SA Weekend cover story: The long road back for Kangaroo Island after the double whammy of the bushfires and COVID-19 pandemic
One of the best starts to the farming season in years has offered a glimmer of hope for a population still reeling from the double whammy of generational bushfires and a global pandemic. Paul Ashenden reports from Kangaroo Island.
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Signs on the Playford Highway near Parndana are still twisted and melted from the inferno.
A few kilometres down the road, around Gosse, the scorched bitumen is another reminder of the immense heat of the blaze.
Even further west, the gutted frame of the Flinders Chase National Park visitor centre sits desolately in a thicket of charred sugar gums, mostly devoid of leaves.
Each scene paints a sombre picture and is an inescapable reminder of the firestorm which changed Kangaroo Island forever six months ago. But look beyond the parched trees which line the roads on the western half of the island, and there are rolling paddocks rich with green. And speak to the hardened farmers who are working tirelessly to rebuild, and you’ll discover a quiet determination. Most are reasonably happy with the recovery process and are committed to doing their best with the horrible cards they have been dealt.
There are still some who are doing it tough, and anger remains that the blaze, which started on December 20, was not contained before it reached a terrifying zenith on January 3. Some blame the dense vegetation in Flinders Chase for the fire’s ferocity and scale. Others blame the timber plantations dotted across the western half of the island.
And the double whammy of the bushfires followed almost immediately by local, national and international travel restrictions have had a devastating blow on the island’s tourism operators, some of whom did not take a booking for five or six months.
The COVID-19 lockdown also shut down hotels, churches and local sport, ruling a line through the community gatherings which have traditionally provided the most natural environments to talk about their shared trauma – a recognised key ingredient to help improve mental health.
But the people who spoke with SAWeekend during a two-day visit to the island were mostly philosophical about the recovery process response and, after a near-perfect start to the farming season, cautiously optimistic about the road forward.
John Symons was one of the miracle survivors of the January blaze. The veteran grazier, 75, was trapped in his ute when the fireball went over his property, Turkey Lane Merinos, northwest of Parndana. He managed to escape but lost the ute, his home of 50 years, two dogs, machinery and just under 2500 sheep.
Symons and his wife Jo now share a home with their daughter Hannah Robins, son-in-law Brian and granddaughter Celine, as they start on the long and slow road to economic recovery.
The family has worked tirelessly since the blaze. Their first, and most gruesome, job (like every farmer who lost sheep and cattle) was to take stock of their immediate animal losses, shoot those who could not be saved and bury the carcasses.
The official tally of dead livestock for the whole island is 59,730 and there are so many mass burial sites that some pockets of land resemble outback opal mining fields.
The idea of killing their own animals was abhorrent for many farmers, so some relied on neighbours or veterinarians to put the scorched animals out of their misery.
As they were counting their losses at Turkey Lane Merinos, Symons, who runs the farm with daughter Robins, established a hospital flock of about 1100, which they mustered every three days to inject each injured sheep with antibiotics and anti-inflammatories, ultimately saving about 850.
Their shearing shed was among the casualties of the blaze, so they borrowed a crutching trailer from a friend to clip their remaining flock, then turned their attention to clearing and then rebuilding 45km of external and internal fencing.
Australian Defence Force reservists and BlazeAid volunteers have helped with their fencing and the State Government engaged civil contractor McMahon Services to clear what remained of all burnt buildings across the island. The removal of the debris from the family home was an important mental step for many.
“I guess it was pretty depressing,” Symons says as he gestures to a patch of land which was once his home and then a pile of twisted, burnt remains, and is now a flat block on which they will rebuild.
“Every day you’d come up here and there’s a piled-up heap of tin and stuff where you’re working. It kind of rubbed off in the end, when you started to get used to seeing the destruction. But they came and did an excellent job in tidying it up and getting that away.”
Mayor Michael Pengilly was outspoken against what he perceived as an initial delay in the clean-up, but Symons’ praise for the clean-up job is echoed by most who lost their homes.
Similarly, most have few complaints about the insurance process, the support they have received from their financial institutions or the accessibility of government assistance – aside from the mountain of paperwork they have had to wade through.
