Kangaroo Island fires force a new direction for local hero

BCA’s Biggies Awards finalist: After living through the trauma of the horrific Kangaroo Island bushfires, Kaytee Collins wants to use her experience as a launchpad to help change the world.

Kaytee Collins of Bank SA. Picture: Tom Roschi

The Business Council of Australia’s Biggies Awards finalist: After living through the trauma of the horrific Kangaroo Island bushfires, Kaytee Collins wants to use her experience as a launchpad to help change the world.

-

After living through the trauma of the horrific Kangaroo Island bushfires, most people would stop and concentrate on themselves for a moment.

But BankSA branch manager Kaytee Collins says she wants to use her “midlife crisis” as a launchpad to help change the world.

After she witnessed the profound and prolonged impact the devastating Black Summer infernos had on her community of Kingscote (the largest town on Kangaroo Island), Collins set her sights on helping as many people as possible.

This is someone who had already completed a Lifeline accidental counsellor course to better equip herself in helping members of the community still coming to grips with the natural disaster. It’s someone who converted her BankSA staffroom into a crisis management room for the stream of people who needed somewhere to turn.

“I have achieved all of the milestones I could have ever dreamt of in this world,” she says.

“And now I sort of go: what can I do more for my community? I enjoyed being there so much, to be able to help in a practical and productive way.

“I actually can be one person who can change the world. I’m not Brittany Higgins, I’m not Mother Teresa, but it doesn’t take a great deal to make a difference.”

Only 15 months earlier, the January night sky on Kangaroo Island burned a ghostly, unnerving orange outside Collins’ window.

She remembered one piece of advice, an odd rhyme stuck in her head.

“When you see the glow, it’s time to go,” the Kingscote manager recalls.

The island community had been on edge for weeks as fires spread from the north coast, but in the first few days of 2020 the threat spread to most parts of the island.

Now on January 9, the fires were out of control and the digital South Australian Country Fire Service map switched from blue to yellow.

Kingscote was no longer considered a safe zone but it was too late to escape.

Instead, residents, tourists and others who had gravitated to Kingscote from across the island as the fires worsened were evacuated to the local jetty, where they packed into cars for a nerve-racking night.

“There was just complete and utter fear. I actually don’t think I’ve ever been so scared of anything before,” Collins says.

After an hour’s sleep, she rolled up her sleeves, opened the BankSA branch doors and got to work.

“It was a no-brainer for me, I just went, people have to be able to go somewhere. And we need to be ready to do whatever it takes,” she says.

Over the coming days, weeks and months — aided by a stockpile of essential goods provided by BankSA, which is part of the Westpac Group — Collins hunted for any resources she could get her hands on.

“One of the experiences I had, because we live and work in the same community, and we know our customers by name, we had lots of people come here over the relief centre because we didn’t have to process them, because we didn’t have to ID them,” she says.

“This was familiar and safe.

“So it was really, really important for me that anyone who felt displaced, lost, or didn’t know where to turn, could go somewhere where they were comfortable and where they were accepted and okay.”

At the time of devastation, the Kangaroo Island local helped anyone who came to see her — and even those who didn’t.

Whether they were a BankSA customer or not, Collins thought outside the box of immediate necessity to find ways to help the Kingscote community get back on their feet.

“They could see, instead of being told by someone else, ‘here’s the clothes to wear’, they could choose something that made them smile, or give them a small glimmer of hope and happiness,” she says.

“Being able to be there and make that difference, I’d do it all again tomorrow.”

-

Q&A

Kaytee, what was the biggest challenge you faced in your community work last year?

It was the fact that I found myself in a world that I didn’t know and a role I didn’t know I held, or that my community didn’t know I held. I thought I was a branch manager, Monday to Friday, 9-5, with financial capabilities. And my role became 24/7. I had people coming to my house, I had people calling me at 2am. And I suddenly became this point of contact, right down to the point that I converted our staffroom into a crisis management room. And I started to categorise customers and community members on a colour scale — red, yellow, orange — depending on whether they were indirectly impacted, impacted or total loss. I gathered the information I could about them, to best work out how to help them. So the big challenge for me was that I expected one or two people to come in and ask for some help, and instead I felt like I was running my own version of the recovery centre.

What should government do to help overcome some of the problems you became aware of last year?

Whether it’s a government agency, or a not-for-profit, there was some sort of red tape in the process, and most people who needed help faced difficulties: “I’ve lost my house. Where do I go?” And the reply: “What’s your name? Do you have your driver’s licence?” “No, my house burnt down.” “Okay, what documents do you have?” “I don’t have anything, everything was burnt down.” I would love to see a bit more “human” where it matters.

Should business do more and, if so, what should they do?

Empowering people is really important. If they’re good enough to do the job, you’ve got to trust them. And when people speak up and say, “Hey, we could do this, and this is gonna make a difference”, hear that for what it is. If people have experiences or are in the know, they’re on your frontline, use those qualities. Allow employees to be human — you don’t always have to follow the book. The only difference between ordinary and extraordinary is a little extra. If you can ask your people to find that little extra, and your business can be that little bit extra, that’s far more important than anything else.