When Bruce Pascoe first moved to Mallacoota there was no policeman and only one school teacher: him.
“The town was like a self-governing body; Mallacoota was its own own self and it was wild,” he said.
“Mad as hell but lovely in its own right, and things have changed now, there’s a different population here, but that same spirit was there in the fires.”
His property lies on the river, upstream from Mallacoota, and it’s here he’s been rediscovering Indigenous agriculture.
But the fires wiped out a crop of kangaroo grass he’d been nurturing for two years and was ready to harvest.
“It was a huge psychological loss for us to lose that entire crop, but then we got this other brilliant grass came through,” Mr Pascoe said.
“It was like the land was telling us, ‘It’s OK, this is what Australia is like, you have fire, you have recovery,’ and that’s what we got.”
Community takes over recovery
The local community has been undergoing a similar transformation.
It’s chosen to take control of its own bushfire recovery, bypassing local council in the hope it can rebuild and recover faster.
Lyn Harwood is one of six locals behind the idea.
Even as the bushfires burned, she’d already turned her mind towards recovery.
“There have been times in the past where the community has been split and wanted to go in different directions,” she said.
“I thought it was really critical that we set up a situation to help Mallacoota recover, that enabled Mallacoota to go forward in a united way.”
The town and surrou