One year ago near the beginning of Australia's unprecedented bushfire season, which claimed 33 lives and destroyed more than 3,000 homes, a small bushfire started at Sarabah in the Gold Coast hinterland.
Over the next few days as conditions deteriorated it quickly spread and eventually claimed 11 homes and the heritage-listed Binna Burra Lodge in the Scenic Rim.
Twelve months on and many people living in the region are still feeling anxious while preparations are underway for the new fire season.
The owner of the Little Bee Secret Garden shop in Canungra, Alex Griffiths, said she still gets emotional when thinking about the disaster, but counts herself as one of the lucky ones.
"All I remember is the smoke and redness in the sky for the length of a month, and the helicopters going overhead," she said.
"I can't believe I am upset, I have so little to be upset about in comparison to other people whose homes were at risk.
"The helicopters were fairly significant for me. It felt like we were in a war zone.
"Every four minutes the helicopters were carting [water] overhead and it was not like anything we had experienced before."
Choppers 'start the heart'
The editor of the Canungra Times, Keer Moriaty, said the smell of smoke from a bushfire currently burning at nearby Springbrook and noise from helicopters, based at the Canungra Army Barracks, has been worrying many locals.
"It's a trigger. We've had some Chinook helicopters doing some training exercises for the past few weeks," she said.
"With the helicopters going overhead it starts your heart again, you're just startled."
Ms Moriarty, who started the small regional newspaper, said the community banded together during the September 2020 crisis with local businesses donating food, livestock feed, and clothing to affected residents.
"No one predicted what eventually happened. We'd had bushfires in the area before," she said.
Ms Moriaty knew the situation was escalating when a local fire fighter rang her to ask if she had seen her ex-husband who lived on a property near the fire front.
"He said, 'I've just seen the fire come up from his property over the valley in Sarabah and I've got crews over there, but can't get hold of anybody'," she said.
"I thought 'oh no', so I called my kids and asked if they'd seen their dad, trying to sound really calm."
The journalist said her ex-husband was okay, but the situation was quickly deteriorating.
"That was when we were like 'this is really bad', and we were hearing stories of the spot fires jumping 200 metres ahead," Ms Moriaty said.
The fire threat eventually eased in the Scenic Rim and the national focus quickly shifted to other bushfires burning across the country.
Keer Moriaty said it had been a rollercoaster 12 months for the hinterland region, but what many people did not realise was that Canungra's water supply also ran dry and authorities were forced to truck in supplies from neighbouring towns.
"It's what I can only describe as something out of a Mad Max movie where people were just desperate for water," the journalist said.
"Then we probably had a little bit of normality and then this pandemic. So it's been really strange."
Fire season threat
Queensland Rural Fire Service Superintendent Alan Gillespie said the Gold Coast hinterland is still a hotspot with predictions it will be an above average bushfire season.
"It won't be anything like we saw last year, but we still have an above average bushfire risk, and that's a bit of a trigger for me," he said.
Superintendent Gillespie said a lot of positives came out of the devasting bushfire emergency, including reviews of the emergency response in South East Queensland.
"We've had the worst fire season in history, followed by a pandemic, so there are some challenges associated with that. But we are adapting to that so we can better prepare our communities and firefighters," he said.
"Building that community resilience is a very important part of what we do as an organisation.
"Last year we showed locals that we can't have a fire truck at every property, so people need to take responsibility for their own properties."
