KEY POINTS:
High winds whistled through Wandong, whipping ash into the eyes of Draga Kovacic as she surveyed the blackened ruins of her home for the past 25 years.
"Burnt, all burnt," she wept, tightly clutching her grandson. "We have lost everything. All I've got left is these clothes I'm wearing."
The small town nestled in bush north of Melbourne was one of the first places hit by the monstrous fires. At least four people died in Wandong and many homes were reduced to charred hulks.
On Tuesday, the sickly-sweet smell of smoke hung in the air.
All that registered for Kovacic and her husband Drago was the scale of their loss.
The elderly couple, originally from Croatia, had built a sizeable house in Wandong, planting 200 fruit trees. They kept chickens. All that remains of their orchard is twisted black stumps. The chickens are gone.
After fleeing their home just in time, the couple returned to find it obliterated.
"This was their whole life, their dream, everything they'd worked for," said their son, Vlado Kovacic.
Drago, a neat man of 74, tapped his breast with his fist. "It hurts me here," he said. "My heart is breaking."
Inside the remains of a once handsome dwelling,
there is little to be seen: a fridge, television and sofa all lie burnt and smashed. The garden is littered with broken stone urns and angels; the fishpond is ankle-deep in ash. A garage door flaps uselessly on its hinges.
There are similar scenes in communities all over the disaster zone, which comprises 20 or so hamlets and townships dotted across a broad arc of forested and agricultural land. And everywhere there is evidence of the fury of the firestorm.
The cinder-black landscape still smoulders in patches. The remains of kangaroos, incinerated in mid-escape, lay across the north-south highway. Metal road signs have become blobs.
Roger Cook has lived in Kinglake West, in the Upper Yarra Valley, for 20 years. His street, Pine Ridge Rd, borders a national park.
"That's what we love about it. You're in a little suburban street, but you've got lyre birds and wombats and beautiful bushland."
There were 47 houses on Pine Ridge Rd, and fire destroyed them all. Dozens of lives were lost in the Kinglake area. Cook believes 21 people died in his street. His own family left just in time.
Three men he knows stayed until houses around them were virtually exploding. By that time, their 4WD was on fire, and their other car was so hot that the gearstick was melting.
"One bloke had to sit in another's lap because the seats were melting, but they managed to drive it," said Cook.
"They were probably the last ones alive in the town. They said they heard screaming as they left."
- INDEPENDENT
