Each week, Samantha Lewis shares her insights on various topics, from exploring new health trends to reimagining personal growth.

As I write this, much of my community is on fire. Literally.

Fires are moving through farmland, vineyards, bush and towns.

Friends have lost homes, workplaces, sheds, stock, and the places that hold generations of memories.

Others are waiting in that awful space of not knowing, watching smoke thicken the sky and checking updates with a knot in their stomach.

We will not know the full impact until it has either passed through or burned itself out, and right now, that feels a long way off.

This is not a tale of sadness though.

Because alongside the destruction, something else has been burning just as fiercely.

The human spirit.

Within hours of the first warnings, social feeds and group messages filled with offers.

Not questions, not hesitation. Offers.

People opening paddocks and sheds to relocate livestock and animals, free of charge.

Trailers hitched up without being asked.

Phone numbers shared with simple messages saying, “If you need somewhere safe, we’ve got you.”

Friends who have never met each other co-ordinating transport for horses, sheep, dogs, cats, chickens.

People checking fences, filling troughs, making room.

Doing what is needed to be done because that is what humans do when things matter.

Then there are our firefighters and emergency workers.

The volunteers who leave their own properties and families to protect someone else’s.

The career crews working impossible hours in brutal conditions.

The co-ordination teams, aircraft pilots, dispatchers and support staff holding the line while the rest of us watch and wait.

They do not seek praise.

They just turn up, again and again, when the rest of us cannot.

Over the past few days my phone has barely stopped.

Messages. Calls. Quiet check-ins.

Offers of spare rooms, couches, caravans, meals, “We have acres available if anyone needs.” “Are you okay?” “What do you need?” “If it comes this way, come here.”

There is something deeply grounding about that.

In moments like this, the noise of the world falls away.

What matters becomes very clear.

Safety. People. Animals. Land. Community.

Fire strips things back to their essentials.

It takes away the illusion that we are separate, that we are self-contained, that we get through life alone.

We don’t. We never have.

We are held by each other, often more quietly than we realise, until a moment like this reveals it in full view.

If you are reading this from a place that has been touched by fire, know this.

You are not invisible.

You are not alone.

And your community is likely showing up in ways you may never forget.

If you are reading this from somewhere safe, hold that gratitude gently.

Check in on someone.

Donate if you can.

Offer what you have, even if it feels small.

Sometimes a message is enough to remind someone that the world has not turned away from them.

The land will heal, slowly.

The scars will remain, for a while.

But woven through the smoke and ash is something unbreakable.

Care. Courage. And the quiet, extraordinary goodness of people, rising when it is needed most.

Shepparton News Google News Panels

Tuesday, 28th July 2026

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