Looking out over the charred remains of Jess and John Bell’s garden in Harcourt, all you can see of their closest neighbours’ houses are brick chimneys, standing among tangles of corrugated iron.
It’s with mixed emotions the young couple, both Country Fire Authority volunteers, describe the “miracle” in which their Victorian weatherboard – a fixer-upper they were “literally about to start renovating” – was saved while many homes on their street were destroyed.
“You’ll see one house burnt and one standing strong, basically untouched. It’s just bizarre,” Jess says. “We were very close to losing our house. We should have lost it. It is just a tinderbox.”
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Harcourt lies about 110km north-west of Melbourne and is best known for apple growing. The town, combined with nearby Ravenswood, lost 54 homes and several businesses on Friday, with the area among the worst hit by bushfires which started on 7 January amid a heatwave that saw temperatures soar past 40C.
Harcourt residents, who were told to evacuate on Friday as the fire spread south from Ravenswood, have been sporadically allowed in to check on their properties. Some have almost nothing left.
The bushfires have burned more than 400,000 hectares (990,000 acres) across Victoria and destroyed more than 700 structures. Twelve major fires were still burning on Wednesday, including the Harcourt fire at Mount Alexander.
On Tuesday, Harcourt was quiet. People were using generators and relying on bottled water. Some were waiting to meet insurance assessors to quantify the damage. Those who could go inside, had done so.
Dark channels of burnt trees have been cut into the landscape, as though rivers of fire had run through the town. At one house, burnt to the ground, socks left hanging on the washing line gave a sense of how quickly people were forced to leave.
People spoke of the “randomness” of the fire – that its erratic nature made it very difficult to fight and the indiscriminate way in which it destroyed some homes and not others.
Two doors up from the Bell’s place on Coolstore Road, a brick veneer house that belonged to veteran CFA members was destroyed.
“They raised their kids in that house and [it’s] rubble,” John says. “I was expecting my place to be on the ground, but ours is fully standing and the guy sitting next to me, his house is on the ground.”
Community comes together
As locals take stock, a massive community-led recovery effort is under way across the wider Castlemaine area and in Harcourt itself, where the miniature railway has been transformed into a relief centre.
“It started out just as a small barbecue for people to gather and it’s turned into quite an incredible operation,” Remy Sowman, a Harcourt resident, says.
“It’s been the community coming together, first and foremost; giving each other hugs and connecting and sharing stories, and then a place for resources to come in.”
He owns the Coolstore cafe with his wife, Bonnie, which they opened only 15 months ago. It was completely destroyed. Their house, a street away, is safe.
Outside the ashen remains of their cafe, remnants of the glass windows crunch underfoot.
Bonnie says it still doesn’t feel real.
The couple, who’ve lived in Harcourt for four years, say they love the community and are planning to reopen the cafe.
“It really was an awesome, special little place and we’re keen to rebuild it in that sense,” Remy says.
The Sowmans say they’ve been overwhelmed by people’s generosity and offers to help.
The cool store cooperative on Coolstore Road was completely destroyed, and walking past the massive, warped structure, which provided essential storage for about 85 customers, feels surreal.
From the road, the glint of thousands of wine bottles is visible amid the stacks of burnt pallets.
Jacqueline Brodie-Hanns, who co-owns the Shedshaker Brewing Company in Castlemaine, lost 90% of her stock and says many local brewers, winemakers and fruit growers have been terribly affected.
“It’s just bigger than anyone imagines,” she says. “People are battered. There are a number of winemakers who will not come back from this.”
Locals have rallied behind the affected businesses. A quickly organised fundraiser at Boomtown bar in Castlemaine raised more than $130,000. Thomas Cuming, who works at Boomtown, says the response was overwhelming.
“We had a quiet little soft moment to take in how wonderful this town is,” he says.
Businesses donated “anything they could” including gift vouchers, paintings, sculptures and furniture. Barb Stanley, who runs nearby Ice-cream Republic and had to evacuate her home last Friday, donated about 450 scoops. “This town’s amazing,” she says.
The local CFA captain, Andrew Wilson, was one of the first to attend the bushfire when it started in Foggarty’s Gap Road on Friday.
Wilson, who has lived in Harcourt his whole life and served as a volunteer firefighter for 44 years, reckons this fire was one of the most intense he’d ever fought. It “ran harder” than the one he battled on black Saturday in 2009 and was “up there” with the black summer fires in New South Wales he worked on with the Rural Fire Service.
“Just the erratic-ness of it, and then when it’s actually impacted a town, you’ve got a higher density of houses that have to ... be defended,” he says.
“It’s pretty hard. We’ve had three members of ours who’ve lost their houses. Another guy’s lost his business. Everyone knows someone.”
