Marysville: Reborn from the ashes

It was once a picturesque town 100km away from Melbourne, surrounded by mountains, waterfalls, creeks and a most splendid sample of Australian flora.

Marysville was considered to an idyllic tourist destination in Victoria. All this was before it was visited by a great natural disaster on Saturday February 7, 2009.

With more than 400 dwellings destroyed by the fire which translates into 95 percent of the town but most importantly with 34 people perishing, life will never be the same for residents of Marysville.

As we mark the one year anniversary of Black Saturday, Anastasia Zarifopoulos agreed to open her home and heart to Neos Kosmos for a rare glimpse into the psychological and physical aftermath of the devastating bushfires.

“There are a lot of problems but there is a lot of help as well,” Anastasia said while trying to recap in one phrase the experience thus far. We met at the Marysville Temporary Village, about two kilometers out from the town’s centre.

As we drove there we passed through the newly built local store serving as a reminder of the reconstruction process that is slowly but steadily trying to re-invigorate the town’s centre.

Construction workers were sweating under the summer sun in an arduous yet excruciating task.

‘Excruciating’ was one of the words used by Anastasia to describe the progress of Marysville’s residents trying to get back on their feet.

The Temporary Village houses around 60 people. A significant number of the Black Saturday survivors, however, settled around Healsville and Alexandra which are the two bigger towns surrounding Marysville to the south and to the north respectively.

Under the circumstances the Village was a well organised settlement that was set up shortly after the bushfires.

It had a common area for all residents which contained a library, a kitchen and all the necessary amenities shared by everyone.

The playground that was just outside the premises was built with donations from a number of organisations.

It is a testament of the rush of Australians and people abroad coming to the aid of those affected by last year’s inferno.

This fact was also manifest in Anastasia’s small apartment that she had so neatly tried to transform into her new home. Most of her appliances, she told me were donated from the Catholic Church. At her place we were also joined by her former neighbour Alan Bryan.

On Black Saturday they fled together from the hellish blaze that hit Marysville. But other people that they knew did not make it.

This fact is still haunting them to this day.

All Marysville survivors received or at least were able to access much needed psychological support to deal with their trauma.

“Well let me tell you; the memorial coming up on Sunday will be a very difficult moment for us,” Alan admitted.

His words were coming out with difficulty giving me the sense that the gaping wound inflicted one year ago will take a long time to heal. How could it be otherwise I wondered with all the stories and faces still reminding them every day.

One of the residents of the Temporary Village, I was told, had survived the horrific ordeal paying an unbearable price; losing his wife and two children.

Recently he was also diagnosed with cancer. “We’ve been told that psychological conditions such as post-traumatic stress syndrome can trigger cancer,” Anastasia said.