How the local football and netball club became a vital support hub for families who lost everything
It is Thursday night at Harcourt Football Netball Club, and it soon becomes evident that fire has changed the way they view success.
The under-12 side is having a scratch match against their parents. Laughter breaks out when a dad slips over and almost pings his hammy. A son sells his mother some candy as he dances around her outstretched arms and delivers the ball neatly to a teammate.
President Mark Dorian is busily unravelling cords and plugging a cash machine into the bar before clearing tables for the Thursday night meals – pizzas and a hearty scoop of Neapolitan ice-cream for the kids.
There is a buzz around the club as five teams enter a weekend of finals, including their senior team against Navarre at Maryborough’s Princes Park on Sunday.
But evidence of January’s devastating bushfire is never far away.
Blackened trees, their branches regenerating with sprouting leaves, stand at the edge of the recreation reserve’s elevated car park, revealing just how close the flames came to engulfing the clubrooms.
A damp clearing, to the west of the ground, is all that is left of the Harcourt Cooperative Cool Store – a vital storage base for up to 90 local businesses that was razed to the ground. More than 50 houses were lost.
As Dorian emerges from the clubrooms, he trades witty quips with parents enjoying an afternoon drink.
Through his guidance Harcourt Football Netball Club has become a crucial focal point for the community.
With support from AFL Victoria and Netball Victoria, one of the first things they did was offer free registration, free uniforms and free equipment for families. Then they provided free meals on a Thursday night.
“We just made a big effort to try and bring normality to people’s lives. I mean, especially for the juniors, it was really about having a place to go,” Dorian says.
“People are still going through all sorts of things now, whether they lost everything, or it affects their work, or who knows? It affects people in different ways. But what this does is gives people a place to unwind, and get away from it, even if it’s for an hour or so, and just enjoy being around people.”
Mother-of-two Shelby is one of those people. The junior coach is putting the under-11 netballers through their paces ahead of their weekend final and also plays for the club’s C-grade team.
She admits she is still finding her feet after the fire burnt her rental home to the ground.
Shelby, who asks for her surname not to be used for privacy reasons, and her son and her daughter lost all of their possessions.
They are living temporarily at her father’s farm where she works part-time and studies social work.
“It’s a very long process [recovering], especially when there’s already a shortage of houses in the country,” she says.
“When you lose 53 [houses] in one community, it makes it very challenging to house everybody. But yeah, this has been a place that we can come, we can enjoy ourselves, we can feel supported, and just find that purpose still. And sport is so good for mental health.”
Members of the Harcourt senior football side are filtering into the ground. The Lions are looking to bounce back after last week’s three-point loss to Talbot. But for some, winning their semi-final on Sunday will be a bonus.
“We’re a success-driven club. Like we’ve been strong for a long period of time, and that’s our motive,” captain and local farmer Tom Walters says. “But on the other hand, sometimes things are bigger than footy, so sometimes you have just got to enjoy the experience and help each other out.
“We all donated a match payment or a portion of a match payment during the year that went to families at the club who were directly affected. It just enabled us to give back a little bit to people that needed it more than us.”
Seven months after the inferno devastated the town, club secretary Di Selwood experiences waves of “survivor guilt”.
She and her daughter left their Harcourt home early, her husband evacuated when the fire became too intense, and yet their house was miraculously saved by their neighbours, CFA veterans Peter and May Wilson.
“I don’t know how, but with buckets and whatever they had available, and they managed to keep the fire to the periphery. We had some burnt trees and fencing, but they saved our house,” Selwood says.
“I’m very grateful, extremely grateful. A bit of survivor guilt. You know, there are people in our street that lost everything.”
Selwood says she and many others were kept busy after the fire.
She explains the football-netball club had cancelled their Bunnings fundraising barbecue because of the disaster, but were able to use the meat to help feed the town.
“We set up and cooked barbecues and fed people probably for the first couple of weeks, and that was part of, I suppose, how the club kept a connection to the community,” she says.
“Then when the council and government and other services came in and took that load away, then we just started focusing on our club, our members, and how we were going to get them back to community sport and back to their friends and what they needed.”
The club has smashed its record for participation this year across five football teams and seven netball sides, as well as 52 Auskickers and more than 20 taking part in NetSetGo.
“We’ve had more players across football and netball than ever before, and in fact I think we’ve got the most in our league,” Dorian says.
“The biggest thing was really making sure that families were able to have somewhere to go.”
Shelby, 31, says the club became a place for families to heal.
“We don’t have a pub, things like that, for people to come together, so this has been one of those places,” she says.
“Even people that don’t even have kids playing here any more, they’ll still come down to training and catch up, have a drink, and have something to eat.
“It has ensured that children still have the opportunity to play sport without that financial pressure on parents.”
Dorian, who has two teenage sons playing with the Lions, Jack and Tom, says some people have found new homes, others are rebuilding, some have left town and some don’t know where they’re going next.
“For some, the struggles are still just as deep at the moment,” he says.
But the football-netball club has been a constant.
“For me, success is measured on participation and the vibe of the club and that’s more important to me than anything that we may win, hopefully, in a few weeks’ time,” he says. “It’s about community and people being together.”
Selwood agrees. The mother of two netball-playing daughters, Madi and Rhian, says six of the club’s families lost everything, but “they have stayed around”.
“It’s not about whether we win the cups or you know what happens in the finals,” she says. “Maybe the senior footballers would disagree with me. In fact, I’m probably sure they would. But I think success for us is bigger.
“It’s not all about the wins. It’s about the club culture. It’s about the people being able to come to a community space and be valued, be a valued member, be heard, be seen, be supported, and I think that’s where the success for us this year is.”
Keep up to date with the best AFL coverage in the country. Sign up for the Real Footy newsletter.
