Original subtitles

What you're about to see is not just a film about bushfires.

It's about resilience.

It's about power of help and it's about hope.

It's about finding our way back when we can't see a path

and it's about how we as a nation galvanised

to face one of the greatest natural disasters in our history.

From our incredible volunteer firefighters who ran towards danger

to our wildlife warriors who worked tirelessly,

you'll see bystanders who became up-standers.

These stories are tough to tell but important to share.

You will hear astonishing accounts of bravery

but also of the devastating impact these fires had on so many.

And to those of you still struggling,

we hope you will take some comfort in this film

and know that you are not alone and that help is available.

This is A Fire Inside.

(THUNDER BOOMS)

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

REPORTER: The terrifying scale of Australia's bushfire disaster

is beginning to emerge...

REPORTER: It's been labelled the worst fire season ever recorded.

REPORTER: There are downright apocalyptic images

coming out of Australia right now

as the country's battling hundreds of fires...

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

GLADYS BEREJIKLIAN: We can't pretend that this is something

we've experienced before.

It's not.

REPORTER: Small towns have been wiped out,

properties, homes, memories ablaze...

REPORTER: An area bigger than England has been reduced to ash.

MAN: And we're not even at the peak of the bushfire season...

REPORTER: There's been no hiding from these fires -

horrific scenes that have shocked the world...

WOMAN: What was harder to see... was the way people responded...

WOMAN: Volunteerism is indelibly marked into our Australian DNA.

But this summer, this took on a whole new meaning...

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

MAN: My join date's really simple.

It's 9/9/09 - 090909.

It's hard to believe it's been that long.

Like, I still remember being 16...

like, 16 years old and watching you run to fires.

Like, we would stay up waiting for Dad to come home, remember?

We'd ask him all about it. Yeah.

And the last thing you wanted to do was tell us all about it

'cause you were knackered and just wanted to sleep.

I'll do that now. You do do that now.

The difference is we're there with you now.

(LAUGHTER)

I remember, as a 16-year-old kid, you know,

watching my dad run out to go and assist people

and just thinking, you know, "Man, I want to be like him

"and I want to follow in his footsteps."

MAN: Made senior deputy in our brigade.

Yeah, have been captain now going on eight years.

You can see it, you know, generations all working their way through,

right down to the sons

and you'll find probably... And daughters.

And daughters. And daughters too.

Yeah, don't get me wrong... And daughters. Yeah.

Sometimes they'll have four generations still in the one brigade.

We went out there, we did an all-nighter

out at, oh, back of Bemboka, the Yankees Gap.

All we had was lollies and biscuits and Mars bars and stuff

and a heap of snakes and stuff.

All good for you.

All really good for us till about 3:00 in the morning...

(WOMAN LAUGHS)

Then things turned to worse

and we all started getting stomach cramps at the same time

and all we could find was a wombat hole.

(LAUGHTER)

Needless to say, the wombat never come out.

(LAUGHTER)

Oh, that's not OK. (LAUGHS)

Neither was the rest of the crew. (LAUGHTER)

We are all fighting over the wombat hole.

You did not. (LAUGHTER)

There's everything from...

You could've all stories of saving houses and... No.

..pulling people out of car accidents... No.

Instead, you decided to tell about shitting in a wombat hole.

Like, that's... That's what it's all about.

(LAUGHS) Oh, Jesus.

(LAUGHTER)

The RFS is the largest recognised volunteer firefighting organisation

in the world.

Each state across the country has a similar organisation.

There are more than 170,000 volunteer firefighters across the country.

Most people have no idea that they're not being paid

but volunteers make up 90% of the firefighting workforce.

As you can see, they've got different colour reflectors in them.

This one here's made in Australia at the moment

and also this one's made in Australia.

My day job, I work for a lighting company.

As a day job, I work for the federal government.

MAN: I do a tow truck duty as well.

I run my own graphic design business.

I work for the local council, myself.

MAN: My main job is to cut the fish and process the fish.

MAN: One of the important things to recognise,

the RFS volunteers are just everyday Australians.

You could just take a sample of everyday people

walking down the street

and they would be reflective of the people who then put on a uniform

and go firefighting.

He had me light her up and I lit her up with the drip torch

and my heart's pounding out of my chest

and I've got photos of us having to jump back into the cab

with bright red faces 'cause we were so hot.

(MAN LAUGHS)

And that's why you keep the aircon running.

(MAN LAUGHS)

MAN: I was a corporal in the army.

I did want to join the police force first but I was too short. (LAUGHS)

At that time, they still had the 5'9" height.

I'm 5'7", so I was a bit short for that.

Just be safe.

Listen to the instructions, what you're being asked.

Make sure we've got no little kinks and stuff like that in there.

BRENDON: But when I left the army, it left a big void in my life.

A bit of an adrenaline junkie, I guess.

So, when my wife and I moved out to Balmoral,

within a couple of months,

I was joined into the brigade and filled that void.

While most people are running away from the fire,

we're running TO the fire.

I've never met a person yet that can understand

why we pay for ourselves to go to these things.

And I guess I can understand where they're coming from

'cause it's not a normal thing people would do.

NATHAN BARNDEN: How do you convince

thousands and thousands of everyday Australians

to go and stand in front of something

that could potentially take their life?

BRENDON O'CONNOR: We'd been in drought for nearly three-odd years.

Locally, all of our rivers, creeks were all dry.

Most of the dams were dry.

We knew, by all indicators,

that we were coming into potentially the worst season we'd ever seen.

MAN: 2019 was shaping up to be Australia's hottest ever year.

But it's also a season where we were expecting to see cold fronts

moving very quickly over the south-eastern parts of Australia.

That's the other missing ingredient,

because for extremely bad bushfire conditions,

you also need to have strong winds.

(THUNDER CRACKS)

SHANE FITZSIMMONS: This was one of the earliest starts

to the fire season we've ever seen.

Ignitions were starting very easily

and fire was spreading ridiculously quickly.

Given the conditions,

a lot of the hazard reduction and prescribed burning programs

were challenged.

BRENDON O'CONNOR: Where normally we could light a 20m strip,

it was one drop.

That was all you needed.

And within seconds, that was ten feet wide.

So it was very volatile.