Many have been too busy to even contemplate their mental health, working weeks on end without taking a day off to get things back on track.
Farmer Tom Wurst, who lost his home on Stokes Bay Rd, has had to devote nearly all his energy to rebuilding the farm, at the expense of his young family.
Wurst, his wife Steph and children Jack, 8, Georgia, 6, and Charlotte, 2, are now renting a friend’s home, about 20km from the farm, near Parndana. He pauses when asked what’s been the toughest part of the recovery process.
“Good question,” he says with a chuckle as we look over the cleared soil which once housed his home and all his belongings. “Just the amount of work, really.
“And probably the family life has suffered. That’s been one of the toughest things. I’ve just been working all the time. Steph’s pretty much over it … You’re trying to cram 10 years of work in six months.”
Like many young country families, the Wursts’ winter weekends usually focus on playing for and supporting their local football and netball club. In their case, it’s the Parndana Roosters in the Kangaroo Island Football League, but coronavirus restrictions forced the league to cancel its senior competition.
Junior under-15 and under-12s football will start again next month, but for the past three months, club members have not had a chance to get together at games and training nights to talk about what they have been through.
“That’s where the COVID thing’s hurt the most, with the mental health side of things,” Wurst says. “Just not being able to get back to some sort of normality has been tough.”
The shutdown of winter sport and its effect on people’s mental health is an issue of which those in officialdom are acutely aware. Both Pengilly and Rob Manton, the State Government’s KI recovery co-ordinator, say the virus restrictions couldn’t have come at a worse time.
Manton is a former soldier who spent years heading up Veterans SA, so knows only too well the effect that trauma can have on individuals and a community.
“In many cases, it takes some years for trauma to manifest,” he says. “The long-term recovery focus of the island will be around mental health and the wellbeing of people. Because at some point people will stop (working around the clock) and that tends to be when they start thinking ‘oh goodness, I’ve lost my house, I’ve all lost my effects and I’ve now got to rebuild the farm that I inherited from my grandfather’.
“There’s a long-term impact there that we need to be very conscious of.”
To that end, the government has announced a $2.61 million health package for everyone from the island, Adelaide Hills and Yorke Peninsula affected by summer’s fires.
It’s part of a multi-million State Government response. On Kangaroo Island, the government has dished out grants for personal hardship (479 payments totalling $248,360), small business loss of income (219 payments totalling $2.19 million), small business rebuilding (51 payments totalling $1.64 million) and primary producers (141 payments totalling $10.16 million).
In addition, a statewide bushfire appeal received $8.8 million in donations – of which $2.39 million has gone to 670 recipients on Kangaroo Island – and a mayoral appeal, which took $5.3 million in donations, has dished out about $2.9 million to 450 applicants.
Staff at a government-run recovery centre at Parndana have guided people through an often overwhelming maze of bureaucracy needed to work through the grants and building application process.
Occupants of the 119 homes which were lost in the fires initially camped out at friends’ homes, in borrowed caravans and even tents immediately after the fire. Manton says all have since found more permanent living arrangements, either in rental homes, fitted-out sheds or in one of 38 temporary accommodation pods provided by Minderoo Foundation – the charity established by mining magnate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest.
“I am unaware of anyone who is still living in unsuitable accommodation,” Manton says. “Everyone who was impacted in that way now has a place to call home in the short term. I’m not aware of anyone who is still living in a caravan … There’s certainly no-one sleeping in a tent or anything like that.”
Manton had barely visited the island before started his role in April and says he’s been amazed by the strength and character of its residents.
“It’s a remarkably resilient community, right across the board, but particularly the farmers and the property owners,” he says.
“If you look at the fact that they’ve had a bushfire, and the fact they’ve had COVID, their view is ‘well, that’s just reality, just deal with it’. And they are just getting on and doing exactly that. They’re incredibly resilient.”
Up at Stokes Bay, Paul and Katja Stanton and their children Poppy, 16, and Sunny, 10, epitomise this resilience as they rebuild their lives after losing the 690 sqm, 21-room, home Paul had spent 46 years gradually building.
