Issue 5 SJC News 2021

Year 11 VCAL students have done it again. A little over one year after the inaugural Bush Fire Relief Camp, 24 SJC students, staff and volunteers have spent four days camping in ‘Man from Snowy River Country’, Corryong.

On Monday 15 March, the Year 11 VCAL students and their teachers left SJC to embark on a day-long journey to North-East Victoria. It has been over a year since the 2019/20 Summer Bush Fires devastated Corryong and its surroundings, notably the small town of Cudgewa, where 14 homes were lost. A whole lot of water has passed under the bridge since then for this community, as it has for many farming and rural communities, with COVID-19 and all of the hidden complications of trying to recover from catastrophic bushfires.

The Year 11 VCAL students, working within the Work-Related Skills Strand of the VCAL curriculum have spent most of Term 1 planning to continue to support communities impacted by the 2019/20 Summer Bush Fires. They decided the best way to support this fire-affected community was to visit them again, spend money there and put feet on the ground to help farmers continue to fix hundreds of kilometers of burnt fencing.

We arrived at the Colac Colac (Clack Clack) Caravan Park on the Monday afternoon, pitched tents, and then made haste to the Upper Murray Pizza and Cinema Café where we met with the Uniting Church Emergency Fencing Team and the farmers we had promised to help. The pizzas just kept rolling out, and they were delicious. Instantly we felt welcomed and at ease with this amazingly resilient community.

Tuesday and Wednesday were spent working with three different farmers from the area, all of whom had been significantly impacted by the fires. This gave us the opportunity to see first-hand the damage that was done and hear the farmers’ stories. The sight driving through the rolling hills of Cudgewa was of lush, green Australian countryside, quite starkly different to what was experienced this time last year.

Students spent most of their time working on fencing, either removing and winding wire from burnt fences or building new fences. This was hard work, but extremely rewarding. It was estimated that each of the teams achieved approximately 500 man-hours of work in the two days. For the solo farmers, that’s over two month’s worth of fencing completed in just two days.

To spend money in the Community, a team of students was tasked with shopping at the local IGA and bakery for breakfast and lunch supplies. After breakfast each day, the boys made and packed lunches for themselves, the volunteers and their host farmers. Chicken Parmigiana from Jack’s Bistro was a huge hit on the Wednesday night, our last evening spent sharing dinner with the farmers, their families and the volunteers. This was a highlight for me and many of the boys. It was a great opportunity for the families that we had met and worked with the wider Corryong community to chat with the boys and catch up with each other. We had the privilege of hearing their stories and sharing in some of their recovery experiences.

There is still a need for help in areas like Cudgewa and Towong Gap. I highly recommend including some volunteering in your next holiday. It’s an extremely rewarding experience, one that makes me very proud to be part of the St Joey’s community. Thank you to all of the SJC staff involved at the camp, Leonie Hart, Shane Dawson and Tom Elliot. A big thank you to our SJC community volunteers, Monika and Rob Ercoli for giving up their time and providing expertise.