Cudlee Creek fire two weeks on: Devastated locals on the long road to recovery
Hills residents are bravely enduring the emotional task of sifting through the rubble, meanwhile Udder Delights staff are having to throw out thousands of smoke-damaged cheese wheels.
SA News
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More than two weeks on from the start of the Cudlee Creek fire, Adelaide Hills residents continue to sift through the rubble of their broken homes with hopes of rebuilding and restoring their livelihoods.
They are on a long road to recovery, and the wounds are as deep as they are raw.
Wendy Nitschke is one resident who has begun the emotional task of clearing the charred remains of her family’s 100-year-old home on the outskirts of Lobethal.
She should be on a luxurious cruise to the Isle of Pines in the South Pacific. Instead, she is grappling with ash, dust and jagged metal.
A friend kindly let her borrow a camper trailer so she could sleep next to her destroyed home, just off Neudorf Rd, but it’s a far cry from the Christmas holiday she was due to take five days after the fire.
The flames of Ash Wednesday lapped at the fringes of the Nitschkes’ home 37 years ago as she stayed and defended it with her late father. The Cudlee Creek blaze proved to be too strong, even for this brave local.
She says her treasured home, which had been in the family for three generations, was one of the first to go up in flames as the fire raged towards their property from Hollands Creek Rd.
”We’ve lost my grandpa’s car, my dad’s motorbike, the family home, numerous sheds ... stuff that we will never be able to replace that’s priceless. Absolutely priceless,” she says. “It’s losing 100 years of my family.”
Precious family photos went up in flames just over two weeks ago, as well as her father’s beloved tractor collection.
But out of the ashes comes amazing kindness, Ms Nitschke says.
“Accept all the support you can if it’s offered because there’s some amazing people out there that are just willing to give us water and feed for our stock,” she says.
A generous teenager, armed with two bottles of water, was walking down Neudorf Rd two days after the fire, looking for someone to help.
Ethan Randall, 16, saw Ms Nitschke trying to tow a 500kg cow with an old car when he decided to jump into action and offer his dad’s four-wheel-drive vehicle.
“He has just been invaluable because our brains are mush at the moment, so he’s kind of like pushing us along,” Ms Nitschke says of Ethan.
“He wants to be up here helping us all the time ... every day, unless we kick him off the property.”
Ethan says he had to do something for those in need.
“In such a bad situation like that, I just don’t like sitting on my arse and doing nothing,” he says.
“She’s told me a lot of stuff about her dad and his history on the property; it’s very meaningful.”
He found a repairer who agreed to restore one of the damaged tractors free.
Ms Nitschke hopes to have plans approved to rebuild her home a short distance away on the same property – but the work that needs to be done seems endless.
Even acquiring fence posts and PVC piping is a lengthy process because of soaring demand across the Hills in the aftermath of the fire.
Further up the hill lie the remains of Enrico and Sophia Sgarbi’s home on Croft Rd.
They, too, hope to rebuild on their land after losing everything, except the clothes on their backs.
After dropping off his son Alexander at Adelaide Airport, Mr Sgarbi, 58, received a phone call from his worried wife on the morning of the fire.
“By the time I got to Lenswood, I could see the smoke and I realised this was not going to be a good day,” he says. “We drove around the property a couple of times and after about 30 minutes, the fire was coming down the hill adjacent to our home.
“That’s how quick it moved.”
The most important thing for Mr Sgarbi was to get his elderly mother to safety.
“The winds were incredible,” he says. “I could barely open the door of my car to get my mother in.
“We left and that was the last we saw of our property.”
While looking at their fallen home last week, it’s hard to imagine how beautiful it once was.
Mr Sgarbi says every night they would grab a drink and pick a different spot on their immaculately landscaped property, “depending on the winds and the clouds”.
“We used to throw food for the magpies … or just grab a drink and walk around the property and just enjoy the fruits of our labour,” he says.
“Even at lunchtime, we would come out on the patio and have lunch together and listen to the birds.”
Standing at what was once the back of their home, Mr Sgarbi pauses for a moment to point out the deafening silence permeating through the singed trees and crispy plants.
“It’s so quiet around here,” he says.
“To be honest, you could not talk because of the birds. This is not normal. This is way too quiet.
