By Casey Neill
As you drive to Marysville along the Black Spur, there at first are no signs of the devastation that the ferocious 2009 bushfires inflicted on the picturesque landscape.
As you get a little closer, though, you spot charred tree trunks on some of the towering gums that line the road.
Then you catch sight of a hill covered with tall trees that are devoid of foliage until their very top.
Jenny Pullen explains that this is epicormic growth – what she describes as the last gasp.
Matchstick-like remnants of mountain ash trees cover the peaks behind the town.
But Jenny doesn’t see destruction – she sees babies.
“They need a fire as hot as we had to open up the seed pods, so there’ll be baby mountain ash growing,” she said.
The Mail spoke to Jenny shortly after fire tore through Marysville, destroying her home and Allwah Tourist Cottages.
She described it then as “worse than Hiroshima”.
Sitting in the rebuilt Fraga’s Cafe in the lead-up to the Black Saturday 10th anniversary, Jenny said she knew that Saturday 7 February 2009 would be a bad day.
“We’d been told for a fortnight that it was going to be the worst day in history,” she said.
“My husband (Graeme) and I are both firefighters so we were very aware of what was happening.
“The leaves had been falling off the trees for a week so we knew it was bad.”
Their son Nigel is a firefighter with the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) and always rings her when he’s heading to a fire.
That day he told her he was off to one at Murrindindi.
“Then he rang back some time later. It might have been 10 minutes, it might have been two hours,” Jenny said.
He told her the fires were really bad, that he was heading back towards Marysville and she needed to leave.
Dressed in her fire gear, she evacuated the guests from her cottages.
“The fourth cottage, the people didn’t want to leave,” she said.
“They said ‘we’ve just been through Healesville, there’s no fires, we’ll be fine’.
“I told them to pack up. They did leave, and thanked me the next day.”
Jenny had her then 81-year-old mum with her.
“She’d been burnt out in the ‘39 fires. She was in a bit of a state,” she said.
“We packed whatever we could. We were going to the oval, Gallipoli Park.
“No sooner had I got mum into the car and we’d driven around to where the oval is and met someone from the SES and he said in no uncertain terms, ‘get the f*** out, nothing’s going to save Marysville’.
“I’d made a pact with one of my friends that we’d both evacuate the mothers together. We drove into Alexandra to my cousin’s house. Both mothers stayed there.
“I thought ‘I’m going back to Marysville and I’m going to save it’.
“I went through three road blocks.”
She was in ‘firefighter mode’, thinking about which hoses to use, which cottage to save first.
At the fourth road block, a local policeman told her she’d die if she continued on.
But Jenny kept driving.
“Then we met the wall of flames,” she said.
She turned around went back to Alexandra
“I didn’t hear any noise and I didn’t see any flames. I obviously did, but it’s been blacked out,” she said.
“Then we evacuated to the community centre at Alexandra and met up with quite a few of my friends and we were all together as a group.
“I was never scared.
“It must have been adrenaline or my training as a firefighter.
“For a long time there I was unsure on what I’d run away from, because I couldn’t see anything, because we weren’t allowed back in.”
Nigel had been evacuated to Gallipoli Park.
“He saw his sister’s house burn without being able to do anything,” she said.
“As devastating as it all was, my friends that were lost and pets that were lost, we stuck together as a family.”
On the Sunday, overcome with anxiety, Jenny insisted that the family needed to literally come together.
An Alexandra family moved into their motorhome so the 10 Pullen family members could be under one roof.
“They’re the people that I really want to thank; they’re the salt of the earth people,” she said.
Jenny said she only started to heal once she was allowed back into Marysville and “I could actually feel the soil and find a chip of china”.
“The roof of the house we were in had collapsed and I knew where precious things would be, so I commando-crawled into where I had a set of jade elephants,” she said.
She found a small piece.
“I felt alright then, I had something,” she said.
At that stage, Jenny had no idea what she was going to do next.
She was 55 years old and worried about finding a job.
“I didn’t know if I could rebuild the cottages,” she said.
“They were only three years old. I was the site manager when they were being built.
“They were named after people in our family, females in our family.
“It took us a long time to work out that it was just too hard to rebuild the cottages and too expensive.
“My husband picked up the tools again, he was a builder.
“He helped build the police station, he built our office area, he helped build the golf club…
“I was offered work for DHS (the Department of Human Services) in the hubs and that really helped me.
“And I think it helped the people I was trying to help because I’d actually been through it.”
Graeme didn’t want to rebuild in Marysville, so they bought a house in nearby Buxton.
“That was somebody else’s house. It wasn’t my home and it didn’t have my things in it,” Jenny said.
Eventually they bought land in Buxton to build on, and just recently moved into their new house.
“I’ve gone home after 10 years,” Jenny said.
“I just feel so humble that I’ve gone home, I’ve finally gone home.”
Nigel and his then-girlfriend Millie are now married with their own home, a daughter and another child on the way.
Jenny’s daughter Sarah and her partner Bert bought in Alexandra.
“Where my office is, I’ve seen so many houses come in on trucks,” she said.
“I wonder where it’s going and whose it is.
“Marysville will never be the same old Marysville, but it’s the new Marysville.
“I feel the community just looks after everybody.
“We all look out for each other.
“I feel loved in the community.”
Jenny has served on the town’s committee for the 10th anniversary commemorations.
“I went on it to put my thoughts forward as a business owner, to try and help the community,” she said.
“I’m trying to be a voice of many people. Every other committee member is as well.
“Nobody is doing it for themselves.
“They’re trying to get the community together.”
Graeme has never marked the anniversary, Jenny said. He tells her he remembers the people he lost every day.
“It slips to the back of my mind, but if I go past the house where they live or see some of their family members,” Jenny said.
She and Graeme were going to a thank-you event in Alexandra on Sunday 3 February.
“Then on the Thursday we have a church service, non-denominational, then walk to the memorial for a minute’s silence, and go to the barbecue area.
“I still don’t know if my husband and will be there.”
After the fires, Dianne Lisle opened Marysville Triangle Real Estate out of a shipping container.
“She asked me if I would like to come and work with her. I really thanked her for it, but I said ‘I don’t think I’m well enough yet’,” Jenny said.
Six months later she took up the offer, got her agent representative licence and later got her full licence.
“Dianne sold the agency and I bought with another partner, Georgia,” she said.
“Now we have The Professionals Real Estate.
“It’s been a godsend to me.
“I should have done it when I was 40, not when I was 60.
“I think being able to help Marysville rebuild has been good for me, to bring new people in or people who’ve gone away and have come back again.
“In my small part I feel as though I’ve helped the town to rebuild.
“There’s still a way to go. There’s lots of empty spaces yet to be built on.
“Out of the devastation I think we’ve done pretty good.
“Actually, we’ve done amazingly well.”