SHANE FITZSIMMONS: I won't refer to it as 'Black Summer'

because we were dealing with over 1,000 fires a month in winter

and then the fires intensified as we moved into spring and summer.

(FIRE ROARS)

WOMAN: Nothing was gonna stop those fires.

They were something dragged up out of hell and dumped on Earth.

MAN: Go! Go! Go!

(MEN CALL OUT INDISTINCTLY)

Everything we tried to do just didn't work.

(MAN CALLS OUT INDISTINCTLY)

The fire was just, you know,

too severe for what we were expecting

and what we were capable of doing.

When everything that you've ever been taught doesn't work,

what do you do?

(FIRE ROARS)

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

BRENDON O'CONNOR: We had the Green Wattle fire

about 7.5km out to our west.

Everyone was very much on edge.

With us in Balmoral here, we've got a lot of national park around us.

It was not if it was gonna get to us, it was when.

(PLANE ENGINE ROARS)

Once the fire stood up, within ten, 15 minutes,

the first wave came through and then we were engulfed.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

I must say, that's probably the only time in my life

I've actually thought, "This will probably be it."

(MUFFLED RADIO COMMUNICATIONS)

MAN: Fuck.

Most tragically, two firefighters lost their lives that night

coming in to help us,

which a lot of us knew those guys.

SHANE FITZSIMMONS: On that fateful night, on Thursday, 19 December,

it was a truly tragic accident and we lost two beautiful individuals

who so selflessly for years have dedicated

to the cause of serving and protecting their local community

and communities much further afield.

For baby Charlotte, you need to know that your dad was a selfless man,

he was a special man

and he only left us because he was a hero.

(BELL TOLLS)

(SOLEMN MUSIC)

BRENDON O'CONNOR: Morale-wise, really hurt everyone.

It affects you very personally to know that these guys lost their lives

coming in to help protect us.

To help honour them, we need to protect

what those guys were putting their lives on the line for

and keep fighting.

That Thursday, 19 December,

the fire was gonna be pushed into the village again.

Myself and every other captain within the Southern Highlands team

were asked to leave our villages.

For me, straight away, it was a no.

After fighting for our village for the last two days,

I was not gonna leave.

I put it to our brigade.

Every member in our brigade in Balmoral decided they wanted to stay.

Lakesland, Douglas Park and Mount Hunter,

they refused to leave and they actually came back in.

That gave us five vehicles to be able to take on the fight.

No other volunteer fire brigades could either come in

or were allowed in.

We could hear them asking and requesting to be sent in

and that being refused by Fire Control.

They obviously deemed it too unsafe to be here.

(HELICOPTER WHIRRS)

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

(MAN CALLS OUT INDISTINCTLY)

BRENDON O'CONNOR: You're in an absolute firestorm.

It was day but it was night.

We fought our way back here because the other call came through

that 35 people were now in the station

and the station was actually being impacted now.

WOMAN: When we got in the fire shed, everything was all hazy.

Oh, it was chaos. It really was.

The fire shed was already under ember attack at that stage.

HELENA KAM: Outside, it was roaring.

Yeah. it was... You could hear the embers hitting the shed.

(FIRE ROARS)

BRENDON O'CONNOR: Our fire station is the place of last resort.

They believed they were all gonna die in here that night, potentially.

(MEN CALL OUT INDISTINCTLY)

We were running out of water.

Firefighters had to stay to try to defend.

Just through sheer exhaustion, they collapsed where they were.

We were absolutely spent.

(FIRE ROARS)

(MEN CALL OUT INDISTINCTLY)

I remember calling out "The cavalry's here."

(MEN CALL OUT INDISTINCTLY)

Just as we had ran out of water, station officer Jason Strong,

through New South Wales Fire and Rescue,

he was hearing my calls and he couldn't deal with it anymore.

(MEN CALL OUT INDISTINCTLY)

They were our first back-up that we received.

They were absolute lifesavers at that point.

JUSTIN KAM: Brendon, being the person he is,

was unwilling to leave the village undefended.

I believe that those actions of his saved the village

because nobody else came to help us

until a lot of the properties were already, you know, under attack.

And lives would have been lost.

It amazes us how some of these people will give

without even thinking of their own situation.

It is very difficult to imagine how some of these other individuals

will go fight somebody else's fires

and not worry about whether their house is burning.

BRENDON O'CONNOR: Two of our members lost their homes,

one directly behind my home

and one of the other members,

while he was saving his neighbour's home, watched his own home burn down.

You know, they're just your average battler.

Most people are struggling day to day as it is,

you know, with paying the bills and keeping their family going.

NATHAN BARNDEN: One guy, he works on horses

and we were coming out of a drought.

Half the stock on the coast were either injured or killed.

He essentially lost his business.

But every day, he was out firefighting,

not making an income, not finding a new job.

He was out protecting his community.

BRENDON O'CONNOR: I'm in awe of every firefighter.

The hours everyone was working, you know, absolute sleep deprivation,

working in the most trying, most dangerous conditions...

JUSTIN KAM: Seeing one of the firefighters lying, unable to breathe

because he was suffering from heat exhaustion and smoke inhalation,

it tells you the levels that they will push themselves.

And they're volunteers...

so what does that tell you about their psyche?

It's a completely different mindset.

NATHAN BARNDEN: I started receiving 000 calls

of people who were trapped in homes...

and this is right as the firestorm hit town the hardest.

The initial report was for a family of seven, with five children,

trapped inside their house and that the house was on fire.

I grabbed a firefighter, whose name was John Gallagher.

We were in a four-wheel-drive, essentially,

so we had no firefighting hoses, no protective curtains,

no sprinkler systems, nothing to protect us.

The fire was basically hitting the side of the car on all sides

as we drove through it...

and as we were driving down this road,

things just got increasingly intense in fire behaviour

and we found ourselves at a point

where we made the decision that we physically couldn't get any further.

We tried to turn around

and we got caught in the stormwater sort of drain.

We couldn't get the car out

and we were just being hammered with wind and debris

and everything was falling to pieces around us and I...

I remember looking at John and I know...

and we never said it

but we both just looked at each other and went, like, "This is it."

"Yeah, this is where we... This is where it ends for us."

And we kind of just did that thing where you look at each other

and you just nod

and you knew.

