Shattered lives, scorched landscapes remain a year after bushfires

Joan and Leon Davey feel completely lost.

This weekend marks one year since their 36-year-old son, his wife and their two little girls died as the worst fires in Australian history swept over their Kinglake home.

The couple are haunted by the image of the young family huddled together in terror in the bathroom.

The loss of four family members, including granddaughters Jorja, 3, and Alexis, 8 months, has broken them.

They feel bewildered about how to go on, when the future they had planned with their eldest son, Rob, was snuffed out, instantly.

"The loss has just devastated us because it was so sudden," Joan Davey says helplessly. "We struggle with their loss, we struggle with the way they died."

The couple had planned to travel to France with their son and his wife, Natasha, 33, to expand their burgeoning wine merchant business. Instead, they have found themselves drowning in paperwork to wind up Rob's and Natasha's wine venture after their deaths.

All the while, the Daveys struggle to deal with their grief.

But they know they are not alone.

One year on, other relatives and friends of the 173 people killed are going through the same trauma.

Countless victims who lost homes and businesses are in various stages of recovery.

The huge loss of life, and in some cases whole townships, has confounded Victorians and sparked fears in the wider community about the devastation a fast-moving bushfire can cause.

The landscape still bears the scars of the fires that burned 430,000ha and destroyed more than 2000 properties.

Once-lush mountains rolling into townships including Kinglake and Marysville resemble pincushions, with bare trees dotting the hillsides. A closer look often reveals tufts of greenery sprouting from blackened twigs and trunks.

But the physical devastation wrought by the fires is not always visible to the naked eye.

Callignee resident Gavin Wigginton says the ground of his Gippsland property smoked for six months after Black Saturday.

He thought the problem had eased until this month, when, shortly before he was due to have the concrete foundations of his new home poured, the smoke started again after a particularly hot day.

Experts investigated and found a burning seam of coal and peat running beneath the surface. It was promptly extinguished and sealed.

But the emotional scars are deeper than any scorched earth.

Peter Olarenshaw, a Callignee beef farmer and policeman, talks for half an hour before quietly revealing his marriage broke down after the fires.

He spent February 7, 2009, warning neighbours of the impending blaze before returning to his property to defend it with the help of his 19-year-old son, Tim. They were lucky to escape with their lives as their property burned down around them.

But the trauma took its toll on Olarenshaw's relationship.

It's something he has seen repeated around the Latrobe Valley, where 11 people died.

"Pardon the pun, but it's been across the mountain like a wildfire," he says of the havoc wreaked on relationships.

The head of the Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority, Christine Nixon, has also recognised the pressure on relationships.

In a speech in October, she said family tensions were on the rise in bushfire-affected areas.

Part of the problem has been the rebuilding effort, which some victims feel has been excruciatingly slow.

Marysville, where almost all the town's buildings were destroyed, is a case in point.

The bakery was one of a handful of buildings left standing. A new supermarket, which was built inside the township's historic car museum, opened only on December 5. There is still no petrol station.

"We're in a long queue for houses that have to be built and it's proving very difficult," Marysville historian Mary Kenealy says.

She and her husband, Reg, do not expect their weatherboard-approved home to be completed until the second half of this year.

"At 71 and 80, starting afresh and building a house for the first time in our lives is quite a challenge," she says.

Some victims, perhaps still in shock or overwhelmed by the prospect of building a home from scratch, are simply not yet in a position to consider rebuilding.

Meanwhile, Victoria's emergency services have had some rebuilding of their own to do.

The royal commission which is still under way last year found significant failings in the way authorities dealt with the catastrophe.

- AAP