Mallacoota residents Carol Nelson and husband Paul tragically lost both their home and business in the bushfires last summer.
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It's been an incredibly difficult year, but ongoing assistance has allowed the family to reach a more hopeful position almost 12 months on.
The couple were previously operating a food van, in both East Gippsland and on the Far South Coast, offering traditional Greek cuisine to market and festival-goers, but sadly their van was decimated when the fire tore through Mallacoota.
After receiving a $50,000 Small Business Bushfire Recovery grant, Ms Nelson said they are now in the process of replacing their trailer with a new custom-built one.
"We're blown away, we'll have exactly the trailer we wanted, it's basically a commercial kitchen on wheels" she said.
"The grant has just taken so much pressure off us, we have been able to take some time and reflect after what has been a really rough year," she said.
Ms Nelson plans to visit Eden and Merimbula markets with the new food van and is investigating setting up on a vacant commercial block in Mallacoota with another hospitality vendor, to provide food throughout the summer months.
"It's been a long time now since we have done any work and we always loved doing what we were doing," she said.
With COVID impacting the whole world so closely on the tail of the catastrophic bushfires, Ms Nelson said the recovery process felt it had been put on the back burner earlier in the year.
"For things to still be quietly happening in the background has been great," she said.
Her family were renting and had been in the same house for 16 years when their home was lost.
"The people who owned the property are not going to rebuild, and in the meantime we had decided we didn't want to go back to that block," she said.
"All the houses around us were gone too, the new houses and people will be different... it would feel like a constant reminder."
"We are renting a holiday house for now and will hopefully enjoy the summer, there's been more rainfall in Mallacoota in recent months than we usually have in a whole year," Ms Nelson said.
Victorian Small Business Bushfire Recovery Grants of up to $50,000 are available for small businesses affected by the Victorian bushfires, and Small Business Bushfire Support Grants of up to $10,000 are available for eligible businesses and primary producers who have been indirectly affected due to the Victorian bushfires.
Approximately 2,300 small businesses have already received grants, but figures suggest there are many more businesses eligible for the grants that are yet to apply.
To find out more about the grants and to apply, please visit business.vic.gov.au/bushfire-recovery
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Leah Szanto
Regional journalist covering the Far South Coast of NSW.
Regional journalist covering the Far South Coast of NSW.