The Stantons have spread themselves over a couple of holiday cabins, normally used by tourists, at the Waves and Wildlife Cottages complex they manage for Katja’s parents. Their farm is a few kilometres south, down Stokes Bay Rd, across the road from the Wurst property.
There used to be four homes on the Stanton property – one each for the families of brothers Paul, John and Richard, and one for their parents, Dean, a 98-year-old World War II bomber pilot, and Mamie. Now there is just one. Only Dean and Mamie’s house survived the blaze, which also claimed many of the animals, both wild and domesticated, the family held so dear.
Paul and Katja Stanton are self-confessed animal people. They share their new cabins with pets, including five dogs, two lambs, two joeys, two cats, a calf, a sleepy lizard … and a mob of about 100 wild kangaroos which graze outside a front door which opens to a magnificent view of Stokes Bay.
It’s an idyllic location but the situation is far from ideal. They haven’t had a day off since the fires, and spend most of their time treating burnt animals – both at the cottage complex and on the farm – and starting to rebuild about 30km of lost fencing.
“The worst things with the fires were the two people who died (Dick and Clayton Lang) and the animals that died,” Katja says. “To lose the house was very sad but it doesn’t really mean anything compared to that. I couldn’t speak for two days (after the fires) just thinking about the animals. You can’t get the pictures out of your head … what they would have gone through.”
Like everyone who spoke to SAWeekend, the Stantons have been blown away by the support they have received from both within the island and from the mainland.
“I’m a real animal person but this is the first time I’ve gone ‘people are so great’,” Katja says. “Because they really are. We wouldn’t have been able to get through this if people had not helped as they have.
“They’ve helped with everything. Financially, bringing food, helping build fences … our friends lent us a tractor. They’ve just done everything for us because we’re just too stupid at the moment to actually organise anything.”
The Stantons haven’t put much thought into what any new home would look like, and there’s goon-natured tension brewing around whether Paul will be allowed to do the building again himself.
Like the Wursts, the Stantons say the routine and stability of school have helped Poppy and Sunny get over the trauma of the summer fires.
The school has also played a critical role as a community hub in the six months since the fires. Every one of the school’s 180 students was directly affected, and Matt Linn, head of Parndana Campus of Kangaroo Island Community Education, says he’s in awe of their resilience.
“After what was a pretty torrid summer, it’s quite lovely for them to be able to return back to the routine and stability of school, and they’ve done that with huge enthusiasm which, considering what so many of them are going through, is quite incredible,” he says.
It’s a sentiment echoed by fifth-generation local Haydon Turner, who SAWeekend found repairing a fence on a property owned by Andrew and Tracie Heinrich, who run the prestigious Ella Matta stud just north of Parndana.
Turner ran his own fencing business for 15 years before selling up just two weeks before the fires. The sale was supposed to be a transition to retirement, but he couldn’t say no when new owner, John Watters of Gum Creek Fencing, asked him to help the locals rebuild.
Turner was one of just four fencing contractors on the island before the fire. He says that number has blown out to 12 in response to the demand.
“I couldn’t do much else so the best thing for me to do is to keep fencing and pass on my experience because we get a few young lads help out,” he says. “And if you don’t pass on the skills of knot tying and stuff like that, they’ll be lost. But the feeling on the island is excellent – everyone’s bonded together pretty well. It’s really a community. They all pitch and help each other.”
Further west, on the edge of Flinders Chase National Park, Fiona and Mark Jago run Western KI Caravan Park. The couple finished renovating their house and office just three months before the fire came through and wiped out those buildings, as well as two camp kitchens and three of the 13 cabins the park once boasted.
They stood on their back deck about 3am on December 30 and watched bolt after bolt of lightning strike in the national park during a storm which had a ferocity which sent tingles down their spines, and knew the next few days were going to be tough.
“Every time you saw a lightning bolt you’re thinking, ‘Where’s that one going to go?’,” Fiona Jago says.
“We knew every lightning bolt was going to start a fire – it was just so hot and dry. It was a storm like you’d never forget; I’d never experienced that sort of thing before.”
Three days later, with more catastrophic conditions on the way and predictions of a massive firefront coming out of the park, the Jagos made the difficult decision to tell their 250 guests they needed to pack up and leave.
