Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today is certainly a day for quiet reflection. We of course observed Remembrance Day at 11.00 am, taking the time to honour and thank the more than 102,000 Australian men and women who've lost their lives over the past century serving our country in wars and peacekeeping missions. But, as you know all too well, Deputy Speaker Gillespie, there has been another reason for reflection in our electorates over the past week.

Last Saturday, 8 November, marked one year since our Black Summer bushfires. It was a horrific windy day that saw 17 emergency-level fires burning across New South Wales grow to 94 blazes in a single day. Some of those fires were in my electorate: Brill Brill and Coombes Gap, west of Port Macquarie; Carrai East, west of Kempsey; Kian Road, west of Macksville; and Bees Nest, west of Dorrigo. Sadly, that night, the Carrai East fire claimed the life of 58-year-old Willawarrin resident Barry Parsons. Over the next few days, fires ravaged through tens of thousands of hectares of bush and grassland, and many residents fled their homes for evacuation centres, with little more than the shirts on their backs and their pets. In total, 156 homes in my electorate alone were lost, with a further 53 damaged, and 353 outbuildings were destroyed, with a further 117 damaged.

I would like to again thank the Rural Fire Service volunteers, not only from my electorate but from across the nation, as well as volunteers from New Zealand and the United States, who bravely put their lives on the line to save ours. I remember travelling to Willawarrin and Bellbrook just after the road reopened and seeing the blackened and scorched earth all the way up to the back door of farmhouse after farmhouse after farmhouse, each property saved by the heroics of the RFS volunteers. I'd also like to thank all of those who spent countless hours at emergency centres and those who cooked food, donated goods or simply provided emotional support. I thank all five local councils, charity organisations like Lions Club and Rotary, and many, many others. In particular, I'd like to recognise Charles Sturt University, who at their own expense provided over 3,000 individual accommodation nights to interstate RFS volunteers.

I was extremely proud of my electorate and the way they responded to such adversity. Their courage was commendable, as was their sense of community, and I thank them for it.

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