NSW bushfires: South coast businesses ask people to come back and support them
Cafe owner Katie Anderson-Brown lost her home 13 days ago to bushfire but she has joined the clamour of calls from NSW south coast businesses for people to come back and insists it’s “business as usual”.
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Cafe owner Katie Anderson-Brown sifts through rubble that was once her rented home, unearthing jewellery and her daughters’ dolls charred in the thousand-degree furnace that destroyed Conjola Park on the NSW south coast.
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Thirteen days on from the disaster, she has joined the clamour of calls from the people of the south coast to declare, “We’re open for business”.
“It took 20 minutes for the fire to destroy the town — my children’s first memories were made in that house. I’ve lost everything I’ve accumulated over the years,” said the owner of the tourist town’s only cafe, Tilly & Mo.
“We can’t cry forever — electricity is back on, the water is clean and drinkable, we’ve put the open sign back in the window. Come back to us, be nice, we need you.”
Business owners along the south coast have been hit hard by the emergency, which resulted in holiday-makers being told to flee.
The owners of Tathra Beach House Apartments are processing $150,000 of cancellations while Kings Point Caravan Park Resort in Ulladulla, normally at 100 per cent occupancy at this time of year, is almost empty.
Eurobodalla mayor Liz Innes pleaded with tourists not to turn their backs on the south coast.
“Half of the north part of the shire has been wiped out,” she said.
“Independently owned supermarkets such as IGAs are facing stock challenges because the highway is blocked and an oversupply of fruit, vegetables and meat that are at risk of going off as locals and tourists desert us.
“The roads are now open, please come back, bring your Eskies and pack it with our local cheese monger and fishmonger and buy our produce.
“We reply on summer trade to keep us going in the coming winter. We’re not what we were but we need to be.”
The NSW Rural Fire Service on Saturday announced the south coast was “open for business” and it was safe for tourists to return to areas previously deemed too dangerous to visit.
The initial damage bill from the bushfires stands at $939 million, according to the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA), but those figures are just the tip of the iceberg.
“We’re not accounting for people or businesses who do not have home or contents’ insurance,” ICA’s Campbell Fuller said. “The cost of wider economic losses could go into billions.”
NSW’s Chamber of Commerce Damien Kelly predicts some businesses will take at least three years to recover. “Some never will, it depends on what challenges they face, the loss of tourism in the area, retail income, and the impact on agricultural production,” he said.
Originally published as NSW bushfires: South coast businesses ask people to come back and support them
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