“The black cockatoos used to nest in those pine trees over there and the white cockatoos would hear my wife’s voice and they would come out here screaming for seed.”
Mr Sgarbi and his wife feel like their bond with nature is broken.
“We were in synch with nature here, and nature was in synch with us,” he says.
After moving to the area in June 2001, the couple began crafting their dream home – an “oasis” where everyday felt like they were living at a resort.
“We’re gutted by the fact that almost 20 years of blood, sweat and tears is gone,” Mr Sgarbi says.
The Cudlee Creek fire wiped out more than 85 homes and devastated several businesses.
With a burning vengeance, it quickly changed people’s lives forever and claimed the life of one man, Ron Selth.
It’s unclear how long it will take for residents to rebound from the devastating fire but they’re not alone on this journey. Support has flooded in from the Adelaide Hills and wider South Australian community as donations continue to roll in.
Mr Sgarbi hopes by sharing his story that people will understand the level of destruction bushfires can inflict.
“It’s an unfortunate situation that we live with in this country,” he says.
“It’s a great country but it’s the problem we’ve got.”
HILLS BUSINESS DITCHES 65 TONNES OF CHEESE
Thousands of wheels of smoke and heat-damaged cheeses are being dumped in skip bins as Udder Delights continues to count the cost of the Cudlee Creek Bushfire.
Workers at the cheese company’s Lobethal factory have been forced to throw pallets full of cheese into a bin ever since the bushfire came within metres of the facility on December 20, rendering the dairy products unsaleable.
Udder Delights managing director Saul Sullivan said the discarded stock was either smoke damaged or spoiled due to a power outage during the fire.
“The last tally has come in at around 60-65 tonnes of stock so it has a retail value of about $2.5 million,” he said.
“The bushfire came right to the back doors (and) it was only because the water bombers hit the factory that it was actually saved, so everything was so badly smoke-affected that it now has to be disposed of.”
Mr Sullivan said the impact of the fire was “absolutely heartbreaking” for the staff.
“The day after the fire here we had a crisis meeting and so any staff here had actually lost houses or had family (that had lost homes),” he said.
“There were a lot of tears and the community has really felt it hard. It has been extremely tough.”
However, Udder Delights is urging the community to support it, and other Adelaide Hills producers, as they recover from the blaze.
“It’s going to take some weeks for production to be back up and running to a decent speed so we’ll certainly be asking the community to support us when things are up and running,” he said.
“I just urge the community to buy products from the Adelaide Hills.”
COUPLE DEVASTATED AT LOSS OF WILDLIFE
Cudlee Creek residents Terry Reardon and Joan Gibbs used to wake up to the sight of lush trees and rich wildlife surrounding them every day.
But, now, bloatflies feast on dead koalas scattered across the blackened earth.
A short distance away from their home, a young kangaroo’s burnt carcass can be seen trapped on a fence.
The couple have lived at the bottom of a valley just off Fox Creek Rd for 30 years and are devastated at the loss of wildlife.
Their now-black 70-acre property is just one patch of land that shows the true environmental destruction of the bushfire that burned three Fridays ago.
“It’s really depressing, we walked around and, apart from seeing dead wildlife, a lot of big old trees have gone,” Mr Reardon said.
Ms Gibbs said blue fairy wrens would enjoy the bracken and blackberry weeds scattered around their plot of land, but now “all the habitat is gone”.
“The skin of the earth has been singed,” she said.
“If you drive from here to Lobethal on the back roads, it’s just like this: nothing.”
The couple successfully defended their home as the flames slowly burned around them on that fateful Friday, knowing they could retreat in their fireproof bunker if they got in trouble.
They ache for those who lost their homes and said they were lucky that the flames happened to be slow in their location.
Wildlife expert Professor Chris Daniels said it will take “decades” for the environment to be fully restored after the Cudlee Creek fire, but initial signs of recovery could be seen as early as next month in some areas.
“It’s utterly, utterly devastating and large numbers of animals and plants have been destroyed but with ... work and support from community and the government, we can recover from this,” he said.
Professor Daniels said every affected area in the Adelaide Hills will have different levels of environmental destruction and it will be a long process to analyse the true cost.
“In areas where the fire was extremely hot, the trees may have been killed and that can be a disaster for ecosystem because those trees are incredibly important,” he said.