And we kept trying to get the car out and it just wouldn't move.

And eventually it just managed

to just pull itself out of the gutter a little bit

and back onto the road.

We went back out to the intersection of the Princes Highway.

I radioed our control centre

and I said that we couldn't get to the family, like, to the people.

But I asked them, you know,

"Can you guarantee that there are people in there,

"because if we go back, this is," you know...

The likelihood of being that lucky twice isn't really high.

And they replied with,

"To the best of our knowledge, there are people in that house"

and so we shut everything up and we turned around and we went back in.

(TENSE MUSIC)

I remember driving into the property

and we pull up at the front of the house

and three-quarters of the house is on fire.

And we can't see a single person.

And their car's in the driveway and it's on fire.

All of their sheds are burning.

The veranda to the front door is on fire.

Everything that you can possibly think of around you is on fire.

John jumped out of the car while I radioed in to say that we'd arrived

and opened the front door to the house, you know,

climbing over the burning veranda

and there were a family of seven, two adults and five kids,

huddled under a blanket in the lounge room

while the room around them burnt.

WOMAN: It was New Year's Eve

and my daughter-in-law was at my house.

We'd rang the police a couple of times

and they had said to remain where we were.

Unfortunately, the next minute, we had a fireball on our property

and it just came and wrapped around the house.

I knew we weren't getting out.

There was nowhere to go.

Two of my babies are struggling,

two of my grandchildren are saying they're so hot in their belly.

Gave them all a paper bag

and told them if they breathe in the paper bag

that the firemen will come -

a promise I didn't know if I could keep.

I think we had minutes, maybe seconds...

and then Jess heard the firemen were at the door, you know, yelling out.

NATHAN BARNDEN: We were trying to get these guys out of their house,

across the burning yard and into our car.

We got all of them in

and had to turn around and try and drive back out through that fire.

We managed to get them through,

then we get back to the fire station and we sit the kids down

and then we turn around and go back to the car

and we go and do it all over again with a different family.

And we do it three times over the next...

I think it's the next hour

and nearly die twice in the process.

NATHAN BARNDEN: My brigade came

and knocked on the window of the car that I was in

and said, "You need to come... You need to come and see your dad."

And my stomach just sank.

And my dad looks at me and tells me that my...

that my Uncle Robert and my cousin Patrick had died

defending their home in Cobargo, just north of where we were.

And I remember just looking at him and sort of saying,

like, "What are you talking about?"

And he... He just said, "They're dead."

(SOLEMN MUSIC)

It's like time just stopped.

I was just on my knees in the middle of the road

while this whole town burned around me, crying.

I grabbed my dad and my brother and we walked back into the fire station

and I walked past the people who I had saved

to tell my mum that she's now lost her brother and her nephew...

(CRIES)

I don't even know how to describe...

what it was like to tell her that.

ROSEY BARNDEN: I was a Salway, the baby of the family.

My family...

A wonderful family.

Just my world.

(CRIES)

I'll miss that time with Robert, that...

yeah, having my big brother to talk to.

NATHAN BARNDEN: Yeah, that was... that was day one for me.

We lost hundreds of homes.

Then I lost my family on day one.

And then, for two months, every single day, I would put on a uniform

and I would go out and I would do it again and again and again.

And partially, it was out of guilt.

(TENSE MUSIC)

BRUCE BUCKLEY: The bushfires extended

from the south-eastern parts of Queensland

all the way down the coast into Tasmania.

That's the equivalent of bushfires in North America

going from Vancouver

all the way down the west coast of the United States

into the northern parts of Mexico.

The smoke from Australia's bushfires circled the entire planet.

In South America, the skies over central Chile went grey.

It was no longer a bushfire that was burning in the wilderness

somewhere in the central parts of Australia.

It was there for all to see

and it was there for month after month.

We had over 200 consecutive days of bushfire emergencies declared.

There were more than 3,000 homes destroyed

and we had more than 18 million hectares of country burnt out.

That's an area close to the size of the United kingdom.

MAN: The silence. Just the quietness.

No birds singing out, no... Nothing.

Not even insects.

When I looked at the soils, they were just baked, like pottery.

Just hard.

No vegetation.

And I just felt empty inside.

WOMAN: They estimate around 3 billion animals

were lost in the fires.

We did search and rescue.

People were saying to us, "How many koalas did you see?"

And we didn't see many because they'd been incinerated.

They were gone. Just dust.

(KOALA YELPS)

I couldn't visualise how we could ever recover from such devastation.

WOMAN: It's kind of stuff that you see from footage of World War II.

But this is happening in our backyard.

I remember just seeing people dazed. It was shock.

But you also saw the absolute despair and adrenaline

that someone was running on at that time.

I slept with my bra on for two weeks

'cause I was jumping up in the middle of the night.

There was a lot of looters in town,

stealing from people's half-burnt houses.

We had a lot of tourists and they were told to leave

and when they left, they took all of our food and petrol

and we had no trucks coming in to refill our shelves.

MAN: Because we were cut off from the world,

people did feel we'd been abandoned.

People, they might have a few possessions in their car

and the clothes on their back - that's all they've got.

We needed help and we needed it desperately.

KYLIE WARREN: The whole RFS were under-resourced.

We didn't have many trucks here,

so everybody sprung into action and my husband was one of them.

The hose is burnt!

KYLIE WARREN: They were in amongst it.

They did as much as a firefighter could without a truck.

(WOMAN AND MAN CALL OUT)

You know, turning off gas bubbles and jumping fences

and putting verandas out and putting gardens out.

And they took control.

They were ordering people around.

And they were, like, "Are you guys firefighters?"

And they go, "No." (LAUGHS) "We're just doing what we can."

PAULA ZAJA: In the back of my head, I was thinking, literally,

I couldn't fight a fire if it came through here.

There's no chance.

I'm sitting there at home, going, "What good am I here?

"What can we do? What can we do?"

So I just put out this call on Facebook

and it just started, this effect...

I couldn't even get through my front door

with the amount of donations that were dumped there.

But what a beautiful problem to have,

to have so many people just go, "We don't know how to help.

"Just let us know what you need and we'll get it to you."

We had - get this - groups of volunteers

that were providing food for our normal volunteers

that were providing food for our firefighters.

