By Taylah Eastwell
Just 50 days after a devastating storm ripped through the Dandenongs, many storm-battered residents have been dealt yet another blow.
Gusty winds with peaks of 100km/h hit the Ranges again on 27 July, serving as a traumatic reminder of the catastrophic weather event of 9 June that left hundreds displaced and many without power for weeks on end.
For Kalorama’s Julia Hall and family, the NBN was only restored around 3pm on Tuesday (27 July) – more than seven weeks following the superstorm.
The family was ecstatic. Finally, they could join the rest of the world in working from home, and their son could finally submit the school work he’d completed by hand over the last month-and-a-half.
With the state set to be let out of lockdown at 11.59pm that evening, their son couldn’t wait to go back to school and see his mates, and Julia was itching to get out and socialise.
But their hope was short-lived.
Just hours after the modem lit up again, the lights flickered and the house went black. The wild winds had hit – the Hall’s now trapped in their property by a fallen tree, once again.
“I just thought surely there can’t be any more trees ready to come down. We had 14 blackwoods down in the 9 June storm. I went to bed early this time, and then at midnight I was woken by the sound of the tree falling over. It gave us a fright, it sounded really close,” Ms Hall said.
With torch in hand, Julia and her son peeked through the window but couldn’t make out what had happened in the darkness.
“We went back inside, then this morning I greeted the tree with my car when I was trying to get down the driveway to get to work,” Ms Hall said.
“We literally weren’t even worried in the beginning, we truly thought there were no more trees that could come down. We went to go for a walk last night and there was a tree down at Mt Dandenong shops, and being typical locals, we all stopped to chip in and started pulling branches off the roads. While we were clearing we were getting blown around, that’s how strong the wind was.
“We didn’t end up going for our walk and just went home and made sure everything was battened down,” Ms Hall said.
The Halls’ are currently house-sitting for friends who are travelling around Australia while they wait on their dream home to be built in Emerald.
“They (the owners) couldn’t believe it. They were driving along the beach and got the text and just said, how can another tree have come down?,” Ms Hall said.
“We were trapped for four days last month, we had power lines around waist height on our driveway and the SES couldn’t touch the tree because the power lines were Ausnet’s responsibility. Ausnet couldn’t give us a date, they actually turned up two and a half weeks later. It was only because of our beautiful neighbour who said he would take care of it that we got out. He told me to go inside and he cut the tree and kicked the power lines onto the ground so I could finally leave the driveway, I just had to drive over them,” Ms Hall said.
“That’s the good thing about the community up here in Kalorama and Mt Dandenong, we all look after each other. When I posted that we were trapped in the driveway again people were commenting asking if they could bring me anything,” she said.
“It’s just things like that, and the Kalorama Hub, that really kept us going after the June storm. The first time I went to the hub I realised I needed to go there everyday because it was the one thing that was going to keep me sane,” she said.
Now in that position again, all the Hall family can do is wait and see whether Ausnet remove the tree blocking them in.
“Because it isn’t on a structure it’s not covered by insurance. If they leave it on my driveway I’ll have to call the SES and let them know they can come, because obviously I can’t get out of our block,” Ms Hall said.
“My husband has a heart condition, my biggest fear is what if he starts to have another heart attack and he can’t get out of the property and the ambo’s can’t get in. I think the authorities sometimes forget about that, they ask if anyone is hurt but not if anyone has a medical condition,” she said.
Ms Hall has also been putting her time spent cooped up at home to good use, having headed a group focused on preserving fallen timber in the Dandenongs.
The Facebook group, titled Rescue Logs – Keep our trees in the hills, is all about preventing trees from being chopped up for firewood or chipped, with hopes they can instead form part of a vibrant community project.
“Mother nature has pushed them over, so we want to make sure they are being used.
“We are talking to council and VicForest and local artists about how we can reuse them and we are hoping big business will get behind it. The most cost in any of this is moving the logs around, they are massive so they are expensive to move.
“We are directing our energy into looking at one or two bigger projects. We are looking at whether we can create a playspace and learning space at Kalorama Park reusing the logs whether it be in sculpting native animals or play equipment, and then also some nice learning areas to remember the storm and the positive parts of it.
“There are a lot of traumatised kids up here after the storm. I don’t want scared children to grow up and move off the hill. We need to remember the positives.
“There is a real opportunity for VicForest and other forestry companies to educate council about the management of trees as well,” Ms Hall said.
