Mates Under Fire

Has COVID-19 stopped the rebuilding after the bushfires? Dick Adams was a deputy police commissioner but he says he has never seen a disaster of this scale and it is his job to fix the coast. He is a recovery coordinator. His first job is to clear the remnants of razed homes and to rebuild community infrastructure. Sir Peter Cosgrove is running the business council response to the blazes. The people he has met in the Malua Bay region are "temporal saints," he says. Find out from the people you have met in this podcast what their plans are now. Who will rebuild and who is planning to move on.  

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Heroes are easy to find in Malua Bay. Raj Gupta is a lifesaver. Too humble to talk about his own fire losses, he would rather talk about the patients who come to his Malua Bay pharmacy. He opened it in the wake of the fires and dispensed medicine in the dark for free. Ken Sloan is the man you would want to see if a devastating fire had just ripped through. He runs the South Coast's best opp shop near Malua Bay and on New Year's Eve morning he was following firetrucks into razed farms to give shattered survivors bottles of water. Emily Maguire has been busy giving haircuts and washes to women who have lost their homes. She sends them home with new makeup and hair products.  

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Amid the horror, one thing is sure in Malua Bay. No one will be the same. We speak to Lifeline about how they are helping people come to terms with the trauma. Post traumatic stress is already apparent in many who stared down the flames and survived.  

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Stoic fire chief Shane Fitzsimmons gave comfort to the people of Malua Bay 24 hours after the inferno. The toll of the dreadful fire season is never far when the commissioner recounts the toll of 25 deaths across the state, including six of his own men. The horror summer didn’t spare his volunteers like Steve Hillyer, a funny Australian larrikin. It's a wonder he has time to be funny, he is homeless. The volunteer firefighter spent more than 24 hours saving other people's homes only to return to his to find a pile of ash  

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Former Wallaby Al Baxter was fearsome on a rugby field but on New Year’s Eve he joined more than 1000 people in a terrifying fight for life on Malua Bay beach. A whiskey in his beach bag settled his nerves to some degree after a frightening day. You will also hear from Jan Russell and how her extraordinary neighbours saved her home while she was sheltering at the beach. Herald Sun photographer Alex Coppel says he was torn, save his family’s home or take photos of the 1000-plus people sheltering from an inferno on the waterfront.  

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Paradise is a fair description of Malua Bay before the Black Summer fires. Crystal waters lapped at pristine sand, tree lined green hills with narrow roads where hundreds of families lived in modest homes rising above the waterfront. Then, all hell broke loose on New Year’s Eve morning. In the hours-long life and death battle which followed, 90 homes were razed, and forged in the fire was an incredible spirit of mateship. The country has seen Andrew Constance’s raw emotion after the fire but now hear the harrowing account of his survival for the first time.  

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The Daily Telegraph takes you into the heart of a community at the epicentre of one of Australia's worst bushfires in recent years. Meet the cast of characters, the heroes and the true Aussies in this new podcast serial, Mates Under Fire  

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