(PHONE VIBRATES)

DAVE ALLEN: The phone calls I took were just quite unbelievable.

From all around Australia, people just loading up generators, fuel,

groceries, supplies, water, whatever they had.

I became a bit of a contact point

and for days and days and days, the phone wouldn't stop.

(PHONE VIBRATES)

Almost got to the stage I threw it in the river

but I just knew it was important to keep it on

and important to keep answering it because...

Mmm.

SUE ASHTON: I've been amazed at the kindness and thoughtfulness

of so many people.

Our website crashed.

It couldn't handle the volume of donations we were getting through.

KYLIE WARREN: People saw an opening of how they could help

and just helped.

(HORN HONKS)

And there was more heroes in plain clothing than there was in uniform

and that was just...

Sorry.

I don't know why I'm crying. Stupid.

It just felt...

We felt cared about.

(CHEERING)

Our volunteers across this entire country,

they are the ones who have saved us.

And I will speak now very confidently on behalf of a nation

when I say to those volunteers thank you!

(CHEERING) Thank you! Thank you!

PAULA ZAJA: It takes crisis to remember we're all human,

to see people coming together

for no other reason but to, you know, keep us going.

That was quite profound.

(THUNDER RUMBLES) (ROUSING MUSIC)

Yes! Yeah, bring it on!

(LAUGHTER)

(RAIN FALLS)

NATHAN BARNDEN: It's a really funny thing to try and explain

because you think they'd be happy that it rained

and that the fires were out...

Like, I'm obviously happy about that

because there was no threat to the community

and there was nothing like that

but for months, you know, I went out every day firefighting

because it gave me a purpose

and then it just ended.

Just one day, we woke up and it was over.

All of the emotion, all of the fear and the guilt...

all of that started coming out really hard.

I retreated from who I was and I stepped away from my family

and I struggled.

I didn't know who I was anymore.

I got into my own head

that if I wasn't good enough to save my own family,

how was I ever good enough to help anyone else's?

Firefighting is easy.

Dealing with the mental health aspects after it is not.

BRENDON O'CONNOR: I'm still finding it very hard to settle,

as a lot of the firefighters are.

I do find it, yeah, quite difficult to...I guess, to fully relax

when I'm in the village,

so it's been a very difficult transition.

Due to the hernias that I got during the fires,

I've still not been back to work.

It's been quite difficult, yeah, to be able to pay the bills

and keep everything going forward.

It's definitely put strain on relationships.

Janet and I, we've been married for 29 years.

During the fires,

I was lucky if I was getting one and a half to two hours sleep a day.

The rest of the time, I was over at the station,

so I was averaging, you know, 20, 22 hours

and I guess doing this probably took its toll on her, I think.

Yeah.

So, unfortunately, yeah, Janet decided that she, yeah...

didn't want to be a part of our life anymore, so...

But it is what it is.

When the bushfire volunteers, when they pack up and go home,

that's the beginning of the recovery.

It's not the end of the situation.

The emergency didn't stop the day the rains came.

A different sort of emergency took over.

MAN: I'm a beef and sheep farmer at Wandella-Cobargo.

I'm fifth generation. The kids are sixth generation.

Grandkids are seventh generation.

You know, we've been here for so long, it's hard to explain to anyone

the feeling you have for the land you love.

NATHAN BARNDEN: Warren Salway's my uncle, so he's my mum's brother.

I know their experiences were tough and I know we nearly lost him too.

WARREN SALWAY: Robert was me big brother.

Patrick was my nephew.

They were only 30m from their house

and they got caught in a fireball.

I think we all thought that we would stop the fire

when it come from the bush to the open country

but there was no way in the world we were gonna pull it up.

Like, it was a tornado coming at us.

WOMAN: Like, it was still dark. You couldn't see.

But Warren could hear cattle bellowing

and he thought, "Thank goodness, you know, there's some alive."

But when it come daylight, they were that badly burnt.

WARREN SALWAY: We had to probably put down about 45 cows

'cause you can't let animals suffer.

We lost 150 head of cattle, 80 sheep,

24km of fencing, five sheds, two houses.

There's 30 years of work just gone in half an hour.

So it's a massive blow.

I was pretty crook.

Like, I'd gone from 19 days that I hadn't stopped...

I was getting up at 3:00 in the morning.

I thought it was getting on top of me

and I said to Helen, "I've got to go and get some help."

The fires were like nothing that I had ever experienced before.

It's not really something that you think about, living in the UK.

I was expecting to just have a bit of a holiday, have a bit of a jolly

and suddenly I went from being, like, a 24-year-old on holiday

to a refugee, camping out on the beach.

It was like walking into an apocalypse.

This family, total strangers, never met them before in my life,

but they saw us in the tents with all the animals

because my aunt had brought horses down as well

and they said, "You can't camp in this.

"We've got a guestroom. You can come stay.

"You can bring the cats, you can bring the horses."

It blew my mind.

They didn't know us at all and they just let us take over their home.

They cooked us dinner, breakfast.

I could not believe how kindly we were treated.

I was so overwhelmed by the kindness that I saw

that I knew I had to give back.

BlazeAid is a charity

that comes into communities after natural disasters

and helps them to rebuild.

The primary work that we do is fencing.

A bunch of backpackers camped up the road

in a community that's been through a lot

and is so traumatised,

that could really go the wrong way but everyone's been so kind to us.

More?

That's all I want.

Alright. Good job.

I've got five wires to put on this.

I've got to walk this five times,

whereas BlazeAid, there's five people here,

so it makes, yeah, a fifth of your work, sort of thing.

HELEN SALWAY: It's been great for Warren with his mental state.

You know, they're all from overseas.

He's teaching them a lot of Aussie slang.

My friends back home

now need me re-translate sentences that I say to them.

"I'm just popping down the bottlo or going to the servo."

WARREN SALWAY: The young people I've had here have been terrific.

Oh... I've told them about what happened

and they've helped me by telling me what they've done in their life,

so, yeah, it's been good.

A good exchange.

Only 9km. But I can see the end. (LAUGHS)

EMILY COPLEY-MOORBY: There are so many farms that we, BlazeAid,

still haven't been able to get to

because there is so much work to do and there is so much recovery left.

