Cobargo community to create a hand-forged Black Summer bushfire memorial
/ By Vanessa MiltonAfter the Black Summer bushfires devastated his local community of Cobargo and surrounding villages, blacksmith Iain Hamilton began to turn his mind to an ambitious memorial project.
"We're going to get everyone in the community to come out and forge a leaf," Hamilton said.
"It will be a sculpture made by everyone, and it will be there for the next 1,000 years."
The Cobargo community tree project was inspired by a tree created by blacksmiths around the world to commemorate Victoria's Black Saturday bushfires.
But the leaves for Cobargo's tree will be individually forged by members of the community.
Each leaf takes about an hour and a half to create, and the sculpture will need 2,000-3,000 leaves.
Fellow blacksmith Philippe Ravenel, whose home in Wandella was destroyed in the bushfires, is collaborating on the project.
"We really want everyone represented on that tree," Ravenel said.
"It's a way to show that we can use fire to create something beautiful."
The two blacksmiths are each dedicating their time to the project in private workshops and community forging days.
It's a slow, methodical process to create each leaf, a cyclical rhythm of heating the steel, hitting it until it cools, then reheating. And as each step is repeated, conversations begin.
For Wandella farmer Warren Salway, the sculpture will help ensure that the memory of the tragic fires never fades.
"We all lost a hell of a lot. I lost my brother and I lost my nephew in the fire," Mr Salway said.
"It's something that we don't ever want to forget, and shouldn't be allowed to forget."
Tammie Jee was one of several members of her extended family who lost homes in the bushfires.
"It was like a bomb had hit," Mrs Jee said.
"There were parts of my parents' place, parts of my brother's cars, spread up to 900 metres from the home. Cars that were completely picked up and ripped into pieces. It was a nightmare really."
Some of Mrs Jee's family have rebuilt and moved into their homes, others are not planning to rebuild, and some were not insured.
"We're a pretty close family. And when you lean on parts of your family quite a bit, it's hard when we're all dealing with the same problems."
Tammie, her husband Brett and their five sons are still living in caravans, pods and sheds on their property at Wandella, dealing with the complexities of getting their plans approved to rebuild.
In the Bega Valley shire, 467 homes and about 1,000 sheds and outbuildings were destroyed during the Black Summer fires.
Two years on, 42 new dwellings have been built and 50 are under construction.
"You keep finding things that you've got to do that haven't been done," Warren Salway said.
"We lost two houses, five sheds, 150-head of cattle, 80 sheep, 30 kilometres of fencing and three sets of stockyards. It just went on and on and on."
Iain Hamilton hopes the tree project will help the community focus on the future.
He estimates it will take two years to create the leaves. Then they will build the tree, and decide where to install it.
The timeframe for the sculpture's completion will complement the pace of Cobargo's recovery, where close to a third of shops in the main street were destroyed and plans for a rebuild are still coming together.
"People who've made leaves now will get involved with the rebuild of the town, because they've got a part in it now," Hamilton said.
"I hope it's symbolic of the community, that we're all part of a tree that can't burn."