Feature Story Healing country

Celebrity chef Adam Liaw hits the road in his new series Adam Liaw’s Roadtrip for Good to visit areas that were badly affected by the Black Summer bushfires. He tells Danielle McGrane that regional Australia is rebuilding and now is the time to visit.

A dam Liaw is on a mission. The celebrity chef wants to get people travelling around the country, particularly to areas that were hit hard by the Black Summer bushfires, and bring tourism back to these places. “When the pandemic kicked off that wasn’t the first tragedy that hit Australia,” Liaw said.

“We had bushfires before that and we had drought for years and years before that as well, so for regional areas it was really tough.”

The stories told in this series, about real people, may have been lost or forgotten so Liaw made it his business to seek them out. He and his production team ventured into regional areas that had been badly affected by the fires.

“We weren’t sure how we were going to be received – were we going to be shunned for coming from a city into a regional area that’s maybe feeling a little bit safe from the virus for a while? Or were we going to find communities that were absolutely devastated from the fires?” he said.

“We certainly saw the devastation – you could still see homes burnt out, whole huge areas of bushland that had been burnt – but the thing that really surprised me was just how positive the communities were. You could tell they’d lost so much, you’re talking to people who’d lost their livelihood and their homes and they were so positive about things and so grateful to the community that rallied around.”

Liaw was surprised to see how hopeful everyone was and how much the communities worked to rebuild.

“We heard stories of how councils would rush the approval through so people could get a shed onto their property to store their produce, or how the local construction people put all their resources into projects to get things built,” he said. “We heard of people lending displaced people their homes, people were coming to volunteer from other communities to put up fences, it was an enormous community effort.”

Liaw sought out the people in farming and hospitality who had a lot to offer despite the damage the fires had done.

“In the first episode we meet Shane Leahy down in Kangaroo Island,” he said.

“He’s a volunteer firefighter and while he was fighting fires on one side of the island, his house was burning down on the other side of the island.”

The chef also returns to his home in the Adelaide Hills, where he said he saw a lot more regrowth and rebuilding going on in the area compared to the last time he’d been there.

“I remember being in the Adelaide Hills days after the fire had gone through, driving through and just seeing this landscape that had been completely destroyed,” he said. “It looked like a war zone. Now Liaw is seeing hope in these areas and using the produce he collects along the way to whip up some of his extraordinary recipes, proving there’s still so much to love in these regional areas.

“We have fantastic food around Australia so if people are hesitant to travel interstate you can easily travel within your own state,” he said.

“We are coming into the summer holidays and people are deciding where to go. They won’t be flying off to Bali or Thailand for their holidays so it’s going to be really important for people to try and plan holidays around Australia and what better way to do that than to help rejuvenate some struggling communities as well.”

Adam Liaw’s Roadtrip for Good, Wednesday, December 2, 8.30pm, SBS Food