DAVE ALLEN: We had people coming down in droves

to help people to clean up,

to re-fence, to just get their lives back in order

and the place was sort of buzzing.

I was conscious that we had to get the pub back open for people.

So many people had lost everything and they needed somewhere to come

and to talk and to be with their friends

and just try and heal each other.

We had the Red Cross here, we had the local council,

we had various insurers.

It became a one-stop shop.

People would come in, get their insurance claims assessed,

talk to the local council, what they needed, etc, etc

and just go bang, bang, bang, bang and, you know, get sorted out.

And, yeah, the coronavirus pandemic,

that just stopped all that in its tracks.

EMILY COPLEY-MOORBY: The BlazeAid camp had to shut down.

I understand it with COVID because it's to keep people safe.

It just does get really frustrating

when you have to turn away willing volunteers.

(RINGING TONE)

MAN: (ON PHONE) Hello. WALTER SALWAY: Hey, Manu.

How are you? Good. All good. How are you?

Alright, mate. Alright. Only just got your message!

Yeah, I'm sorry, I was a bit confused but...

That's a bugger. Like, all your team's been stood down, have they?

All of the young guys here, like, 35 people,

are having a day off today because of this.

Yeah. OK. See you later.

Bye. Bye.

By the sound of it, all their crews have been stood down.

It's just ridiculous.

Like, you've got great young people that want to help you and they can't.

(LAUGHS)

JOHN BROGDEN: Many of those areas had been in drought,

then they were hit by fires and then, of course, COVID,

so this year's been not just a double whammy for some people

but a triple whammy.

We have a view in Australia that farmers are stoic.

You know, they can get through the tough times,

they can get through droughts, they can get through fires

but, you know, we're all human - there's only so much we can take.

Got the gloves on, dear. (HELEN LAUGHS)

Well, just to pull the wire out

'cause it makes your fingers a bit sore.

WARREN SALWAY: She's my best friend.

She's really this hand and that hand all put together.

She gives me a lot of strength.

HELEN SALWAY: He just needs to try to have a bit of a break.

Like, I'm worried a little bit about his emotional state and that,

you know, so...

He was sort of winding down the last couple of years

'cause my health hasn't been good, so...

Got a non-curable blood cancer, like, multiple myeloma.

Then you get a disaster like this and it's just created a lot of work

and, yeah, financial burden, sort of thing.

So, yeah.

PAULA ZAJA: The impacts of any crisis is long-term.

It's not that first few months but that's when the media's there,

that's when everyone puts attention in.

That's what everyone feels good about, you know, helping.

And then the next crisis will come

and everyone leaves and the town goes.

DAVE ALLEN: Yeah, Red Cross, Salvation Army,

those charities were here

and they were really good in providing counselling for people

but, you know, they're not here in Cobargo anymore.

People's focus changed and people got to move on.

You know, everything comes to an end

and people have got a lot on their plate, absolutely.

But we still have people living rough.

Like, we've had 1,000 homes been lost in this area.

How long is that going to take to rebuild?

WOMAN: Our old home here, my husband and I built it

and we had a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful big stone chimney.

We found all these really old, old red bricks

and it was just...mmm, to die for.

And after the fire,

that chimney was still standing and that was fantastic.

But we were told because it was on the foundations of the house...

it had to go.

And I no sooner stepped out to look to see the Kato hit it,

bang, and that was the end of that.

And that's...

Mmm. Yeah.

I think I cried for about four or five hours

because the chimney was...

The old house, it was all that was left of it, you know.

And, you know, you've just got to move on.

We've whacked up an old shack out of iron,

old iron that didn't get burnt.

It gets very cold here. Big frosts.

I mean, we're not that far from the snowfields. (LAUGHS)

DAVE ALLEN: We're in winter now

and for people to still be living in tents and old second-hand caravans

that are freezing at night,

to me, it's ridiculous.

You know, we had all this money donated,

you know, we had charity cricket matches, we had celebrity concerts.

We just lack that coordination, that someone...

to tie the various levels of government,

all the charity organisations, all the community groups,

tie all those strings together and get it really focused

and really going forward

because sometimes it feels like it's just going sideways.

JUSTIN: Oh...

Are you getting cold again? Mmm?

Are you cold again?

It's fine.

I've got my hot chocolate now. Oh.

JUSTIN KAM: When we came here 20 years ago,

there was not much there, just a lot of shrub.

HELENA KAM: We put up a tent, just to see what the land was all about.

I think we lived in that tent for about 18 months

and I think that's where Gabriel came from.

(BOTH LAUGH)

The locals that were here,

we found out that they actually ran a book on us

as to how long we would actually last in the village,

or in a tent, for that matter.

We asked, "Well, how much did you lose?"

And the guy went and said, "Oh, your resilient bastards."

(BOTH LAUGH)

The fires burnt our home on 21 December.

We managed to finally get electricity as of yesterday.

Yeah, it's 30 August now, so, you know, eight months.

They deliberately call it recovery.

We were in survival mode.

Part of rebuilding, we had to declare a 54m radius of bushland.

Which is basically a suburban block.

(CHAINSAW WHINES)

We work on the property until sundown. That's every day.

We actually haven't stopped from the time of the fires.

It's just been constant.

(CHAINSAW WHINES)

The work that needs to be done

is not something 50, 60-year-olds do anymore.

You feel the mornings in winter, you feel the cold

and then, at the end of the day, you're a ball of pain.

GABRIEL KAM: Oh, I definitely worry for my parents.

They're burning themselves out

and they're going to hurt themselves really badly

and I don't know if I'll be there to help

and even if I am there, what I can do to help.

So it's very worrying.

(CHAINSAW WHINES)

HELENA KAM: For the first time in our lives,

we actually needed help because we had nowhere else to turn.

PAULA ZAJA: Helena and Justin find it very hard to ask for help.

I remember how hard it was for Helena to have people on her block.

You know, "This was my house. This is no longer my house.

"I'm proud person and I have nothing."

That's where the shame comes up and it makes it so hard to ask for help.

I could see it because I've lived it, you know, that you put on that front

and "I'm OK, I'm OK, I'm OK" but you know you're not deep down.

I think from my own personal story is why I do what I do.

After choosing to leave domestic violence,

I found myself in a situation where it was just so hard to manage.

