People fall in love with Mallacoota. Families come for a summer holiday, and a second one, and then keep returning for fifty years or more. People drop in to look at the view, buy a house on a whim, and stay for good. It’s that sort of place.

Mallacoota is my lifelong love affair. I’ve holidayed here forever, and now it’s my home. I’ll be here for good, because this is where I feel truly alive.

Watching Mallacoota burn was an experience I can’t quite believe ever happened, even though the brutal evidence is everywhere. It’s as though I’d been plucked out of normal life that day and dropped into another place; a strange and threatening landscape. It was how I imagined the end of a dying world might look – pitch black except for a vivid orange glow.

I’d left my house and taken shelter on the foreshore, with thousands of others, and the thing that struck me most was how calm everyone was. We’d all clicked into survival mode, I think. I sat in the car  going over and over what I would do if the worst happened. It didn’t happen – despite the devastation, we were lucky that day.

A few weeks on, the atmosphere is unnaturally quiet. Normally, the big campground would be full of people having fun with their families and friends. But now, it’s like a ghost town; almost empty. It’s eerie – an unsettling reminder of that other strange reality. Continue reading “After the fires” →