The fire didn’t choose what to take.
In one place, it left a vineyard standing.
In another, it wiped everything to ash.
Across the same region in Victoria, farmers are facing very different realities.
Chris has lived on his property for 45 years.
When the fire came through, he and his son made the decision to leave.
It wasn’t an easy choice.
His son didn’t want to go. He wouldn’t leave unless Chris left first.
So Chris made that call, not for the farm, but for his son.
They hoped for the best.
It didn’t turn out that way.
“Lost our family home… lost our machinery shed and all the equipment and tractors. Probably the worst outcome you could think of.”
In a matter of hours, decades of work were gone.
But not everything was lost.
“I’m alive and my son’s alive. So that’s a great thing.”
And somehow, his vineyard survived.
“It’s telling me something that there’s hope for the future.”
Not far away, Pietro is facing a different reality.
For years, he and his family built something unique.
A farm connected directly to their restaurant in Melbourne.
A true paddock-to-plate story, where what they grew and raised on the land made its way straight to the table.
It was a way of life.
Then the fire came through.
“They came in… and just wiped everything. Sheds, everything.”
“No power, no water… ashes, just ashes.”
The buildings are gone. The infrastructure is gone.
But not everything.
“We still have the goats, the donkeys, the pigs… it’s amazing.”
And with them, the possibility to rebuild.
When everything is uncertain, the basics matter most.
Water.
Shelter.
A place to begin again.
For both Chris and Pietro, the arrival of a water tank changed what came next.
For Chris, it means being able to set up temporary living and rebuild with one less pressure.
For Pietro, it transformed a property with nothing, no power, no water, into somewhere they could start again.
“Today we got 22,000 litres of water tank… that is amazing.”
“All thanks to them… that’s going to get me and my family through.”
Water security doesn’t rebuild a home.
But it makes rebuilding possible.
It’s one less thing to worry about in a moment where everything else feels uncertain.
Right now, farmers like Chris and Pietro are working out how to start again.
Rebuilding homes.
Rebuilding farms.
Rebuilding what’s been lost.
Some have lost everything.
Some are holding onto what remains.
All are facing the long road ahead.
Because recovery doesn’t happen all at once.
And it doesn’t happen alone.