Glen Siede and his son Nick White are standing under the base of Mount Buffalo. The sky is clear, the river is up, and there is fresh snow on nearby slopes.
Normally, the caravan park they run would be filled with people sitting along the banks, kids playing in the park, and mountain bikers returning after a morning on the trails.
“Right now, we don’t want people in the park,” Siede said. He points upwards to where a police helicopter has been circling for the last hour.
The caravan park they run is just hundreds of metres away from the property where Dezi Freeman allegedly shot and killed two police officers, wounding a third.
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There has been no official sighting of Freeman as the search for the gunman entered its eighth day. After spending 24 hours in lockdown, locals in Porepunkah have tried to go about their normal lives as convoys of police conduct raids in houses around the area, and large swathes of bush are cut off by roadblocks.
Normally a tourist town, a gateway to the alpine region, Porepunkah is now full of police and journalists.
Many locals won’t talk – they know Freeman or his wife, Mali. They’ve had the media in town for the week, and they’re over it. But everyone is still speculating – where he is, why they haven’t found him yet, and whether it’s safe.
“I don’t think he would come for us,” one woman, who did not want to be named, said.
Others, like the Siede and White, are starting to worry about their livelihoods.
“Usually we’ve got cars flooding past and people popping into the park, even in the quiet times, but it’s been completely dead,” White said.
“Even when I went into Bright, there is usually people walking down the street, but there’s no one. It’s the quietest I’ve ever seen the supermarket as well.”
On Tuesday afternoon, police visited properties in Wangaratta, closing off the road and going from door to door. In Porepunkah, at least two raids were carried out on properties, with police returning to a home they had searched late last week.
For several hours in the afternoon, the roadblock near Freeman’s old home was back up. Police again swarmed the property, with two Bearcat vehicles and the special operations group searching the surrounding area while a helicopter flew overhead.
In the main strip of Bright, police set up a “mobile facility” for community members to drop in and share any information they have on Freeman and his whereabouts.
Police believe people in the community are helping him. On Monday, Supt Brett Kahan said people knew where Freeman was hiding and asked anyone with any information to come forward.
Immediately after the shooting, Siede moved everyone staying at the park out, and has been offering refunds or credits for those with bookings in the coming days. School holidays are starting at the end of the month, followed by the AFL Grand Final weekend – typically two of their busiest times of year.
“We’ve got school holiday bookings,” he said. “But we don’t know whether to be open or closed. The police won’t tell us anything.”
Normally at this time of year, the influx of tourists the snow brings is starting to thin. But blizzard conditions over the weekend meant Hotham was hit with 77cm of soft fresh snow.
“Normally we would be seeing a few more tourists coming through the town, especially the ski shop,” said Ben Foster, who works at the shop.
“Especially after we’ve had an absolute bump of snowfall like we just had over the weekend.”
He said visitors had “dropped straight off a cliff” – with people ringing to cancel bookings.
On local Facebook groups, many people are asking which stores are open and what the safest way to get to the snow is.
Almost ironically, Foster said he had never felt safer living in Bright. “There’s police everywhere,” he said.
The small number of snow lovers who have made it up the mountain have almost had it to themselves, with no lines and fewer people on the runs, he said.
“The snow is amazing,” Foster said. “And there’s another front coming within about eight days, I think another 20 to 30cm potentially.”
He said any help the government could offer to businesses would “be fantastic”, especially as the last two snow seasons had suffered from poor weather.
A spokesperson for the Victorian government said they were working with the council and businesses to “understand the impacts” of the incident.
“What has occurred in Porepunkah is shocking and heartbreaking,” the spokesperson said.
“Our government stands with the community of Porepunkah who are now carrying the weight of this horrific incident and with Victoria police and the emergency services who are still responding to this unthinkable crime.”
On Wednesday, council-run facilities across the area, including libraries, visitor information centres, transfer stations and the customer service centre in Bright, will open again.
The Alpine Shire mayor, Sarah Nicholas, did not respond to a request for comment, but in a Facebook video posted on Monday, said she had visited Porepunkah.
“It’s great to see the camaraderie that the community members are showing towards and between each other,” Nicholas said. “It’s a really strong community, and it’s wonderful to see how they’re managing through this crisis.”
She reminded the community to stay vigilant and said the council was working on “support services” to help people, but did not say what they would be.
