we are going to die.’” Remarkably, they survived – as did the diary, and the family home.
Tragically, June’s 84-year-old father, Ross Rixon – who lived nearby – suffered significant burns while trying to defend his home. “We heard that he woke all of his neighbours,” June says. “He was screaming at them to get up. They all got out to the showground but Dad went back.” Rixon was evacuated to a hospital in Sydney by plane but later had a heart attack and died.
In the months that followed that black day, the Tarlintons have been touched by the response. “We have had tremendous support,” June says. Almost 30 friends and family arrived within weeks to help rebuild damaged farm infrastructure. Due to a month-long power outage, the Tarlintons had to pour away 50,000 litres of milk; Bega Cheese, which they supply, paid for it anyway. “A lot of 2020 is a bit of a blur,” Richard says. “But what stands out is the camaraderie between people and the help that came. The donations of farm equipment and hay have been incredible.”
June says 1 January 2021 cannot come soon enough. “This has been the year that everything that could go wrong has gone wrong,” she says. “Somehow I think passing the anniversary will boost the community.”
‘It was apocalyptic’
Ian Barnes – captain, Malua Bay Rural Fire Brigade
At the back of the Malua Bay Rural Fire Brigade headquarters, 21 pages of Facebook comments are pinned to the wall. “You are all heroes,” reads one. “Forever grateful,” offers another. The 400 or so comments came in response to a post from the brigade’s captain, Ian Barnes, in early January. “We are painfully conscious of the massive loss of property,” he wrote at the time. “To those who are now homeless our Brigade members extend their deepest sympathy.”
Barnes, 68, and with half a century of firefighting experience, nods at the wall. That sentiment has sustained him and his close-knit brigade in the months that followed the traumatic day. “It hasn’t stopped,” he says. “The community has supported us morally and financially.”
The brigade had been prepared. Worried about drought conditions and a high fuel load, Barnes gave a presentation to his fellow volunteers in August 2019. It was titled: “When the big fire comes from the west.” When it did come, on the morning of 31 December, Barnes found himself outgunned.
“It was apocalyptic,” he says. “The most remarkable thing about the whole day was that there was no loss of life.”
Barnes holds up a framed satellite image from 31 December 2019, showing the entire region in flames. “Even a billion dollars of equipment could not stop that,” he says. But his brigade has been reinforced by 10 recruits since January. “We had a pleasing response,” he adds. “Especially from women, which was great – the RFS needs more women.”
One year on, the trauma of that day persists. Covid-19 inhibited collective healing; it was not until September that the brigade could gather for their annual general meeting. The captain says he is keeping a close eye on the mental health of his peers and the wider community. “It will take years for some people to recover,” he says.
‘We were left to fend for ourselves’
Belinda Dorsett and Dean White – Mossy Cafe, Mossy Point
The Mossy Cafe in Mossy Point has been a community institution for decades. With outdoor tables surrounding the eatery, it is a popular spot among locals and tourists in the summer months. But it had never seen summer like the last.
“I woke up at 6am on New Year’s Eve,” says Dean White, the Mossy’s front of house manager. “At 6.03am I got the text to evacuate.” White and the cafe owner/head chef, Belinda Dorsett, rushed to the premises to disconnect the gas, before evacuating to Malua Bay. With minimal updates, the pair assumed the worst. “I thought the cafe was gone,” Dorsett says. Once the fire front has passed, they managed to return to the cafe – and found it still standing.
On New Year’s Day, White and Dorsett cooked up a storm, giving the food out for free to a local community trapped by road closures and stunned by the events of the past 24 hours. “We were cooking in the dark, with smoke all around,” Dorsett says. They pair went through 40kg of chicken, 50kg of beef and 500 eggs. .
Just as the Mossy was resuming ordinary trade, Covid-19 emerged. Despite initial fears, the Mossy has ridden out the remainder of 2020 in good spirits. “To be honest, the Covid-19 period has been really good for us financially,” says Dorsett, who employs almost 50 staff. Many Canberrans temporarily moved to the area, while locals who would typically travel for work remained at home. “The locals really supported us – we had some locals here every day,” she says.
Dorsett contrasts the official response to the pandemic and to the bushfires. “Through Covid-19, I felt there was an abundance of support from the government,” she says. “After the bushfires, we were left to fend for ourselves. I didn’t need much help, but so many people in the community weren’t getting the help they did needed. We felt let down.”
‘Every child had a story’
Rebecca Lester – childcare centre director, Batemans Bay
On a whiteboard in her office at SDN preschool on the outskirts of Batemans Bay, Rebecca Lester has written out a quote from John Dewey, a US philosopher. It reads: “We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.” 2020 has certainly given Lester and her team plenty of fuel for reflection.
Lester first felt the impact of the bushfires in early December last year. The air quality deteriorated so rapidly that her students, 30 three- to five-year-olds, had to spend the final weeks of the term inside. While the New Year’s Eve fire came close to the centre, it emerged without any damage. But Lester and her team have spent the subsequent 12 months helping preschoolers manage the trauma of that day.