By 1.30pm on Friday, January 3, they could see the front heading for the park. Fiona hooked up their own caravan and drove east, and Mark fled half an hour later, bound for the relative safety of Kingscote and wondering what would be left when they returned.
It wasn’t until the following Monday they could return and count the cost. Miraculously, 10 cabins and the toilet block had survived, which buoyed them enough to commit to getting the park back on its feet.
It has been a long haul, and involved living first in their caravan, and now in one of the cabins, but they committed to and were ready for reopening by Easter. And then COVID-19 came along. So they had an extra couple of months of cleaning up before finally opening on May 19 – with the remaining cabins and 40 powered and 30 unpowered camping sites – and people, like the wildlife, are starting to return.
The decision to reopen Flinders Chase National Park to people on guided tours – such as those the caravan park provides – earlier this month was a big milestone, and an even bigger one will come when the park opens to the public on July 4 and people will have the unique opportunity to see the green shoots of its regrowth.
“It’s amazing – the regrowth really is,” Fiona Jago says. “It’s beautiful in its own way.
“I had one guest this morning who had never been into the National Park before and he said he found it quite confronting at first to drive through the park and see the devastation, but he also talked about how beautiful it was as well – how quickly it’s regrowing.”
The reopening of the park is a drawcard both mayor Michael Pengilly and tourism body chairman Pierre Gregor say the island desperately needs after going months with virtually zero visitors.
Even tourist operators who weren’t physically affected by the fires lost business in early January – the peak time for visitors – thanks to an incorrect perception that the whole island had gone up in flames.
A State Government “Book Them Out” campaign, which encouraged tourists to return to the state’s fire-ravaged regions, was just starting to hit its straps when the global pandemic delivered the island’s second once-in-a-generation blow in almost as many months.
For some tourist destinations physically affected by the fires, though, the devastation was complete. The demolition and clean-up of the burnt-out remains of the $60 million luxury Southern Ocean Lodge is ongoing. Owners James and Hayley Baillie have vowed to rebuild but a reopening is still at least two years away.
Flinders Chase National Park’s visitor centre and the Chase Cafe which once sat inside it were gutted and will similarly take years to rebuild. Roo Lagoon Gallery and KI Wilderness Retreat simply no longer exist.
“But there hasn’t been a tourism business on the island that hasn’t been affected,” Gregor says. “And when I talk about tourism, it’s more than the accommodation, experience providers and farmgate cellar doors; it’s also the broader visitor economy, such as retail outlets, souvenir stores and cafes. They’ve all been impacted directly by both bushfires and COVID.”
Pengilly estimates it will be 10 years before the island properly recovers from the fires. He acknowledges there are still some in the community struggling to cope but says there is an overarching sentiment of positivity about the recovery process.
The council has received about 30 applications for new homes and some people hope to be living in them by Christmas.
The mayor is full of praise for the 600 or so Australian Defence Force personnel who chipped in with a myriad of tasks – including clearing trees of roads, rolling up fence wire, burying livestock and delivering generators – immediately after the blaze.
And volunteers from BlazeAid have worked tirelessly and continuously, even throughout the COVID-19 lockdown, helping farmers clear and replace hundreds of kilometres of internal and perimeter fencing.
“I really think the community’s really banded together very well on this, and it has done right through,” Pengilly says. “I don’t think that will go away, despite the odd hiccup. I actually think things are quite positive, and pretty good – we’ve just got to work on.”
But he understands the island still has many challenges as it recovers from both the bushfires and coronavirus. Unemployment on the island is reasonably high and winter is a traditionally quiet time for tourism operators, who are relishing the thought of all interstate borders reopening in July. Pengilly urged South Australians to help boost Kangaroo Island’s economic prospects by paying a visit.
“I’d encourage everyone to come over during winter,” he says. “The countryside’s green, the bush is regenerating, the coastal scenery is all good. You’ll be able to go down to Flinders Chase and all those other places, so please come. As I said the other day, you can’t go overseas, you haven’t been able to go interstate. So if you want an overseas trip, come to Kangaroo Island.”