One year ago today, Tylden's Christine Taylor had to be rescued by her SES teammates from her home after heavy winds and rain swept through the region, damaging her house.
Overnight into June 10, 120 kilometre per hour winds and rain lashed the Macedon Ranges, sending roofs flying from buildings, trees crashing down onto cars and leaving homes without power for days.
A year on, locals are still waiting for their houses to be fixed, some of those the very people who volunteered with the region's emergency services to ensure other members of their communities were okay in the aftermath.
Ms Taylor is still fighting her insurer to have her house repaired.
"It was very traumatic, to say the least, because I lost two-thirds of the roof of my house and [it] is still not fixed to this point," she said.
Initial repairs by a builder contracted by the insurer to make Ms Taylor's house safe after the storms failed to prevent more damage from taking place, leaving her home, as she described it, "uninhabitable".
"The building company they appointed didn't get the make safe repairs done. Instead of just having the roofs gone, I ended up with massive water damage inside the house as well, which has continued.
"And every time it rains, more water penetrates through the tarping that failed right from the beginning of the make safe and is still continuing to fail."
A 31-year veteran of the state's volunteer emergency service, Ms Taylor is now the controller of the Woodend SES.
She spent weeks after the storms living with family members on the other side of Victoria's COVID-19 border in metropolitan Melbourne.
Finance watchdog involved in settling claims
The Australian Financial Complaints Authority said as of May 30, it had received 89 complaints in relation to the June 9 storms in Victoria and where complaints were upheld, the authority had so far ordered firms to pay $274,000.
The top three issues were denial of a claim because of a policy exclusion or condition; delay in claim handling; and disputes over the amount of the claim.
The Insurance Council of Australia said a second storm event in October last year made matters worse and that access to properties and the extent of the damage had made the repairs a difficult task.
It said a lack of labour, trades and building supplies also made the recovery difficult.
Gisborne SES controller Mike Bagnall said the unit had nearly 200 requests for assistance on that first day.
He said it was not uncommon for emergency workers, including those who volunteered in regional Victoria, to find their own properties damaged during large-scale emergencies.
"We had crews responding to members' houses while that member was out assisting others in the community. So we do rally around everyone in the community equally as well as our members," he said.
Rebuilding homes and minds
In the days after the storms, around 700 homes were without power in the hardest-hit areas of Lancefield, Blackwood and Woodend.
Ross Redwin is semi-retired and lives at Korweinguboora between the towns of Daylesford and Ballan, near Ballarat. He lost his home in the storm and said June was now a stressful time as it brought memories back to the surface.
He told ABC Statewide Drive that around midnight one year ago, the first of seven trees crashed down on his house where he and his two children were asleep.
“The impact was quite shattering and woke me. As I was walking through the house looking to see what might have happened, my daughter started calling out for me,” he said.
His children escaped uninjured and after the fifth tree fell on the house, Mr Redwin decided it was too unsafe to stay.
Unable to drive out, he and his children walked through the bush to a neighbour's house while trees continued to fall around them.
"What was going through my head was that I had just no idea of whether we would survive or not, whether a tree would land on us and kill us, if I can be that blunt about it," Mr Redwin said.
The council put a demolition order on the house, but Mr Redwin is still arguing with the insurer.
He said seven builders had toured the house, as well as a structural engineer, and recommended it be demolished, but the insurer believed it could fix it for between $20,000 and $40,000.
Help on the way
Rob Gordon, a clinical psychologist who has spent the past 30 years working with people affected by emergencies and disasters, will travel to Hepburn later this month.
He will speak at the Lyonville Hall for people who are struggling with mental health after the storm.
He told ABC Statewide Drive Mr Redwin was showing normal signs of trauma and it would take several winters for him to be able to replace the experience of last year's disaster.
"The sense of can you trust anyone, who do you trust?
"You put your money with an insurance company to insure you and then when it doesn't happen, this is very unsettling for everyone. And this sense of battling here alone against these big systems is depressing."
Macedon Ranges Shire Council mayor Jennifer Anderson said the recovery was ongoing for the council and residents.
The council partnered with Bushfire Recovery Victoria and the neighbouring Moorabool and Hepburn shire councils to clean-up fallen trees and upscale the processing of the waste.
The wood has since been used by the Woodend Men's Shed to create nest boxes and provide sawdust for pig farmers.
