‘It just can’t be replaced’: Mallacoota’s black summer grief is still fresh after five years

Table of Contents

Don Ashby

Predictably, he thinks he'd probably spend more time at home. Actually, he probably wouldn't leave at all. Last year, he headed across town to support his mates he assumed would be in the firing line, but it turns out, they got through the bushfire without major issues, only for his own place to go up in flames. He's decided that this time, he'd stay on his own side of town, where the bush is close by and he can lend a hand to those around him.

The day after the house burnt to the ground, he set up the relief centre at the local community hall. Would he do that again? Maybe... but where? Even after five years, the hall is still halfway through renovations and the rooms are a bit on the small side. Where would everyone go? And the tourists? There seem to be heaps of them around this time of year. The cars, caravans, boats bumper-to-bumper on the one road leading out of town are burned into his memory.

Would we be needing to redo all evacuation procedures by boat and air?

And once the smoke cleared, the psychologists arrived, didn't they? Some people thought it was too soon, that it might've helped others, but not him. That was his grief deal, and his community were just doing what needed to be done.

He wrote his way through the book about recovery, penning poems, “although not for therapy”. Just honest words written throughout his journeys – recovery, picking up the pieces, rebuilding, trying again. He kept writing until finally, he had a book: When The Fire Comes By, with Yolande Oakley's pictures.

Natalie Handsjuk

“When my house went up in flames, I was in absolute shock, but I consoled myself with the fact that those things were just gone. Not a person. It wasn’t the same as losing someone.”

Natalie Handsjuk's daughter, Phoebe, had always wanted a small beachside shack. When she died unexpectedly in 2010 at 24, Natalie built Phoebe's little cottage as a tribute. "When the bushfires tore it to pieces, I was reminded, yet again, that anything I tie myself to can be gone in a flash."

“There's always a way to find something good, no matter how bad things get. I've often found that it's the people who've helped me when I needed them, including those I'd never met before, who make it worthwhile. It's also the strength I've discovered within myself to keep going and to start over – that's what I've found at the end of the day. And it's always there if I look for it.”

“I had to create something in the space that was left behind.”

I've got a new place in Phoenix Cottage which is a ripper! It's taken me a fair bit of effort to get it set up, and during that time I've moved on and left my old life behind.

Bidgee's Cottage is for sale. Handsjuk has moved back to a cherished place from her childhood in the Darling Range highlands, where she's begun a fresh chapter living on her grandmother's property.

“Mallacoota will always stay in my heart as my home. I'm really looking forward to going back and appreciating its natural beauty and catching up with me good mates there.”

Justin Brady

Justin Brady was going alright. He didn't think he was too badly affected. Then the lockdowns came in.

During COVID-19, a few of those who had lost their homes moved into the caravan park down near the town's waterfront. It was right in the middle of midwinter, when the ocean swells were rolling in and rough, making them a constant, fiery presence in his sleep.

“It knocked me out because I'd woken up from a good sleep thinking, 'What's that loud noise? Is it a fire?' I would've been really anxious.”

One morning after one of those restless nights, he ran into a couple of older women at the lookout on the other side of the park. And although it was lockdown, they chatted for a bit. That became a daily morning ritual. He'd amble up to the lookout, a cuppa in one hand and his mandolin in the other. "I'd play a bit of music for them and we'd have a chuckle and a yarn. It was probably a way of me trying to tap into some sort of normality."

He heard about a community disaster trauma session conducted by eating disorders specialist Dr Robert Gordon, who reckoned it was a real ripper.

“Grief was a big part of that conversation and it really resonated with me. He helped me get a handle on what happens after a crisis like a bushfire. It helped me make sense of what was going on in my head and where it was headed.”

Two days out from New Year's Eve, Brady is having a butcher's in the rough-around-the-edges camp kitchen of his fibro block.

The bush has made a good recovery given the gloomy landscape he came back to five years ago. “Back then there was no sound of the wind rustling through the trees, no birds singing, there was nothing … It was as though an eerie atmosphere hung in the air,” he says.

