Mallacoota is a town that knows fire intimately. On New Year's Eve 2019, thousands of residents crowded the foreshore as flames approached, huddled together waiting for evacuation. The fire destroyed 123 homes and burned 83 per cent of the surrounding area. Now, six years later, the community is not waiting for the next crisis. The Mallacoota and District Recovery Association, born from the ashes of Black Summer, has spent years building systems to moderate fire behaviour, understand forest composition, and prepare every resident for what comes next.
With the Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council (AFAC) now warning of heightened bushfire risk across New South Wales, Victoria, and parts of southeast South Australia during the coming autumn, Mallacoota's approach to community-led resilience has become a template. Not because it is perfect, but because it works when centralised emergency response reaches its limits.
The Autumn 2026 Seasonal Bushfire Outlook identifies increased fire risk across southern and central NSW, large parts of Victoria, extending into parts of southeast South Australia, and southern Western Australia. The driver is not a single weather event but a structural problem: persistent soil moisture deficits across fire-prone regions. The Bureau of Meteorology's long-range forecast compounds the concern. Autumn temperatures are likely to be warmer than average, and rainfall is expected to be below average across most of southern Australia. Even with anticipated rains in the short term, the outlook suggests months of sustained dryness.
In regional areas, this is not new information. Farmers in western Victoria have watched soil conditions deteriorate for three seasons. Communities in the NSW southern tablelands have documented declining water tables and earlier drying cycles each year. What the AFAC outlook does is confirm what local knowledge already suggests: the conditions are now in place for significant fire activity, and preparation cannot wait.
The national response has layers. The Australian government allocated $17.7 million through the Bushfire Community Recovery and Resilience Program to support critical preparedness and recovery projects. State fire services continue to issue daily fire danger ratings. The CFA in Victoria has launched its Get Fire Ready initiative, reaching metropolitan, regional, and rural communities with practical advice on fire planning and emergency access.
But the real work, researchers and community leaders increasingly argue, happens at the town and farm level. Natural Resource Management regions across Australia work with landholders to plan fire management tailored to specific areas, using field data, mapping, and workshops to build community resilience across whole landscapes. Organisations like Bushfire Resilience Inc coordinate community-led approaches, empowering local groups to develop self-reliance systems rather than waiting for external emergency response.
Mallacoota's experience reveals what works. The Mallacoota and District Recovery Association developed its model after consulting the recovery process from Strathewen, which rebuilt after the 2009 Black Saturday fires. Instead of waiting for government guidance, residents gathered and set their own vision: an inclusive, vibrant community that ensures everyone receives the support they need, restores what was loved, and prepares for future disasters. The association now coordinates fuel management working groups, hosts webinars on fire behaviour and traditional knowledge, and engages with both community members and emergency agencies from a position of collective ownership, not deference.
For communities like Happy Valley on Queensland's island of K'Gari and parts of Wannon in Victoria, similar approaches have created systems and processes for self-reliance in response to bushfire threat. These communities have learned a hard lesson: when fire arrives, centralised emergency services are important but insufficient. The margin between survival and loss is often determined by what the community has already decided to do.
This is not to diminish government investment in preparedness infrastructure and emergency response. The $1.2 billion disaster recovery provision in the 2025-26 federal budget reflects a recognition that fire recovery cannot be left to chance. But it does suggest a reframing: government resources are most effective when they support community-led resilience, not replace it.
As autumn approaches and fire danger ratings begin their daily cycles across three states, the question for regional Australia is not whether fires will come. The question is whether communities have built the social infrastructure to survive and recover when they do. Mallacoota's answer, written in the work of six years, is that preparation begins now, in the quiet months, before the wind shifts.