The house on the corner of Stanley Avenue and Terra Nova Drive in Mallacoota had always been a welcoming place. Fairy lights hung in the windows and the Christmas decorations were always the first in the street. “It was home for everybody; it was the corner stop and everybody was welcome,” says Taylor Bourke Shepheard as she scrambles over the broken pieces of her lounge room. Her mum, Lisa Bourke, hangs quietly in the background. “One of my earliest memories is of Pop’s cupboard full of mum’s antiques and Pop’s war medals.” Shepheard says after the fires they combed through the ash looking for her nan’s engagement ring, to no avail. Instead they uncovered some of her great-grandfather’s war medals. “We are definitely grieving everything we have lost inside, but we are now looking forward to gaining a bigger and better house that will welcome more people,” she says.