By Clay Lucas
On a Tuesday afternoon in February, in the Grampians town of Pomonal, Russ Kellett four times faced the front of a bushfire he describes as “the beast”, as it repeatedly roared through his town.
No lives were lost – the community heeded the evacuation warnings – but the fire consumed 44 homes, which is almost one-third of the buildings in this tiny town of just over 300 people.
Pomonal last Friday morning. In the foreground is the destroyed Pomonal Cottages.Credit: Joe Armao
“We were watching houses explode, gas bottles explode around us,” says Kellett of a blaze that roared louder than anyone who hasn’t been in a bushfire can imagine.
“The whole environment changes – you’re fighting fire and then all of a sudden, everything goes pinky red and there’s this little calm for I don’t know how long, and then all of a sudden, you hear this roar and then the fire front comes through. And before you know it, it’s dancing everywhere and it’s got its own weather system.”
Two of the fire crew Kellett was with that February 13 afternoon watched their own homes burn but kept fighting to save other houses. The crew fought on because they knew saving the town’s infrastructure was crucial.
“We knew part of the healing process down the track would be having those major structures,” says Kellett, who moved to Pomonal in 2019.
Pomonal resident and CFA member Russ Kellett. He also runs the local Men’s Shed.Credit: Joe Armao
The community hall, the school, the church, the town store and cafe, the pub, the winery and the fire station were all saved.
A remarkable recovery is now under way in this tiny town in one of Australia’s most picturesque settings, and the resilience on display could become a case study of how other towns belted by catastrophe can heal.
The “beast” that attacked Pomonal also smashed the wider economy.
New figures from economists Urban Enterprise, produced for Grampians Wimmera Mallee Tourism, show February’s bushfires cost the region $202 million and a decline of 460,000 people on last year’s visitor numbers.
Regrowth in Pomonal 12 weeks after the bushfire roared through the town.Credit: Joe Armao
Pomonal is finding a way to recover in part thanks to a local association that long before February’s fire had a specific resilience plan in place.
“It’s community resilience, not personal resilience,” says Jill Miller, chair of the Pomonal Progress Association and a former chief executive of Grampians Community Health. About eight years ago, the progress association organised the association so that it divided the tiny town into small districts.
“We notionally divided the town into four parts – you’re in the Pomonal CBD now,” she jokes of the Pomonal General Store, where we are sitting and which her daughter Nadia owns, “and the idea was that in town, you got to know 50 people.”
That led to a street-by-street directory in each district, updated annually, which allowed people – if they were willing – to be connected with their neighbours, so they could be alerted in an emergency. And importantly, after the emergency had passed, when those in need could be matched with those who could give.
Jill Miller, the chair of the Pomonal Progress Association, in the town store and cafe.Credit: Joe Armao
Among those who lost their home was Anton Henricksen, who was making gelato in his Halls Gap ice-cream store, a 15-minute drive from Pomonal, when his son called to say they had to evacuate.
“We came home, loaded up some of the animals – that was basically all we loaded – and took off to an evacuation point in Ararat,” Henricksen says.
He wasn’t allowed back in for five days. When he returned, “I was surprised at the totality of what went. There wasn’t even floorboards left.”
Henricksen is halfway through taking apart the rubble of his steel-framed Pomonal house for removal and, like others in the town, has been frustrated by the slow clean-up.
Only the steel frame remains of Anton Henricksen’s seven-bedroom home in Pomonal.Credit: Joe Armao
But Henricksen says the mood in the town has been remarkable and the community’s generosity in response to the losses has been striking.
Soon after the fire, he mentioned on a podcast that he’d lost his Royal Doulton figurine collection. Then Royal Doulton figurines started arriving at the post office. “From people who don’t know me from a bar of soap.”
Henricksen lives next door to Pomonal Cottages, a business Bela Pechnig and his family bought six months before the fire. They were out of town, at a friend’s wedding, on the day and returned to find their cottages destroyed. Pechnig says they were under-insured, and he too is frustrated at the clean-up’s slow pace.