I never forget the nights when it was hard to feed the kids

and they're eating my portion of dinner

and I'm telling them that I had, you know, a big lunch at work

and you're going to bed hungry.

Those things are quite pivotal.

Having that roof over your head, having food,

they are basic human needs.

I can't rebuild those houses,

I can't take away all the issues they're gonna have with rebuilding

but I can put food on their tables.

I run a food rescue service called Our Community Pantry.

We're working with those that have been fire-affected.

They can get their food for free.

We're supporting over 4,000 families, which is pretty awesome.

Most people see the big project

but they don't see all the hands that go into

putting the labels on the food, you know, packing the bags.

You couldn't have that project without all the help behind it.

WOMAN: I volunteer at Pantry most Tuesdays

and then the occasional Fridays.

While my house burnt down on 21 December,

I was here on the 23rd making hampers.

To see Victoria at a point where she's actually saying

"I'm gonna help other people,"

it says an awful amount about someone.

I was absolutely in shock and cried for a long time

but this filled me back up, I guess, with hope.

And that's why I do it. It was certainly not for the pay.

(LAUGHS) Yeah, it's just because it's a really nice feeling

to help others.

MAN: This country has suffered drought, it's now suffered fire

and most of these people have a minimum of two years

before they get to rebuild

and we can't let these people disappear from our mind's eye

as we go forward.

We are delivering up to 200 temporary recovery pods

for people that have lost their houses.

The idea with building these is that they're temporary for two years

and people have the opportunity during those two years to rebuild,

get their development authorities in place.

But going forward, we'll relocate these to a central point

and have them ready to roll out immediately upon another disaster,

rather than having to start from scratch again.

So, we're building up the capital for resilience

in response to the fires.

BARBARA STEWART: A pod, you walk in, they've got a little shower recess,

a toilet and a basin

and then they've got, like, little bunkbeds.

It was really quite funny.

We heard about this 80-odd-year-old German guy that lives down in Cobargo

and he went like this to the bed and he said,

"Oh, they're very solid, the beds."

And the guy said, "Oh, yeah." He said, "They're very solid."

He said, "I mean really solid," the old bloke said.

And they said, "Yes, it's very, very solid."

He said, "We've never known them to collapse at all."

He said, "But are they any good for bonking in?"

(LAUGHS)

And the guy said, "For what?"

And he said, "You know, bonking in. Can you bonk on these beds?"

And he said, "I don't know. We've never tried it." (LAUGHS)

So...

So, yeah, you've gotta have a sense of humour

and this old chappy... life wasn't over for him.

(LAUGHS)

He's got a lot to look forward to.

MAN: Hello. Hello.

How you going?

I don't know.

Not bad, is it? (DOG BARKS)

You like it? It's absolutely beautiful.

For heaven's sake...

There's two top bunks there that fold down.

They're just left up for now but if you want to...

put up shelving or anything, you can put them down.

They've got rails there that can go in...

Unbelievable. ..and a ladder up the back.

But we just put the two mattresses down back so you can put a couch in,

things like that, whatever you want.

It's generous. You know, we thought it was fantastic.

But we just felt very guilty about having it.

I'll show you your gas... (CLICKING)

Oh, you don't even need a lighter? No.

There's a gas bottle just out the back...to put into the container...

with a cover on it.

Thank you so much. No worries.

Happy to help.

It's just too much...

It is, it's too much.

(DOGS CONTINUE BARKING)

Shut those dogs up!

We got in touch and said we knew a couple

that should be more deserving to have that pod, not us.

Then we arranged to have the pod taken up to this other family.

She's a sister at the hospital, works nightshift

and her husband's 80% blind.

And so, that was good for them, you know,

and they're better off to have that.

We didn't really need it. We were OK.

Oh, dear me.

(LAUGHS)

Cheers. Oh, cheers.

Cheers, girl. Cheers, girl.

(BOTH LAUGH)

There's always somebody out there worse off than you are

and if you think too much about what you've lost

and that, "Oh, this shouldn't have happened" or blah, blah, blah,

it's a silly attitude because you're alive.

A lot of people lost lives.

You're alive.

You just get up and get on with it.

PAULA ZAJA: From day one, we saw cracks happening.

You know, it's not just Helena, it's not just Justin,

it's not Victoria, it's not just Brendon.

We see the cracks everywhere.

We know that these communities

are short on resources for mental health to begin with

and then, throw something in like this...

You see it in their eyes, you know.

People are concerned for others but afraid to ask for their own help.

JOHN BROGDEN: Lifeline is an outreach service

to people who are in crisis and at high risk of suicide.

Even eight months on, we were still getting 200 to 300 calls a day.

And our calls have increased, not decreased.

Some people tough it through the first couple of weeks or the month.

They're the person around who's the pillar for people.

They get through the tough times,

then they just fall to pieces six or 12 or 18 months later.

BRENDON O'CONNOR: When you go away to a town and you save it

and there's damage, you know,

you take that very personally but you then get to leave.

When it's in your own town and it's just so widespread,

it's horrible, to be honest.

My head was not in a good place.

I was really depressed, angry, feeling very detached...

even down to that point I'd had suicidal thoughts.

I just wanted it gone. I just wanted it gone.

WOMAN: So many people are really struggling to come to terms with,

"How do I move forward from here?"

My question to people has always been around,

"What is it that stands in the way of you being at peace?"

Brendon reached out to us

because he was finding that he couldn't stop crying

and this was so unusual for him

'cause he's not someone who readily cries.

BRENDON O'CONNOR: I had a good talk with Petrea

and let her know where my headspace was, which wasn't good.

I guess there were a lot of indicators to her

that I needed help now, not... you know, not down the track.

It's pretty horrific stuff

and, you know, 21 years ago, into these things

and then have your own village destroyed as it was...

Yes. ..it's a lot.

And the hypervigilance, it's just constantly there.

We certainly encountered many men who were very surprised

at their own reaction to what had happened to them.

(TENSE MUSIC)

JOHN BROGDEN: These were war-like conditions.

You know, it's like a soldier at the front line, you know.

You need to be there, you need to keep being there.

The come-off of all of that adrenaline, of all of that fear,

of all of that worry doesn't...

You just don't switch it off and go back to work the next day.