“It has been a healing process for everyone,” says Lester, who has 30 years’ experience in early learning. When the centre reopened in late January, her staff focused on listening. “Every child had a story,” Lester says. They then tried to provide opportunities for recovery through play. “We set up a fire truck so they could re-enact the trauma that they had gone through,” she continues. “It could come out in their play and then we could engage with them in those conversations.”
Lester is a proud Wonnarua woman and is passionate about embedding Indigenous learning into the centre’s teaching. This approach has been underscored during the bushfire recovery. “We talked to them a lot about care for country,” she explains. “We discussed how the fires are important in rejuvenating country – we would go for walks, or show photos of the leaves regrowing.”
The healing has taken time. “With our little friends, we noticed – they would hear sirens and become panicky,” she adds. Winter, when local residents began to burn wood for heating, provoked more painful memories. As the year progressed, Lester continued to encourage discussion about that fateful day. “This is a real-life experience that we all went through,” she says. “It was really important that we stopped whatever we were doing to have those conversations.”
‘I was three minutes too late’
Ron and Anna Dunne – Nelligen
The night before New Year’s Eve was a restless one for Ron and Anna Dunne. With their family home nestled in the bush behind Nelligen, near the Clyde River, they were well aware of the fire risk they faced. Having lived on the spot for more than two decades, they had done their homework. “We considered ourselves fairly well-prepared,” Ron says.
As they had planned, Ron, his son and his brother-in-law took shelter by the river as the fire front came through in the late morning. Ron then tried to return to his house, but found the road blocked by a member of the NSW Rural Fire Service. “They wouldn’t let me past,” he recalls. Ron spent almost an hour pleading before finally being allowed through. His house had only just caught alight. “I was three minutes too late,” he continues. Despite trying valiantly, he was unable to douse the flames – and watched his home burn to the ground. “I felt I had let down the team.”
This tragedy would be just the beginning of the Dunnes’ nightmare. A year later, they are still living in a caravan on their property. Construction is yet to begin on their new house. “We were hoping that building would be under way by now,” Ron says. They submitted a development application in September, only to find that the local council and RFS had deemed the property to have a bushfire attack level of “flame zone”, the most extreme rating. According to Ron, the cost difference of building to that rating could exceed $200,000.
The Dunnes asked the RFS to reconsider. “They want us to build a concrete and steel bunker,” says Ron. “For a once-in-a-hundred-year fire.”
When Guardian Australia visits in mid-December, the Dunnes are facing the prospect of still being in the caravan for Christmas in 2021. “That would be the worst-case scenario,” Ron says. But days later, after extensive correspondence with the RFS and having sought assistance from a politician, the Dunnes finally have their application approved – at the original fire rating. “It is a great Christmas present,” he says.
Ron, a butcher in nearby Batehaven, sees the ongoing trauma of the bushfires on a daily basis. “Being a butcher, I speak to a lot of locals,” he says. “There are some really serious mental health issues out there.” He suggests that, since the pandemic, bushfire victims have been neglected. “There is a lot of focus put on one thing in this world at the moment,” he says. “And everything else is getting forgotten about.”
‘We want to leave a legacy’
Zena Armstrong – president, Cobargo Community Bushfire Recovery Fund Inc
“I didn’t expect to be doing this.” So offers Zena Armstrong as she surveys the landscape from the veranda of her property outside Cobargo. It is hard to imagine someone better suited to the task of driving the town’s recovery. Now retired, Armstrong had a long career at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade – working on the postwar reconstruction of Iraq and a number of natural disaster taskforces.
Cobargo and the surrounding region were devastated on New Year’s Eve. The town gained international notoriety when the prime minister, Scott Morrison, was shunned during a visit in the immediate aftermath. Twelve months on Armstrong and fellow community members have raised more than $700,000 for recovery and reconstruction.
“The government talks a lot about resilience – what does that actually mean, for a community like Cobargo?” Armstrong says. Among the projects being explored are a bushfire refuge at the local showgrounds and a Cobargo micro-grid (the town was without electricity for almost two weeks). Resilience and climate adaption go hand-in-hand, although Armstrong skirts around the politics. “We can do what we want to do without having to find ourselves in an argument about climate change,” she says.
Much of the group’s efforts has been dedicated to grant applications in the hope of securing millions of dollars from the NSW and federal governments to rebuild Cobargo’s main street. Armstrong is careful with her criticisms. “Government is engaging as best as it knows how, because there is no blueprint,” she says. “But to do this properly, you need a lot more resources.” A particular gripe is the competitive nature of the grant process – Cobargo is competing with other bushfire-hit towns, and even the local council, for funding.
Armstrong’s own property, to the east of Cobargo, emerged from the summer unscathed. That good fortune has not stopped her from throwing herself into the recovery effort. “This is my home,” she says. “Like so many others I am doing what I can, with the skills I have, to help my community get back on its feet.” She hopes that the fund will have a lasting influence. “We don’t just want to build back,” she concludes. “We want to build something that will leave a legacy.”
