It's been three-and-a-half years since catastrophic bushfires ravaged East Gippsland, in Victoria in the summer of 2019–2020.
With estimates that only a third of homes in the region have been rebuilt, many residents are enduring their fourth winter living in makeshift accommodation, including in caravans, sheds and temporary units.
Others have sold up or relocated. Some underinsured, others unable to afford to rebuild to new bushfire standards due to the rising cost of construction and materials.
Neil Smith offers a welcome ear to those still doing it tough.
He coordinates a unique timber-milling project that's putting a community-purchased portable sawmill to good use to process and salvage trees damaged in the fires.
Timber from fallen trees is milled onsite at no cost to the property owner, and can be used for anything from house framing, cladding and stockyard fence posts to rebuilding farm sheds. The versatile sawmill can even produce something as fine as timber tomato stakes.
Loading...But, it's a race against time as residents have a five-year window to salvage their timber before the wood deteriorates in the elements. And the government disaster funding is fast drying up.
"There are a lot people living in what could only be described as hard situations," Mr Smith said.
"The recovery is nowhere near complete in East Gippsland. I go out on to properties now and people still end up in tears."
Community-led recovery project
The East Gippsland Timber Milling project came about after a Sarsfield resident approached the Bruthen Lions Club with the idea of getting a portable sawmill to salvage timber on private properties where trees had either fallen or been pushed over during and after the fires.
Three small, motorised portable Lucas sawmills were purchased with extra funds from the East Gippsland Community Foundation; state and federal governments; and the solutions-focused Minderoo Foundation, part-founded by Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest.
Milling contractors were trained up with the necessary operational and safety licenses to use the machinery.
"The timber is milled for the property owner for whatever they want at no cost to the property owner," Mr Smith said.
"There's been a lot of timber cut for fencing, stockyard rails, for decking on housing, framing, for chook sheds and farm sheds. Just about anything that you can imagine anything people use hardwood timber for is being milled."
Some of the wood has been used for internal fixtures such as benchtops and shelving, with property owners often donating excess timber to fellow fire-affected property owners in need.
Mr Smith said that with a shortage of hardwood timber, a farmer would need to spend about $15,000 to build a stockyard with new timber in the current market.
"It does reduce the cost of recovery for properties to be able to have access to the timber. If it isn't milled, it becomes logs rotting in the paddock or being pushed into a pile and burnt."
Bushfire timber part of home's story
With about 70 properties assisted by the project so far, the mills are capable of processing selected onsite logs that are 400mm in diameter into usable timber.
Timber can be cut into 200 x 200 millimetres pieces up to 6 meters long, down to fence palings and tomato stakes that are 20mm thick x 100mm wide
Mr Smith said that many trees are hollow, too twisted or too small for milling so bird, insect and animal habitats were not compromised.
"We lost our house, farm sheds, farm machinery, fences, cattle yards and a number of things in the 2019 bushfires," Wairewa property owner Matt Zagami said.
His family were able to mill fence posts and rails from salvaged timber from one of the portable mills that had been stationed on his farm for the local community.
"We'd just renovated our house before the fires, so we'd had timber that we'd used from the old house in the new house," he said, of the limited availability to hardwood products.
"It's irreplaceable, you wouldn't buy it. You can't buy it."
Still waiting to rebuild the family home, Mr Zagami said the salvaged timber would carry the sentimental history of the farm into the family's rebuild projects, helping to recreate what had been lost in some way.
Practical support still needed
Mr Smith said that the timber milling project had given physical and mental impetus to property owners.
He said that many were facing the overwhelming task of trying to clean up their properties, rebuild kilometres of fencing, recreate stockyards and re-establish homes on their own.
"To have the milling contractors come on the property and work with them, have a chat over morning tea, that gives such a lift to that property owner," Mr Smith said.
Aside from receiving milled timber to rebuild with, he says the project also provides property owners with trees for replanting, and that thousands of trees had already been replanted as part of the service.
"Every way which you look at this project, it has had enormous benefits."
Future of mobile mills in doubt
Like many issues shelved by COVID over the past three years, much of the bushfire and flood-affected regions across that nation have been presumed to have 'recovered', despite disaster recovery being an ongoing process.
From the initial 40 to 50 properties that were earmarked for the milling service, Mr Smith said the project waiting list had grown to more than 180 properties, from Clifton Creek to Mallacoota.
"At the moment, the project is in a fairly difficult situation. The last application placed to the federal government's national emergency management agency was unsuccessful," Mr Smith said.
"The project has run out of money."
Mr Smith estimates the project would require a budget of $1.4 million over three years to work through the properties on the waiting list.
He said operational costs such as insurance, repairs and wages added up to about $22,000 a month.
With the Goongerah and Buchan mills already having ceased operation, he said the Mallacoota mill had enough funds to survive for three or four months.
Although the mills have only operated on privately owned land, where trees had come down, Mr Smith said that there was scope to travel to different disaster zones across different parts of the country.
Mill deployment for national disaster clean ups
Mr Smith said that selective logging of debris had applications in salvaging unsafe, dead and fallen roadside trees after fires, cyclones, wind events and storms in both urban and regional settings.
"For the next disaster whether it is in East Gippsland or somewhere else in Victoria, New South Wales or wherever, the equipment and the knowledge could be sent to that place to assist them to recover," he said.
With so many property owners on the current mill waiting list Mr Smith hoped that at least one of the mobile mills could remain functional.
He said that it would be a great loss to lose the skills, experience and infrastructure built up around the project to date if funding couldn't be secured to save the project.
With proper business planning and support, he believes the project could be developed into self-sustaining social enterprise.
"If the project doesn't continue it would be very disappointing for the people that haven't been able to utilise the project thus far," Mr Zagami said.
"For future programs, it would be great to keep it ongoing."