Community spirit emerges in ashes
Amidst another bushfire emergency, this time in East Gippsland, the Bushfire Recovery Centre at Tonimbuk Hall reopened early last week to support the community ravaged by bushfire in March.
Confronted by images of current harrowing bushfires, for those who faced the same situation in March last year the community hall was reopened early to give residents a chance to see each other and support each other through another trying time.
Tonimbuk residents David and Sue McMahon lost their home in the March bushfires and Sue said seeing the images that she so vividly remembers had devastated her.
“It really makes me sad for the people who have lost their home and will have to go through what we have now,” she said. “Naively, we probably thought we would be all back up and running soon, but here we are 10 months later, still waiting, so it’s just a hard process to go through.”
The McMahons are waiting to rebuild their home, at the moment only being able to rebuild one of the sheds they lost and restore the three kilometres of fencing that was also burnt.
“It’s been a really slow process,” Mrs McMahon said. “Everything has been hard, there hasn’t been an easy moment in the whole time. The recovery takes a long time.”
Despite the timely rebuild and hard times, Mrs McMahon said having the Tonimbuk Recovery Centre and the people in it had been an incredible support not only for her, but many of the residents.
“The upside is, look at us all here, we’re a community now and we all know each other a lot more than what we did before and we support each other a lot more than we did before. The benefits of that are enormous,” she said.
After taking a direct hit during the fires, the Tonimbuk community has continued to rally around each other, which Mrs McMahon said was something that wasn’t occurring before.
“We’ve had community dinners regularly since about September now and that’s a really good way to recover by talking to people who have been through similar things which makes you realise, you’re not on your own in this,” she said.
The Bushfire Recovery Centre located at the Tonimbuk Hall will be open every Monday and Friday between 9am to 4pm, from-yesterday.
Community dinners will continue from 6pm every Wednesday night for those looking for support.