Nothing sweet about this ‘hellish’ 2020

After baring ‘hellish’ fires and then a pandemic, Mogo Lolly Shop owner Theresa Matthews wants to erase the past 12 months from her memory.

‘I don’t want to have to come home and look after burnt animals like I did last time,’ says Theresa Matthews, the owner of Mogo Lolly Shop. Picture: Sean Davey

For Mogo Lolly Shop owner Theresa Matthews, there’s been nothing sweet about the year 2020.

The small business owner, whose home and shop’s entire stock was damaged during “hellish” fires that tore through the tiny coastal town on the NSW south coast on New Year’s Day, says she wants to erase the past 12 months from her memory.

“The anniversary is coming up, which is a bit nerve-racking,” Ms Matthews said.

“I just want it to go away.”

Ahead of the release of the Royal Commission into Natural Disaster Arrangement’s final report this week, Ms Mat­thews says she hopes the inquiry will recommend better communication systems and preparation protocols before and during a fire event.

“They should have told us to leave much earlier,” she said.

“At Ulladulla, they had very good community meetings and updates on Facebook but there was no real fire emergency messaging down here and we don’t have a really large auditorium … where you can evacuate to.”

The commission’s interim report, released in August, called for the immediate rollout of a new nat­ional emergency warning system after the probe heard evidence that terms such as “watch and act” had been confusing to those in the line of fire.

Ms Matthews said she had to move locations five times to escape the ever-changing threats on the day of the fire.

While she had done more clearing this year in preparation for the fire season, she said she would not be able to cope if a similar inferno was to bear down on the area. “I’m not staying. I’m not fighting. I’m not even coming back to see if the house is still there,” she said through tears.

“I don’t want to go through that again. I don’t want to have to come home and look after the burnt animals like I did last time. I can’t go through that again.”

The shop, which proudly stocks just Australian-made confectionary, looks a little different thanks to the coronavirus pandemic and large bottles of hand sanitiser.

A masked-shop attendant now greets visitors as they enter the store.

Ms Matthews said in some ways, COVID-19 had been “a bit of a blessing” giving her time to get her affairs in order and deal with the damage at her property, as well as the holes burned into the shopfront’s veranda.

She said community support had been fantastic but she had been left heartbroken by “disaster tourists” who arrived in droves to gawk at the destruction in the days after the blaze.

“People were standing out there photographing me as I took down the burnt-out Christmas display I had put up for the kids,” she said.

“They watched me doing it with their phones rather than lending a hand and, yes, I could have used a bit of a help that day. I couldn’t cope with it.”

Outside the shop, James and Dimity Stanthorpe, who had come from Wagga Wagga, were among a throng of visitors looking to support the local economy.

“We came by because we knew that the bushfires had destroyed much of the area and we just wanted to show some support,” Mr Stanthorpe said, clutching a bag full of lollies.