Award honours rise from ashes

DUNALLEY has been named as “a little town that can” with its school a finalist in the National Resilient Australia Awards to be announced on Thursday.

Dunalley was devastated by bushfire in 2013.

Its police station, bakery and the Dunalley Primary School were all destroyed along with about 80 other homes and buildings.

The community banded together and just 40 days after the emergency, a fully functioning temporary school was up and running, allowing 120 students and their teachers to be back in class only two days after the scheduled start of the 2013 school year.

The Dunalley school is one of three short-listed for the National School Award in the 2017 awards.

In March this year, four years after the school was reduced to rubble, a new $6 million facility was opened.

Dunalley Primary School Principal Susan Jeffery said that while the school population declined in the aftermath of the bushfires, it was now rebuilding and about 100 pupils were enrolled for the 2014 year.

“Resilience is the word that sums up this community. Since the bushfires people have pulled together in an amazing way,” Ms Jeffrey said.

“There is a real sense of positivity among the school community and the broader community as we come to the end of the first year in the new school.”

The Lachlan community is in the running for the National Photography Award with an image which captures a hands-on community activity led by the local fire brigade.

The winners of the awards will be announced in Sydney on November 23.