Christmas is coming to the South Coast in nondescript cardboard boxes filled with bright and beautiful decorations lovingly handmade by people from around the world.
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Canberra friends Juanita Watters and Bianca Brownlow earlier this year started the #RemakeChristmas campaign, asking people to handcraft Christmas decorations to replace those lost by South Coast residents in last summer's devastating bushfires.
Juanita's own parents had a property at Cobargo, one of the hard-hit communities in the New Year's Eve fires. Buildings on the property were destroyed. Juanita found one of the most confronting aspects of the clean-up was coming across a burnt-out trunk of Christmas decorations, all their festive colours reduced to the black and grey of ash and rubble; memories gone with them.
In the months since #RemakeChristmas was launched, the project's Facebook group grew rapidly to almost 700 members from Australia and around the world.
The response was overwhelming.
Craftspeople from Australia as well as countries including the United States, Norway, Ireland, New Zealand Belgium and South Africa made one-of-a-kind decorations using knitting, crochet, sewing, papercraft, mosaic, pottery and more.
One person alone made 200 individual decorations. There were thousands of others made and donated.
"We were just blown away and so inspired by the generosity of strangers around the world," Bianca said.
The pair and a host of good-spirited volunteers got together last weekend at the Downer Community Centre to pack up the decorations to be sent to the Cobargo and Quaama recovery centres, for distribution.
Bianca said some contributors included a special card for the recipients of their work but also a personal note to the organisers about why they wanted to be involved with the project.
"There were so many beautiful notes in which people talked about their own personal connection and why they wanted to participate. Things like, 'I'm making the first Christmas stocking for my grandson, so I wanted to make one for someone else'," she said.
The women chose to focus on Christmas decorations because they were possessions so meaningful but something homeowners probably would not prioritise to replace.
They were also motivated by the fact many fire-affected families would go to put up their Christmas tree as usual, only to realise those boxes of decorations no longer existed.
"There is so much sentiment wrapped up in Christmas decorations," Bianca said.
"We have a paper snowman on our tree, that is torn, but we can't bear to get rid of it because it was made by our daughter."
That same sense of thoughtfulness went into each decoration.
Bianca said as the world had moved on and another Christmas came, vivid memories of the fires were likely to return to those affected communities.
The decorations were to act as a salve.
It was to let those South Coast communities know someone cared, whether they were half-way around the world, or just across the street.
