With a few hours to spare, his dad bundled him into the car and they sped away from the flames engulfing Steels Creek in the Yarra Ranges.

“I remember going back and seeing nothing,” the now 13-year-old said.

“Where my house used to be was flat and black ash.”

Connor is among a generation of children in the Yarra Ranges area who have grown up terrified of fires since that catastrophic event almost a decade ago.

But now, a new partnership between Wurundjeri elders, Dixons Creek Primary School and the local community is tackling this fear by teaching students Indigenous burning techniques.

As part of the Return of the Firestick project, students at the small country school have walked on country with Indigenous elders Uncle Dave Wandin and Ralph to learn the difference between good and bad fire and smoke.

“The white smoke is good for the environment,” 11-year-old Chloe, who also lost her home in the Black Saturday fires, explains.

“The black smoke harms the environment.”

On another excursion, this time with their parents, students watched the elders make fire by rubbing sticks together and then igniting leaves scattered across the forest floor.

Beneath the towering gumtrees, Grade 6 student Lily helped spread this fire with a piece of bark.

She watched insects and lizards scurry out of the earth before the slow-burning fire reached them.

“We also did a smoking ceremony,” the 12-year-old said.

“We were given a gumleaf and we walked through the smoke.”

Unlike large-scale fuel reduction exercises undertaken by fire authorities, cultural burns are low intensity and encourage vegetation to regrow.

The flames creep through the undergrowth, allowing animals and insects to escape, and sparing the valuable canopy above.

Uncle Dave believes cultural burns play an important role in reducing the intensity of bushfires.

“We can't stop bushfires, they are a natural part of the landscape,” he said.

“But producing this different structure within the monoculture of the forest can slow down the intensity of it, and in some cases stop it. That’s what our people have done for thousands and thousands of years.”

He said it was important that this knowledge was shared with others.

Eager to share what they had learnt, current and former Dixons Creek students ran a presentation about cultural burnings at a Reconciliation Day event in Healesville earlier this year.

The project is a finalist in the Resilient Australia Awards, which is sponsored by the federal government and recognises initiatives that make communities more resilient to disasters.

Dixons Creek teacher Kylie Schabel said she was still seeing the effects of Black Saturday among students.

They’ve attended funerals of friends taken too soon, witnessed family breakups and experienced financial difficulties due to the loss of their family’s homes and businesses.

“Whether their houses burnt down or not they were living in an environment where everything was dead,” Ms Schabel said.

“It’s black, everyone is really traumatised. They were living in that environment for years. One child is in year 7 this year and is still living in a half-built house.”

When the school takes part in its regular fire drills, students' fear of fire becomes particularly apparent.

“We go into the art room, which is the only building here that is brick,” Ms Schabel said.

“When we pull down those shutters those kids freak out.”

She said the project taught students not to always be fearful of fire.

“It is not going to be another Black Saturday, armageddon, every other year because that’s what a lot of them are frightened of," she said.

“It gives them hope."