PETREA KING: What happens when people are on high alert

for many, many weeks,

they get very high cortisol and adrenaline levels

for a long period of time

and that interferes with your ability to make decisions.

It interferes with sleep.

What we found is when we educated people about,

"This is what's been going on in your body

"over the last few weeks and months"

and they're, like, "Oh, so it's not about character,

"it's not about 'I should've done better,'

"it's not about 'There's something wrong with me.'

"This is just a perfectly natural response

"to a very unnatural situation."

(BIRDSONG)

BRENDON O'CONNOR: It's definitely not about getting over it

'cause you're gonna carry these things forever.

It was about being able to clear my mind

and come to terms with what I've gone through.

People will need counselling for a long, long time...

but I guess a lot don't want to talk about it and keep bringing it back up

'cause it is quite traumatising when you go through it again.

With me, I guess being the first one to do it,

I guess, was probably a good thing

because a lot of people then looked at it and thought,

"Well, if he can do it, so can I."

(JUSTIN LAUGHS)

PETREA KING: How good to see you. Hi, Petrea.

Oh...

Welcome. Thank you.

Hey, Helena.

Beautiful to see you.

Oh...

(HELENA CRIES)

Oh, dear. Sorry.

No. Never apologise for tears.

It's been absolutely awful.

It hurts the heart so deeply, doesn't it?

Mmm. Mmm.

Mmm.

It's been a very confusing year.

You know, it's gonna be a very long...long haul.

You know, it creates anxiety.

It's, like, "How long is this gonna take?"

And I don't think there's any answer for that.

SHANE FITZSIMMONS: There is this stigma, there is this shame

about being emotionally impacted or affected

and I would plead to everybody and our particularly men -

not exclusively, but men are the worst offenders, in my experience -

we've got to do more to open the doors

and give permission to our mates, to our colleagues,

to our families, to our loved ones

that it's OK to be impacted and affected by traumatic experiences.

CLEM BARNDEN: I thought I was a rock.

Physically, I'm alright. Mentally, I'm scarred through it.

Talking about it makes it come good.

It's a release.

If you don't release, it builds up inside you,

then it becomes a real problem.

BRENDON O'CONNOR: It can't be forced onto the person.

You know, you've gotta be ready to put your hand up.

You know, without them,

I honestly can say I don't know whether I would still be here.

JOHN BROGDEN: 20, 30 years ago,

I think we would've thought these people would just tough it out.

They'll be fine.

I think one of the lessons for Australia and Australians

is we're not as tough as we thought we were

but we are more resilient than we think we are.

BRUCE BUCKLEY: We can expect to see far more severe fire seasons

than what we've seen in the past.

All of the increase in bushfire activity

occurred with a global warming in the order of plus-1.1 degree.

We are facing a global warming of not plus-two, not plus-2.5

but plus-three degrees,

so whatever we've seen to date, this is just the start of it.

VICTOR STEFFENSEN: Everyone goes, "Climate change!"

And, yes, I agree, we need to be serious about that.

But the other side of it is bad management.

Prescribed burning has got a long way to go.

Some of them get quite cool and they might get it right

but the majority that I see

is burning the wrong ecosystems at the time of the year...

upsetting the regrowth of plants and animals.

And the heat that comes out of those types of burns

is bad for our landscape.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

Aboriginal fire management practices are a just stark contrast.

It's a whole 'nother level

of an intimate connection with the country.

It is about the right fire for the right time,

for the right type of country.

Fires are more frequent for Aboriginal burning

but less destructive.

That's how Aboriginal people have been burning for thousands of years.

We don't want to burn the soil till it's charred and baked.

We want to protect the organic matter that sits in the soils.

And that organic matter is crucial for the revegetation of country.

When they manage it the Western way and burn to get rid of all the fuel

and no mind for the health of the landscape,

then we start to see plants that don't belong in those systems,

plants that are flammable come up and shoot up

and that creates fires worser... down the track.

For a long time, we didn't really take it too seriously, you know,

because this wasn't as fast as we want.

It's a slow process.

But it's very effective.

BRENDON O'CONNOR: To me, it has a big part in how it should be done.

It shouldn't just be about, you know,

lock this little square in and burn that out.

You know, we've got to look at the bigger picture.

You know, when we look at the fires,

it's the first time in history, really,

that Aboriginal people are being listened to for their knowledge

and as a solution.

Not only are we trying to save the environment,

we're trying to save culture as well,

which is a part of that environment.

We're in a turning point.

How can we not invest in the future generations

and the health of this planet?

Otherwise we'll have no country left to live on.

NATHAN BARNDEN: Fires have occurred forever in Australia

and they will continue to happen.

We're aware we're gonna have to face this again.

You know, I don't know how we'll go the next time there's a bigger fire

that's threatening our own home in our own area.

And I don't know what it'll do to our family.

ROSEY BARNDEN: Up until December, it didn't worry me.

I guess in the back of your mind you think about it but I just...

Yeah, I never thought about anything bad happening.

But when the pager goes off,

straight away, it's just that instant hurt in my stomach

to see Clem and Michael and Nathan gone all night.

You got a little text message from Clem with a little love heart

and that was my only thing that I knew he was alright...

I hate the fires. I hate everything about it.

And that's... that finding that balance

of having fire ruin your whole family

and then have fire that is my family.

NATHAN BARNDEN: Going out to fires after losing Patrick and Robert

was never the same.

I think I quit 23 times.

I sat in, you know, the station,

where for the last, you know, 12 years, I'd...

I'd lived for

and I wanted to throw it all away.

CHRISTINE PAULING: We have our heroes that saved us

but to see Nathan, such a young man, with so much on his shoulders...

it brings me to tears.

He's holding onto a weight that you and I can't even imagine.

(CRANKS HANDBRAKE)

(KEYS JINGLE)

Hi, love. Hello. Hey. How are you?

Hi. How are you?

Good. How are you? Good.

How are you?

Yeah.

It's taken a long time and a lot of feeling pretty bad about everything

and...

I cannot imagine.

..I struggled, despite the fact

that I was really happy that we saved you guys.

It was so hard... WOMAN: Yeah.

..to know that I couldn't save my own family.

Yeah.

And it took a long time before I felt proud about this

and I think it was your birthday...

February.

