Zagami family recall horror of Black Summer bushfires at Wairewa

Matt Zagami felt lucky to be alive after returning to his Wairewa farm and finding complete devastation. Five years on, he recalls his memories of the Black Summer bushfires.

When Matt and Katie Zagami packed the essentials, loaded the car and left their Wairewa farm for the safety of Lakes Entrance – where they had sent their four children a night earlier – it was a tough call, but the right one.

“We left early in the afternoon … we felt it definitely wasn’t worth risking the potential loss of life to sit there and fight a fire that in the end was quite devastating to our area,” Matt said.

“At the end of the day, everyone was extremely lucky in our area that no one died.

“When we walked back into the place the next day, until you see what had happened, you never quite know how lucky you actually were.”

The Zagamis lost their newly renovated home, 90 per cent of the sheds on their 160ha farm, all the fences, the vegetable crops in the ground, machinery, irrigation and bore water infrastructure.

“We suffered the brunt of the fire in our valley,” Matt said, adding five out of seven houses at their end of the valley burnt that night in Wairewa.

“There was barely a patch of our farm country that didn’t get burnt.

“The initial feeling was, ‘shit, we are going to lose everything’.”

They couldn’t comprehend the support they would have in the next few months or how their insurance would work.

The Zagami family house before the Black Summer bushfires ripped through Wairewa in East Gippsland.

After the fire.

“We had insurance on most things but of course after you assess things over a 12 month period you understand how underinsured you were to get back to the position you were in. Plus the compounded effect of Covid that was placed on us made the cost of rebuilding and re-establishing our business seem so far out of our reach.”

The Zagami family survey the damage on their Wairewa farm after the Black Summer bushfires.

For four years the Zagamis moved around, living in two AirBnBs, sharing a house with family, a shed back at the farm, and also Victorian government short-term modular housing, before last year buying their neighbour’s farm, which came with the house they now call home.

They have rebuilt two houses to accommodate workers on their farm – infrastructure lost but essential for a vegetable business located in remote East Gippsland.

“Initially, we didn’t know how we’d get by,” Matt said.

The Zagami family at Wairewa – 5 years after the Black Summer bushfires destroyed their home.

They grappled with emotions while having to make long term decisions about rebuilding not only their home, but also their business.

“Farms at the best of times aren’t the most reliable things so loaning money to sink everything into it again was a difficult decision,” Matt said.

Despite the mountains to climb, the Zagamis came out on top.

“My wife went back to full time work in the first month then our insurance kicked in, and the support of family, friends and the community was amazing and will never be forgotten,” Matt said.

“We’ve got ourselves in a position where our business will grow and develop so it can once again be a reliable source of employment and produce for generations to come.”