Steely resolve hits the air

By Kath Gannaway
STEELS Creek residents shared their stories of Black Saturday and the first nine months of recovery with ABC radio listeners around the country last week.
Bush Telegraph and the Victorian Country Hour broadcast nationally from the back verandah of Stephen and Kathryn Carroll’s beautiful Roseglen property on Wednesday morning, 10 December.
Steels Creek was one of three communities, including Flowerdale and Traralgon South, chosen because of the unique community experiences.
“These were the smaller communities, which lost people and experienced the trauma but which have not received a lot of media attention,” Bush Telegraph presenter Michael Mackenzie said.
“We wanted them to know we understood what they are going through,” he said.
He said the overwhelming impression he had of the community was of their resilience.
“It puts things into perspective in your own mind when you realise people have the strength to carry on in what many would consider overwhelming loss; that while people deal with trauma in different ways, these communities refuse to lie down and that’s a testament to the spirit of our rural communities,” he said.
Kathryn Carroll told of escaping along Steels Creek Road with daughters Georgie and Sophie and of the anxiety of not hearing from her husband for 45 minutes as the fire raced through their property.
Mrs Carroll said they lost their pet dog, a horse and two bulls as well as the magnificent hedge that was a feature of the property, sheds and equipment. But husband Stephen saved the house.
Christine Tomlinson told of losing $1m worth of cellared wine and the fruit off their Cooinda Estate vines.
“We’re in our 60s and we’ve worked for years to establish the winery and B&B and it all just went up in a puff of smoke,” she told Libby Price, presenter of the Victorian Country Hour.
She said they considered themselves lucky in that they lost only 5 per cent of their vines and this year’s crop was looking good.
Ms Price was called into the 774 studio on Black Saturday to do the fire warnings for the weekend, covering Beechworth, Alexandra and Yea in the week following and going on the road for another week after that.
Going over and over the stories was traumatic for her, too, she said, but she believed it could be beneficial.
“You have to keep dealing with it,” she said. “For the people here today I think it’s beneficial to tell their stories again. You don’t want to end up being caught unawares (of the emotional impact) later on.”
The event again pulled together members of the Steels Creek community to share a cuppa, sizzling sausages provided by the local tennis club, sponge cakes, cherries and the sense of community that so impressed the 774 presenters.