Teachers at a New South Wales (NSW) south coast school thought their young students were coping well after the Black Summer bushfires–until wild winds swept through the playground.
Royal Far West chief executive Jacqui Emery was at the school after the catastrophic fires as part of the rural children’s charity wellbeing program in disaster-affected regions.
She saw the moment things changed.
“The kids were really acting out as soon as these winds picked up and the teachers recognised, ‘Oh, maybe we do have a problem’,” she recalled to AAP.
“It’s a sad but hopeful story, in a way, because that’s what we do: we’ve been working with teachers and parents and children to be able to talk about the emotions, what they experienced, to be able to process it.”…