“They give you a timeline and then they don’t stick to the timeline,” says the father of two. But, he says, “I don’t want to complain too much” because the community support has helped them through.
Two watches Henricksen pulled from the ashes of his house. He still hopes to find a missing gold ring.Credit: Joe Armao
Pechnig is at the community hall when we meet, as is Lynne McKinnon, who is giving clothing, toiletries or whatever else to people who have lost everything they need. The fastest-moving item is men’s workwear, as those who lost their clothing begin cleaning up properties.
“Donations have come from all over the state,” says McKinnon, who lives in the town and planned to stay and defend her property on the day. But seeing the pressure the town was under, she decided to leave. “If I stay, they’ve got to go and look after a little old lady. So I left. As I drove away, I was just worried about everybody else.”
Central to the town’s recovery has been those who run key stores, such as the general store and the pub. The work done by the progress association long before February’s fire hit has been key to supporting each other once the fire passed.
Susie Macaffer at the pub she and husband Colin run, Barney’s Bar & Bistro.Credit: Joe Armao
“For years we’ve done things like community dinners to try and meet your neighbours or talk about fire safety stuff. During COVID it was about COVID,” says Susie Macaffer, who with husband Colin runs the pub, Barney’s Bar & Bistro.
Macaffer says the 12 weeks since the fire haven’t been easy. “Managing the emotions of each of us individually – the ups and the downs – are like riding a wave.” Recently, though, she and Colin held a fundraiser that collected about $12,000, which in time locals will decide how to best spend.
Another local, John Matthews, spent 22 years in the military and 16 years as an air traffic controller, which made him almost perfectly prepared both to survive that brutal February day and to later help co-ordinate the recovery effort.
Pomonal resident John Matthews helped co-ordinate the town’s recovery effort.Credit: Joe Armao
Things are progressing slowly, says Matthews, who works for the local Ararat council. “But understandably so because all of the people and the agencies involved are just getting their head around it.”
Matthews has lived in Pomonal since 2016 and says the community had talked about resilience long before February’s fire.
He says the generosity of neighbouring towns has been astounding. “The Aussie spirit of ‘someone’s down, give him a hand’” was on display, Matthews says.
Farmers in Berriwillock, population 180, knew that feeding livestock after a fire was often the hardest thing. And so those farmers loaded up two trucks, each with 60 enormous hay bales, and drove 200 kilometres south to Pomonal.
Matthews and others realised this would be more than enough, so they asked the farmers to divert the second truck to nearby Dadswells Bridge, which also burnt and had more livestock to support than Pomonal.
Lyn Rasmussen from BlazeAid, which repairs fencing lost after a disaster.Credit: Joe Armao
Lost en masse in the fire that hit Pomonal were kilometres of fences. Lyn Rasmussen volunteers with BlazeAid, which moves in after a natural disaster to help farmers and landowners rebuild fences.
Rasmussen says the need for emotional support in rural towns is often needed as badly as the fences, although in Pomonal they have already reinstated them at 32 properties.
“We go and visit a farmer, and they just sit there and shake their head and say, ‘I don’t know where to start’. If they’ve saved their livestock, they’ve still got to go around and hand feed a lot of times,” Rasmussen says.
Volunteers from Disaster Relief Australia have also been crucial to recovery, and several locals commended their hard work.
Jill Miller from the Pomonal Progress Association says those who want to help the town recover need to keep the Grampians in their mind for longer than “just a short news cycle. It is necessary to keep us in your hearts for a while longer because we won’t know how the recovery has really gone for another 12 or 18 months.”
Pomonal’s “I have, I need” box in the town’s general store and cafe.Credit: Clay Lucas
Sitting on the cafe table as Miller speaks is the town’s “I have, I need” box, where people fill out a slip of paper saying what they have to give away or what they desperately need.
“It’s connecting that person with another person – a person who needs a fridge with someone who has a spare fridge, say. And by doing that long enough you can get a feel for what the next place is that we need to go as a community. Hopefully, we get it right.”
The sign at the entrance to Pomonal, thanks “essential services and local heroes”.Credit: Joe Armao
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