The reblossoming of Flowerdale after Black Saturday

FLOWERDALE, the forgotten town of the hell that was Black Saturday, is almost unrecognisable today.

FLOWERDALE, the forgotten town of the hell that was Black Saturday, is almost unrecognisable today.

The small rural community, which lost 13 of its own and two out of every three homes on February 7 last year, has gone from feeling abandoned by emergency services in their time of need to being the pin-up town for reconstruction and recovery.

Among the towering blackened gums that are now all covered in new green growth, dozens of new homes are being built, locals are still on a high after being visited by Prince William, and joking about who won the egg and spoon race at the Australia Day barbecue. Sixty-five residents and counting, including an 80-year-old grandmother, have gotten a Flowerdale tattoo in a show of unity. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd entertained the children of the primary school after he came to announce a $2.2 million upgrade, and Shane Warne has even given a few cricket lessons.

"There is a hell of a lot of activity going on," says chairman of the Flowerdale Recovery Committee, John Burgess, as he took Inquirer on a tour of the town. "Here we are just a year out and what has gone on is quite remarkable."

Burgess and fellow committee member Peter Williams have been significant driving forces in the reconstruction of Flowerdale and neighbouring Hazeldene since the communities lost 13 residents and 201 of its 324 homes in the fires.

The former corporate businessman of 25 years has taken a no-nonsense approach to the massive task, organising locals into what he calls "community engines", and utilising government, business and philanthropic donations to get on with the job.

His "shed", as he calls it, which is an outdoor bar overlooking the valley where the town sits, is home to the community's reconstruction meetings every Monday night, as well as monthly discussions with the government department heads, and countless brain storming sessions.

"We have taken a real corporate business approach to this because it is big business, we are talking big sums of money," he says, sitting at a long wooden table where Coldplay singer Chris Martin, Warne and former federal defence chief Peter Cosgrove have sat before, all there to talk about what they can do for Flowerdale.

"We have taken the professional business case-type scenario and decided to work with all types of government, state, local, as well as philanthropic donors. Our process has just been extremely transparent."

Burgess and Williams have copped some criticism from the community for leading the recovery efforts, given that they did not lose their homes. The town is not without its problems and is often divided by those who have lost their properties and those who have not. Burgess believes this lack of personal stress has allowed him to do a better job as chairman of the six-member Flowerdale Recovery Committee."I don't think you could do this job if you were coping with that as well," he says. "It would be just too hard."

Once the town addressed the urgent issues of food, water and shelter for its residents made homeless by the fires -- including setting up the first temporary homes in just 16 days as they "were not having a city of tents" -- the committee put a lot of consideration into the long-term reconstruction of Flowerdale.

The pair sought out other communities around the world that had gone through disasters and brought out the mayor of the US town of Greensburg, Bob Dixon, who successfully rebuilt his community to the highest environmental standards after it was hit by a tornado in 2007. Burgess also called up Cosgrove, since he worked on the Innisfail cyclone and thus had some expertise on reconstruction.

"There are fifty [homes] in construction, finished or building going on. We think, compared to other communities, that's huge," Burgess says. "And even when we map ourselves off Greensburg, which got wiped out in 2007 . .. our recovery mode as far as what has been happening on a world scale seems to be escalating fairly quickly."

He believes one key to their success was holding a Flowerdale Future Forum where the community was asked exactly what they wanted. They came up with "a clear mandate" of 14 requests and the committee has spent the last year getting through "12 and a half". Burgess is confident everything will be completed within the next three months.

"I would put it to two things," he says of the town's progress. "It's an extremely close-knit community and we just didn't have any hierarchy in the town.

"Our only two businesses were the pub and the store and I think because of the non-hierarchical issue it made us not get caught up in town politics. They [the community] voted a committee and entrusted that committee to go and do what they asked us to do. And that is what we do."

On our tour of Flowerdale this week, we see evidence of how everyone in the community is trying to help out. On a drive past the town's sporting reserve, Burgess winds down the car window and has a chat to the president of the local tennis club, Jeanette Kamar, who has taken on responsibility for the town's sport and recreation. He tells her he has got an appointment to have a "chat with the minister" about her requests for more funding and things were looking positive. "Jeanette was great after the fires as she got as many people as they could to play tennis, get active, just to keep their minds off things," Burgess says as we drive on. "She's just fantastic."

We next meet Beverley and John Pritchett, who have almost finished rebuilding their home themselves after it was destroyed in Black Saturday. They are currently sleeping in a camper van while they wait for the plumbing to be finished. The couple say they have had "their ups and downs" over the last 12 months but the Flowerdale community has been a great support.

"Its just brought us together so much more," Beverley says of the fires and the consequent recovery efforts. "We are always going over to the neighbours to borrow things or have barbecues. That just didn't happen before."

Another resident who lost his home, Peter Byrne, tells us as he inspects the new growth on his once blackened property, that it has been a hard year for the town but spirits are good considering the circumstances. "We have all been through a rollercoaster of emotions. Sometimes we feel like we are making some movement and sometimes we think we are going backwards," he says.

The artist, who also works with Aboriginal communities, is gearing up to leave his temporary home and move to New Zealand with his wife for a fresh start. But he says he will always feel connected to Flowerdale and may build a studio on the land where his house once stood.

"We really didn't want to go back into the annual fire angst every summer, we had enough of that after living here for 25 years," he says. "But I would still like to think that Flowerdale has a place in my life and we don't want to lose contact with the people or the town."

Byrne originally took photographer David Crosling and myself on a tour of Flowerdale 72 hours after Black Saturday, when we were the first outsiders into the devastated town. Wearing our CFA-issued media uniforms, locals initially confused us with emergency services personnel, as they had yet to reach Flowerdale. Byrne then told us the harrowing story of how he and a group of locals, including publican Steve Phelan, had stayed behind after the CFA had left and went on to save the Flowerdale Hotel and more than 40 people inside.

"I will never forget the image of you two walking in with your yellow suits. It was like where did you come from?" he tells me at exactly the same spot where he stood among the ruins of the town just 12 months earlier, and he now stands amid rebuilt homes.

"It was like a little bit of magic for us that day. You kicked off the whole national attention for Flowerdale. It really put the town on the map . . . and it has just gone on from there."