Locals like 73-year-old Lindy Marshall rely on friends for clean water, shower at other people’s homes and eat pub meals

'We're all just waiting': NSW south coast residents still in limbo three months after bushfires

'We're all just waiting': NSW south coast residents still in limbo three months after bushfires

In the village of Verona on the fire-ravaged New South Wales south coast, Lindy Marshall has become used to waiting.

Since she lost her home near Cobargo in the bushfires that tore through this part of the state on New Year’s Eve, the 73-year-old has been living in a fire-damaged shed on her property with her four rescue dogs.

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Unable to secure short-term rental accommodation, Marshall has spent the last three months living in arrested development; spending hours on the phone navigating a complex web of bureaucracy as she tries to get her life back in order, while also securing basic provisions such as clean drinking water and food.

She’s not alone – even as governments have encouraged tourists to return to the NSW south coast to aid the region’s flagging retail economy, hundreds of people in bushfire-affected areas continue to live day-to-day as they wait for their lives to return to normalcy.

“We’re all just waiting, waiting, waiting in limbo until someone does something,” Marshall told Guardian Australia.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lindy Marshall is like hundreds of others in bushfire-affected areas, living day-to-day and waiting for her life to return to normalcy. Photograph: Ben Marden/The Guardian

“I’m in the same situation as so many others. It doesn’t mitigate the pain. Except that you’ve got a lot of compatriots.”

Since January, hundreds of millions of dollars have been raised for bushfire relief. Charities such as the Red Cross raised more than $100m, while a significant pool of private fundraising has been generated through appeals including the more than $50m raised by the comedian Celeste Barber.

At the same time, individual states and the commonwealth have made commitments including a one-off payment of $1,000 to people in bushfire-affected areas.

Some of those fundraising efforts have hit roadblocks. The Red Cross has been criticised for spending up to 10% of bushfire donations on administration costs, while Barber’s appeal was hampered by concerns the NSW Rural Fire Service trustee could not distribute money to other states or to bushfire victims.

But many charities insist the money is getting to where it is needed. The Salvation Army has received $43m in donations since its bushfire recovery appeal was launched in November. To date its spent $21.2m of that money including more than $15m in “hardship payments” paid out to more than 9,400 people affected by the fires.

And yet, three months after the fires, people like Marshall remain in limbo.

Though her home insurance has been paid out, the company contracted by the NSW government to conduct property clean-ups, Laing O’Rourke, is yet to visit, and thanks to a scarcity of rental properties she’s been unable to secure short-term accommodation.

Instead, she’s forced to rely on friends for basic necessities such as clean drinking water. Marshall has been borrowing portable plastic water tanks from friends, showering at other people’s homes and eating meals at Cobargo’s only pub “when I get hungry”.

When she can’t borrow water containers, she fills up buckets at a rest-stop near town.

“This is what people in the city don’t understand,” Marshall told Guardian Australia. “I don’t know how much money has been raised. You hear all this talk about all these celebrities donating millions of dollars. But as far as I’m concerned it should be up to the government to look after not just me but everyone doing exactly the same thing.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lindy Marshall is forced to rely on friends for basic necessities such as clean drinking water. Photograph: Ben Marden/The Guardian

In the absence of official help, it has often fallen to local volunteers to provide assistance. Matthew Strohfeldt, a Cobargo resident who lost his home during the bushfires, has been raising money to purchase 1,000-litre water containers for people such as Marshall.

He says that in his district alone there are still dozens of people who remain homeless three months on from the fires.

“People are living in tents, campervans, sheds with nothing but a mattress on the floor, or they’re couch surfing,” he said.

“The temporary housing is near on impossible to find. It was hard enough to get a rental around here as it was and now this has all happened.”

Strohfeldt says he started helping deliver water to properties after his own home was destroyed rather than, in his words, “sitting around getting depressed and angry and frustrated”.

He said he approached his local council for funding but was knocked back. Instead, he and his friends have been raising money for generators and portable drinking water tanks through GoFundMe pages and other small donations.

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But the challenges keep coming.

“We started with power, getting people generators so they could at least have light in their caravans and those bits and pieces,” he said.

“Then we moved onto water. The next problem is septics. People still don’t have sewerage. There’s also things like heating. Winter is coming and I can tell you that you don’t want to be living in a tent down here in June. It’s all these essential things that just don’t seem to be getting picked up.”

Beyond the practicalities of everyday life, the bushfires continue to take a toll on the fabric of towns like Cobargo.

“People are just frustrated,” he said.

“You’ve got people, for example, who lived out on rural blocks for 30 years without DA approval or anything like that. They’ve got no money to replace their homes and are stuck in town getting angry and frustrated because the lives they’re used to have been lost.”