Resilience is wearing thin in the town, as business owners face mass booking cancellations and insurers turn their backs
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The tourist road from Dunkeld to Halls Gap is eerily quiet. Blackened trees stretch spidery branches towards a sky still smudged with smoke. The road is open, but few cars take it save for a wildlife rescue vehicle inching slowly along, its occupants scanning the burnt-out forest for limping wallabies reported in the area. A lone currawong shrieks, invisible.
Fire ripped through this part of the Grampians/Gariwerd national park six weeks ago, and still burns on the other side of the mountain range – an immense rocky ridge jutting out through the smoke haze. But already, new growth is starting to sprout. Green spikes burst from the charcoal stumps of grass-trees. Near a dry creek bed, tiny fern fronds unfurl out of the ash.
