Kangaroo Island bushfire recovery: BlazeAid volunteers repair farmers’ burnt-out fences
There’s a long struggle ahead for the farmers of Kangaroo Island, but a horde of volunteers will be there for months helping rebuild their farms’ fences, and community.
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They’re coming from all over the world, and they’ll probably be there for six months.
They are the BlazeAid volunteers who have flocked to Kangaroo Island to help farmers in the painstaking task of repairing fences destroyed by the bushfire.
BlazeAid crews are also helping farmers in the Adelaide Hills, where 270 volunteers are registered, and near Edithburgh on the Yorke Peninsula.
But their work on KI will be the organisation’s biggest and most complex undertaking in SA. An advance group of six set up camp in Parndana a couple of weeks ago, after initial plans to establish a base further west at Gosse were scrapped when the bushfire ripped through the tiny township and gutted the Western District Football Club.
After the fire which had raged on the island for weeks finally settled down, officials last weekend opened the gates for other volunteers to make the trip across and start helping out.
Co-ordinators Greg and Ann Stevens, pictured, established the camp at Parndana Sporting Club.
The North Haven couple expect their caravan will be their home for at least six months – as long as it takes to get the job done.
The sporting club, home of the Parndana Roosters football team, has become a home to dozens of caravans, camper trailers, tents and swags.
Army reservists have also set up base on the other side of the oval, and the two organisations are working together to play a key role helping islanders get back on their feet.
Mr Stevens said he had fielded calls from every corner of the globe from people wanting to come and help. There was even an indigenous training group from Broome, in northern WA, planning to drive more than 4000 kilometres to join them.
Some volunteers will stay for a day, some will stay for months as they help farmers firstly remove the remains of thousands of kilometres of fencing burnt by the fire, and then build new ones.
Fencing is a priority for farmers to manage, feed and water animals which survived the blaze.
Steve Hewitt, from north of Gawler, was one of the first to arrive as part of the advance crew and has been to many BlazeAid camps across Australia over the years. He said farmers, usually proudly independent, were sometimes initially reluctant to accept help, especially from an organisation made up of mostly elderly volunteers.
“But once we start on a property and one or two farmers see what we do, word spreads like wildfire that we can put up a good fence and we get inundated with work,” he said. “People often ask why I do BlazeAid, and I always say I do it because I’m selfish – it makes me feel good.
“When you go out to a farm, especially on the first day, very often you’ll find a farmer that has kilometres of fencing and so many trees down and you can tell by their body language that they’re just thoroughly beaten. And you spend one day, do a bit of clearing, maybe put up one little fence, and just the change that happens in them in a day is something that’s unbelievable. The rewards you get from helping the farmers is just unbelievable. The change in their attitude … it gives them optimism.”
The BlazeAid volunteers said they had been blown away by the reception they received from the Kangaroo Island community.
One Parndana local had offered to pay for a meal at the Parndana Hotel for every volunteer once a week for as long as the BlazeAiders were in town.
BlazeAid was founded by Victorian couple Kevin and Rhonda Butler in in 2009.
The charity has since spent more than 100,000 volunteer days helping more than 4000 properties across Australia repair enough fences to stretch from Adelaide to Darwin and back.
Defence Force relishes chance to help recovery
No task is too small. No task is too menial.
That’s been the ethos of the more than 600 Australian Defence Force personnel who have been part of Operation Bushfire Assist on Kangaroo Island and in the Adelaide Hills.
On the island especially, the army has left an impression which will live with the locals for years.
Hundreds of army vehicles, ranging from Bushmasters to bulldozers, have been a common sight along local roads, khaki-clad soldiers have manned chainsaws and water pumps and Chinook helicopters have dropped bales of hay to desperate farmers in remote areas.
Major Trent Harron, the Officer Commanding for the 10th/27th Battalion Emergency Support Team on the island, said his soldiers had formed a special bond with the locals and were relishing the chance to help wherever and however they could.
Major Harron, recently returned from a six-month deployment to Iraq with Task Group Taji IX in northern Baghdad, said it was rewarding to now be able to help residents on home soil.
“As Defence Force members, we are often very focused on communities external to Australia and Australia’s interests abroad,” he said. “But we derive a lot of purpose from helping people at home.”
Soldiers, both full-time and reservists, have come from all over Australia to be part of the recovery effort.
Their tasks have included delivering hay and water to desperate farmers, burying livestock and wild animals killed in the blaze, clearing fallen trees off roads, delivering generators to residents left without power and helping BlazeAid volunteers remove and restore destroyed fencing.
They have also done some heavy lifting, from retrieving a $27,000, 300kg bed used by a quadriplegic forced to evacuate to shifting pianos for residents affected by the fires.
Army personnel have manned the water pump at Parndana CFS station, helped evacuate residents when the fire advanced on January 9 and helped re-establish water supplies after the island’s main water plant was badly damaged.
They’ve created firebreaks, helped recover and treat animals injured in the fire, and offered pastoral care for residents coming to terms with the trauma of the fires.
An army reservist who is a barista in his civilian role even jumped behind the counter and helped make coffees when he noticed an employee under the pump at a Parndana cafe.
They might not be tasks they ever expected to be undertaking, but their training in crisis management, combined with the unique set of real-life skills only army reservists can bring, has made them a perfect fit for the bushfire recovery effort.
“We’ve been trained to operate with not enough resources in austere environments, with time pressure,” Lieutenant Rob Main from Mount Gambier explains. “Here we have all the resources we can ask for, we have time pressure and we have austere environments.
“In reality, we’re very well prepared for situations like this.
We have plumbers, carpenters, engineers, people with trades so that if a person throws a hairy problem at us, one of the guys in the detachment can say, ‘I can fix that sir’, and we do it there and then.
“So we’re able to offer an insane amount of capability.”
Sergeant Aaron Stevens, from 9 Combat Service Support Battalion, grew up in country Victoria near Bendigo and was among the first army personnel to deploy to the island.
With a lifelong connection with drought-stricken farmers, he jumped at the chance to help out and has been overwhelmed by the reception the islanders have given him and his colleagues.
“This has definitely been the most satisfying thing I’ve ever done” he said. “Just being out there, getting that face-to-face contact and to see the effect that we’re having.
“You join the army to go overseas and do your job but this is what we’re really defending. To be able to come out here … it’s been absolutely amazing. If anyone walks away from this and says I haven’t been affected, I’d be very surprised.”