Three years on and Garvoc fire survivors are only just starting to rebuild

The fact he didn't receive his compensation settlement until November means that he is really only just starting to rebuild his Garvoc sheep farm now.

And he only got about 40 per cent of his claim because he was under-insured, but he said it would have been a lot less if it weren't for the advocacy of his neighbours and lawyers.

Mr McGillivery said while others might expect that life for his family would have returned to normal, it had been a long road back.

"Because it's only really been four months since we've had a settlement, it's as though the fires were very recent for us," he said.

"We're three years in but it's really going to take another two years.

"You're really only beginning after three years to re-establish."

Mr McGillivery said they had come to terms with the reality of their loss and were now starting to embrace the possibilities.

"We're still keen to press on," he said.

"There's certainly not the raw pain and distress and the acute grief where you just standing and you're numb and you're not sure what to do.

"The beauty of being so busy and active is that it helps you cope with the grief and the trauma."

But the busyness of running back and forth to their farm from their rental in Terang is starting to take a toll. "We've just become so fatigued and tired," he said. "It's exhausting."

Mr McGillivery said the family, at first, thought they'd be able to re-establish the farm business without having to rebuild a house out there but had now realised that was not the case because of all the travel involved.

While they have been able to re-establish routines, life has actually become more demanding and less stable than it was before the fire.

He said so many of the things they used to take for granted were destroyed in the fire.

And most of those reminders are still on the farm, with the McGilliverys unable to remove their burnt out belongings until now.

He said they had to retain a lot of it as evidence because financial documentation was lost in the fire.

Read more:

I'm a survivor, not a victim of the fires

"We're starting to get rid of the things that remind us of the fires. That's going to be a relief," he said.

But he said they were accepting the reality.

"We still don't see ourselves as victims, we see ourselves as survivors and the need to press on, but it is a longer road," he said.

Mr McGillivery said they were now focused on looking after the health and well-being of their family of seven by making a routine out of life's small pleasures such as taking their farm dog for a walk each night after dinner.

The are also looking to start rebuilding their home.

He said if they waited until they could do the ideal or optimum thing, it wouldn't happen so they had decided to look at what they could realistically do which would also be sufficient.

"We're not carrying debt but unlike dairy farmers, at the moment because we're understocked, we have an inadequate on-farm cash flow for the major re-establishments," he said.

"For us, re-establishing our mixed farming/sheep farming business, it's requiring us starting from scratch again."

He said they weren't able to access the rural finance concessional loans because they couldn't fulfill the terms.

"We had to say no to it even though it would have been really great," he said.

"For example, they wanted us to stock virtually with capacity again at the 800-900 sheep that we lost but we realised we couldn't do that without the internal fences and the water and facilities to crutch and shear and perform husbandry things."

So he is replacing his flock slowly by keeping most of the ewe lambs as breeders.

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