..February, when I ran into you in the shops.

It was the fact that, you know,

she got to have a birthday that she wouldn't have...

Had. Yeah. ..wouldn't have had.

And... Yeah.

But it took a long time to realise that I should be happy.

Like, you know... I know that sounds terrible but...

No. I have the most precious gift... Yep.

..anyone could give me.

I have the five grandchildren.

And you know, I was beyond.

I had every veranda alight. Yep.

I'd used up every resource of water. Yeah, there were minutes...

I'd made a promise to my grandchildren

that that fireman would come and he did.

And then he went back and he came back to Quaama again

and he came back to Quaama again.

And I see the faces... Yep.

..of all the people that you did save.

I'm sorry you couldn't save your family.

I just can't imagine life without mine.

Nothing. Yeah.

Nothing.

Yeah, I don't know how we did it. (LAUGHS)

I don't know how. Yeah.

I think we had split seconds.

We had six calls for six houses at the same time

and yours was the one we chose to go to first.

My youngest one asked you, "Will we die?"

And I remember you went...

I was expecting you to say "Of course not"

and I looked at the sight of your face when you went,

"We'll do our best." Yep.

I'm, like, "Wow, we're in big trouble."

I didn't think we'd get back out.

We just thought we were safe. Mmm.

We had two firemen in the front seat

that had got every one of us out of that house

and I remember you telling the kids...

We kept an eye out for the cops because there was...

Double demerits. Double demerits.

And we had nine of us in a five-seater.

Nine in the car. Yeah.

Three children in the boot. And it was, like...

'Cause I was trying to be funny at the time and I didn't... (LAUGHS)

We were so distracted.

I was just glad to have someone there

that knew what they were doing.

We had a pretty big adventure.

I don't think anyone would be able to beat that. That was huge.

Went with Mad Max through fireballs and everything, didn't we?

GIRL: Yeah.

I often wonder and I often question why...

why I joined and why I stayed.

And they are very different things.

I joined because, as a 16-year-old kid,

I watched my dad do something that was kind of cool.

Like, my dad went out on fire trucks and put out fires.

I stay because we get to make a difference on somebody's life

at their worst moment.

There are people who are here now because of the actions that I did

and if you think back to 15-year-old Nathan,

who was making the decision to join up,

those decisions back then,

12 years later, made the difference in someone's life.

It makes me proud.

I'm proud, more than anything,

to stand alongside my dad and my brother and do what we do

and I would...

I don't know what I would do without it.

ROSEY BARNDEN: I would never, ever ask them not to do it

because that's who they all are

and supporting these guys and seeing them still being able to go out

and do what they do helps me too, so...

And, yeah, that's why I'd never ask them to give it up.

Hey, Justin. How are you, mate?

Are you good? How you going, brother?

Yeah, good. And yourself? We've gotta stop meeting like this.

(BOTH LAUGH) People will start talking.

Hey, Vicky! How are you?

Hey, darl. Are you well? Really good to see you.

I haven't seen you for ages.

JUSTIN: Nobody is without their faults.

Brendan can be absolutely hard-headed sometimes.

(LAUGHS) Oh, yes.

However, you know, in saying that,

you know, that hard-headedness saved this village.

(SINGS) # 24th of November

# After a lightning storm

# Green Wattle fire

# 100 miles to blow... #

I love where I live.

# Thought the town would burn... # Love the people.

We're like a big family in the village.

With my crew, they're like brothers and sisters to me,

which is what we call each other, 'brother' and 'sister'.

You know, the camaraderie never goes away.

You know, I want to make sure they're safe and that our residents are safe,

our village is safe

and that's why I still do it, for the people in the village, yep.

# Thank those heroes in yellow

# Sleep peacefully tonight

# Thank those heroes in yellow. #

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

MAN: Beautiful! Beautiful!

JUSTIN KAM: This is our home.

Our property is our little patch of paradise for us, you know.

It's a beautiful place.

HELENA KAM: Gabriel was born here. (LAUGHS)

Yeah, we're resilient.

(LAUGHS)

And buggers at it too. (BOTH LAUGH)

We're just stubborn people too.

You're not gonna get rid of us that easy.

BARBARA STEWART: A lot of people have said to me

that they just can't get over that I can still have a sense of humour

and laugh about what's been going on.

I do cry but I cry quietly behind my own door.

I lost so many things, precious things

but as my son said, "Mum, they're just things."

EMILY COPLEY-MOORBY: At the end of the day, I didn't lose anything.

I was just here for it.

But the way that I move on

is by helping people who are suffering more than I am.

SHANE FITZSIMMONS: I would challenge anybody across Australia

to look in their local community

and ask yourself, "What's working well here?"

And I'm willing to bet you that it'll be underpinned by volunteers.

MAN: Every time I release a koala and we see it go up the tree,

every time I release them, I just say, "That's why we do what we do."

PAULA ZAJA: You know, they say if you want love, you give love.

If you need help, help someone else.

My identity was linked as a victim

and as soon as you start doing things for others, your identity changes

and your value in you changes, so I'm not that victim anymore.

You know, I've been able to take that and make good out of it.

Giving back makes you bigger.

Helping someone else makes you better.

MAX CARRASCO: The most beautiful reward that I had,

this little girl...

I'm sorry.

(CRIES)

She saw the uniform...

and she just ran to me and give me a big hug.

And she said, "Thank you, Mr Firefighter.

"You saved my house."

Do I get money for that?

There's no money in the world can pay that.

No money.

NATHAN BARNDEN: "I read of a man who stood to speak

"At the funeral of a friend

"He referred to the dates on the tombstone

"From the beginning to the end.

"He noted the first came the date of birth

"And spoke of the following date with tears

"But what he said mattered most of all

"Was the dash between those years.

"For that dash represents all of the time

"That that person has spent alive on Earth

"And now only those who love them know what that little line is worth.

"For it matters not how much we own, the cars, the house, the cash

"What matters most is how we live and love

"And how we spend our dash.

"So, think about this long and hard

"Are there things that you would like to change?

"For you never know how much time is left that can still be rearranged.

"So, when your eulogy is being read with your life's actions to rehash

"Would you be proud of the things they say

"About how you spent your dash?"

Captioned by Ai-Media ai-media.tv