Hello everyone!
Welcome to the Community Center! I'm @Bhu...
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Hello everyone!
Welcome to the Community Center! I'm @Bhumika , one of the Community Managers for our English Community Ce...
Latest reply
HI everyone from the East coast of New South Wales Australia, which has had more than its fair share of bad stuff this year!
Our ordeal began before Christmas 2019 with the 'unprecedented' 'apocalyptic' bushfires that were raging up and down our coastline for weeks and weeks! Our little town (pop: 400) is on the Princes Highway (Highway 1) south of Sydney and some fire brigades were based in our community hall, but whenever the fire threatened our township, they were off dealing with fires elsewhere... we had thousands more fires in this state than we had fire crews to deal with them all at the same time!
So it was down to our wonderful neighbours who were determined to stay and defend their properties. If it weren't for them, our town would have been totally obliterated (as was suggested it had been on our local Rural Fire Service app - not comforting at all when we were evacuated and had to rely on social media for updates on the fate of our beloved home and B and B).... Our town was surrounded by fire on all sides, and one of those pyro storms shot across the hills behind us (west), while over those terrible few weeks, fire was also being pushed up the coast from south of us, down towards us from the north, and also running up the highway just east of our place!
Accepting guests or otherwise was very much a spontaneous choice at this time, and in most cases guests had already cancelled or we had to ask them to as our part of the township is accessed by one road only both in and out. Bless them, many opted to let the payments go through regardless and reschedule their stays at a later date. Two of those parties are staying with us this Christmas-New Year only a full year later than planned!
On Christmas Day, nobody around here dared leave home in case we couldn't get back, as the highway was being closed sporadically both north and south of our town, so we invited some neighbours over for morning tea. One of them brought some bubbly, which I can't deny, really did help me relax a little, and they returned the invitation for an afternoon meal across at their place, where the imbibing continued, and we all managed to relax a bit for a while, but it was probably the last time we smiled for several weeks after that!
We had to evacuate three times, on each occasion, for different periods of time, depending on the fire direction and when the highway was closed, sometimes for several days. It was a really eerie experience, at the height of our holiday season, seeing authorities tell holidaymakers to: get out of here! go home! Now! and long lines of cars queued up at petrol stations to get fuel to drive back home, but a number of these petrol stations couldn't provide fuel as they had lost power!
Every time we had to evacuate, we thought we had seen our home for the last time, and are still quite amazed it survived. Certainly we were more fortunate than many hundreds of other people who lost everything, not to mention those who died, and the billions of animals that perished in those few weeks across our state alone!
When the fires had taken their toll in our region, the fundraisers started up, and we attended everything we could to help those less fortunate than ourselves. One of those was to help farmers who had lost stock, fencing and feed: it was called "Buy a Bale", and when a friend of mine in Scotland heard about this, she said she and a friend wanted to donate 150 pounds between them. What wonderful friends!!!
I was very fortunate too, that my little business qualified for a small government grant due to loss of business throughout the holiday season, and this was adequate to compensate me for my losses.
Then, after the two months of non essential travel due to the Covid issue, from 1st June, my B and B was inundated with bookings, many mid week as well as weekends, which is not so common in our winter, but I ended up having to block out extra days between bookings for a bit of breathing space! We have been booked steadily ever since, and these summer holidays commencing this week, we are fully booked to the end of January, not even a single available night has been left unaccounted for. After 5 1/2 years, while doing pretty well, still, this is a first! So I am rushed off my feet now, and grateful for it, if exhausted.
I am just incredibly grateful that we got through this horror episode with the support of wonderful townsfolk helping each other out, and many beautiful guests who were keen to come back to stay again and help contribute to getting our tourism economy and so much more, back on track. Another, more recent plus that I have noted is that our wildflowers have never responded so well as they have to the extremes of last summer, nor have we ever had so many deafening cicadas!
We have only just had our borders opened up again to other states, so I expect to see the demand continue for some time yet. One news headline the other day suggested that many popular holiday towns in our state are virtually hanging out 'No Vacancy' signs at the entrance to the towns! 
