Long-time Wanaka resident Steve Worley has seen the devastating effects of Australia’s massive bushfires first-hand.

Owner of the Kodak store on Ardmore Street, Steve now also owns a similar business in the northern New South Wales town of Ballina, just south of Byron Bay. In May this year he joined the NSW State Emergency Services (SES) as a volunteer and, as part of this team, has had an active role supporting the NSW Fire and Rescue during the current bushfire crisis.

“It’s quite a contrast – floods in Wanaka and reopening the store today, compared to two weeks ago with my SES team in the Whiporie and Myall Creek area, south-west and inland from Ballina, where we were knocking on doors, asking people if they had an evacuation plan and a way to get their pets out,” Steve said. “Did they know where the nearest centre is, and whether it took pets or not. We weren’t telling people, but advising them of their options.”

Steve is well-known locally for his contribution to the Wanaka Community Patrol, an initiative he started in 2014.

“I retired from the community patrol when I started spending more time in Australia. It was recommended to me that I join another voluntary service and the SES was the most obvious one.”

SES is a state-funded voluntary organisation and there are about 100 members in Steve’s unit, ranging from 18 to 70-year-olds. 

The fires have burned at least 2.7M hectares.

“Living in a beach community, storms and tsunami are our main focus usually, and road crashes. I’ve benefited from their excellent training in the past six months,” Steve said.

While the Australian fires no longer dominate New Zealand news, they are still burning fiercely across wide areas. The Guardian newspaper provided the current statistics of the fires’ toll: six people have died, almost 700 homes have been destroyed and at least 2.7M hectares have burned. Fires stretch the distance of the NSW coastline. Drought has gripped this part of Australia for several months and some coastal towns face the possibility of running out of water by January if summer rains fail to materialise.

Steve said the Whiporie area where he was working is still bad. “The houses I was knocking on, a week later they’re all gone. Road signs look like they’ve been blow-torched. Estimates of 1000 koalas being killed. I heard of beekeepers trying to go back into the forest to rescue their bees and hearing the burnt koalas crying. The fire season has started early and it’s massive with pretty much no rain since July. Two fires north of Sydney last week joined to make a 1,000km wide front.”

Steve returns to Ballina today (Thursday December 13) and will be back into some kind of rescue work on Sunday or Monday. “There’s a lot of community support for locals, and some from the government. Saving lives is the priority, but some people don’t want to move. People are wondering what’s going to happen next.”

Steve said he will continue living between Wanaka and Ballina for the meantime. “I have a great team running the Wanaka store and expect we’ll have a busy summer as usual now most businesses are operational again as the lake level lowers.”

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