Women rise from the ashes of Black Saturday

Arwyn Taylor, Jemima Richards-Exton, Jodie Thorneycroft , Justine Morris, Tanya Miller, Karen Ostenried and Katherine Grinlaw.
Photo: Craig Abraham

Simon Mann
25 July 2009
The Age

THEY started out just wanting a catch-up. A girls' night away, they suggested. The response was immediate. What a great idea, people said. Suddenly, they were talking about 100 or so women, and word kept spreading.

The Murrindindi mayor was asked about it. She spoke to Christine Nixon, who guaranteed funding from private donors via the Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority. The ANZ Bank lent an events manager.

Soon, there were 200 women from the state's bushfire-affected zones who were keen to be involved. Then 300. From Bendigo and Beechworth, from Gippsland and Marysville and Flowerdale and Strathewen and, of course, Kinglake, where the idea had first germinated like a seed that defied the destruction of Black Saturday.

And when registrations closed for the so-called "bush-to-beach" weekend retreat, in Lorne, 359 women had signed up. In fact, when they all arrived on that Friday night earlier this month, they numbered 392. The oldest was 82, the youngest 17.

Some had been widowed, some had lost family. All had lost friends or acquaintances. All were suffering what they commonly referred to as "bushfire brain" — "can't think straight, can't remember anything, information overload", as one woman categorises the affliction.

There were lots of tears, hugs and laughter. They talked, they meditated, they danced, they "got it off their chests", according to one participant. There were seminars about grief, about rebuilding lives, on managing money and negotiating grants. Lorne's local traders supplied shopping vouchers to encourage a little retail therapy.

Some savoured the stillness of the beach. Others lapped up time sharing with new-found friends; in all, they supped on a "banquet of soul food", as one would reflect later.

The horror of February 7 didn't desert them, but the pain of it subsided just a little. And at the conclusion there was a connectedness that few of the women had ever experienced, one that they pledged to nurture in the difficult months ahead.

"One of my strongest feelings after the fires was the loneliness," says Jodie Thorneycroft, who first suggested the women's retreat to friend Justine Morris at Kinglake's opening football match of the year, itself a celebration of the mountain's indomitable human spirit.

"In Kinglake, we lost one in every 15 people," says Ms Thorneycroft, who has lived there for 20 years.

"Most of the people who died I knew, or I knew of, and with so many houses gone, it felt like there was no one left. All my closest girlfriends had lost their homes and were no longer on the mountain. It was a horrible, empty feeling … We had to group together and start building relationships. Otherwise, the whole community was going to fall apart."

As they moved among the footy crowd on that April day, Thorneycroft and Morris were overwhelmed by the response. Then they spoke to Jemima Richards-Exton who, with husband David, had moved to Kinglake a year or so earlier. Out of those frenetic early days of the fire aftermath, Richards-Exton had helped start a women's networking and friendship group that met every second Sunday night. They still do, sharing soup, just hanging around and sometimes listening to guest speakers.

Bali bombing victim Nicole McLean, who lost an arm in the 2002 attack, came by one night "just talking about how shit it is when you get hit by trauma", as Ms Richards-Exton puts it.

Thorneycroft knew about the women's group. It made sense to join forces, and Richards-Exton had already seen how powerful the experience of coming together could be.

"That very first meeting (of the Sunday group) was amazing," she says now. "Some of the toughest country women, they actually lost it, because at last they had the safety and support to let go."

The organisers went into overdrive, as others joined them. Case managers working with victims passed on news of the retreat.

The Cumberland Resort cut the women a good deal, and sponsors underwrote the $106,000 cost of the operation. Those attending paid $80 each, and everyone came in by bus.

Says Justine Morris: "It was really good just to drive down there and through that area that had been burnt in the Ash Wednesday fires.

"I'm just thinking this is really lovely just to be able to look into the future a long way.

"To see that power of regeneration. That's something to look forward to."

But she admits: "I just wasn't prepared for how vulnerable and fragile people were when we got them down there."

There was a bit of talk that, really, this was exactly what the men needed, too. But men are from Mars and women are from Venus. "What's very evident is how differently men and women are handling the emotional side of this," says Richards-Exton.

"The men kind of get back to work or sweep it under the carpet and don't want to talk about it, maybe in the hope that it gets better. Whereas, the women want to talk. It's a different thing altogether."

She adds: "Women are the cornerstone of the family. If they're not doing OK, then the rest of the family can fall apart."

Plans are under way for a second retreat, probably in October, for women who missed the first. Ms Thorneycroft reckons they'll need three or four eventually to match demand. This time they hope to keep numbers to a more manageable 250.

The retreat's aftermath has been a closeness that the women struggle to articulate. "Before the fires, I didn't really know anybody, other than my family," says Ms Richards-Exton. "It's quite ironic."

Rhonda Abotomey, who lost a brother and other family in the fires, says the three-day retreat was a testament to the power of compassion, "of women nurturing and healing and sharing; women making a huge difference because they have the belief that they can, and the determination that 'doing' is the only option".

A tangible impact has been that Kinglake's Sunday women's group has swelled, with 70 more women expressing an interest.

"It's like a mini-retreat every fortnight," says Arwyn Taylor, a Uniting Church employee who is managing Kinglake's temporary accommodation village.

"We're all sisters now!" chips in Ms Thorneycroft.

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