Over time the wildlife started returning too. First it was the lyrebirds, then the koalas, then goannas.

Fair dinkum, five years on and the JB Shack's still not been rebuilt. "That'll happen," he says. "I got to a point where I just had to let go of rushing things."

Gary Proctor

It's when everything's done that you start thinkin' about how ya go from bein' in the midst of all the action, to just sittin' there at night, wonderin' about what's been and gone.

Gary Proctor recalls his life before the fire, almost three decades spent living among the Nngaanyatjarra people of the Western Desert.

He reckons about 20 years' worth of artworks and 150 years' worth of family snaps went up in flames. But they weren't nothing at all. Even reduced to ash and nothing else, there was still something present, materially different but the vessel of what remained. They held memories of the past, just in a different form.

He recalls the day he got down on his hands and knees in a heap of cinders, brush in one hand, tin in the other, sweeping as he went along. It wasn't to find things, but to give time for whatever had gone down to sort itself out. It was then, moving forward through the cinders, leaving the past's trail behind him to iron out, that he came across her, his small bronze statue of Guanyin, the Chinese figure of loving kindness. He grins in amazement at the memory. She was only around 10cm high and it was a fair dinkum wonder she'd made it through the fire. Proof, he says, that if you look for lucky breaks you'll often find 'em – but you need to keep looking.

Christy Bryar

Over the years following the fires, Christy Bryar spent New Year's Eve surrounded by mates at her Gipsy Point place. At midnight she'd generally celebrate the occasion with a toast and a excited promise that next year's dancefloor would be in the new house.

This year she decided to mark it quietly with no promises. "I couldn't face saying, 'I'm going to be in my house next year' again. Without a house it's hard to move on. The bushfires continue to be part of our daily life. Everything around us is a reminder and we feel like we're stuck in limbo. Five years on, we're still having the same talk every day about the fires and having to explain every day why we're not in our house yet. People move on at different rates but until we've got a home we can't put the fires behind us."

Brooke Robinson

Brooke Robinson's new house still smells brand new, looks brand new and feels brand new. "It doesn't feel like home properly. It's not the actual house I walked out of on the day, it just doesn't have that same atmosphere."

Even before the embers had started falling, Robinson had a feeling. “We knew the fire was going to be massive because it was as dry as a bone. And we'd been waiting and waiting for it to swing its way for a couple of years,” she says. She grabbed what people told her to grab – “your photos and insurance papers” – chucked them in the ute's tray and headed to the dock. Halfway down Betka Road, when the haze from the smoke was setting in, she thought about turning back. “But … you can’t take the lot,” she told herself and kept going. “We just had to get onto the lake.”

A few weeks after the fires, sifting through the rubble, she found an old bracelet. She chucked it in the back of the ute, on top of the other gear. It's been there ever since. “I chucked it on the pile and thought, ‘I'll sort that out later’.

“I just headed straight back to work – I had to muster up some cash, I had to build a house. Zac was 16, I had to put a roof over our heads.” They've relocated four times over the past five years. Now she sometimes finds herself sitting in her ute, with her stuff, unable to work out where she's supposed to be.

Over Christmas she finally got round to unpacking the car. So far she’s taken out a few things, one of which is a framed photo board. But the most significant photo is on her phone, taken on the day she bought the house. Standing in front of the old house, beaming with pride, her arms are wrapped around her young blokes, Zac and Tyson. "That was 14 years back. I was a solo mum, working two jobs: gutting fish at the abalone coop and pouring pints at the pub."

Geez, I put in so much effort and that's why it's been a real struggle to let go.

“People may believe you've moved on, but it never really goes away. You need to be surrounded by family and cherished memories, like your kids' first handprints, their baby labels, their baby albums. That's what makes a house a home. And when that's all taken away, it just can't be easily replaced – it's not as straightforward as that.”