Residents return to tragic ghost towns

Hundreds of Victorians have made their way back into fire-ravaged towns to find out what’s left of their homes.

What remains of historic Towong Hill Station homestead.

The historic Towong Hill Station, where Silver Brumby author Elyne Mitchell and her family have lived for generations, has been gutted, with only the walls appearing to remain of the massive homestead that overlooks the Murray River and Snowy Mountains.

As hundreds of Victorians made their way back into fire-ravaged towns to survey the damage, photos of the homestead, built in the early 1900s just outside Corryong, show the building is almost unrecognisable since being hit by an inferno on Saturday.

Towong Hill Station homestead before it was gutted by fire.

The large two-storey homestead, said to have boasted 27 rooms, two kitchens and eight bedrooms, was where Mitchell wrote books romanticising the Snowy Mountains, its brumbies, and life on the region’s cattle stations.

Current owner John Mitchell, a cattle identity and well-known philanthropist, declined to comment.

Convoys returned residents to nearby towns along the Murray Valley Highway — including Walwa and Tallangatta — and into the East Gippsland community of Cann River on Tuesday, after the weather cooled enough to allow people to survey what was left of their homes.

Veterinarian Sarah Albert was evacuated from Walwa with her son on Sunday, while her husband stayed with a small group of locals to defend their community.

“It’s pretty scary,” she said. “It’s a small town but we’re used to hustle and bustle.

“It just became a ghost town.”

Walwa resident Janice Newnham decided to stay at her property on Saturday after an earlier fire had already burnt out the fuel surrounding her property.

“The whole of the hills just lit up — it was like molten lava was running all over the hills,” she said of Saturday’s blaze.