For Lana Wolstencroft and Todd Byrnes, Saturday was meant to be the culmination of a 22-year romance, a day to finally tie the knot. Instead, the couple from Sawmill found themselves at the Mansfield showgrounds, their wedding cancelled, as smoke from devastating bushfires lifted to reveal a scorched landscape.
A Celebration Derailed by Flames
The pair were set to marry at the Kevington Hotel on the banks of the Goulburn River, with a two-day celebration for 120 guests planned. Wolstencroft's mother and sister had travelled by caravan from Cairns for the occasion. However, as a severe heatwave gripped Victoria, sending temperatures soaring to 46C on Friday, bushfires erupted, creating an impassable barrier of flame and smoke.
"The fire just kept developing," Wolstencroft explained. With guests stranded on opposite sides of the firefront—including the makeup artist and most attendees from Melbourne—and winds described as "hectic," the couple made the difficult decision at 6pm on Friday. "It was not worth the risk of all our friends and family," she said.
One family friend had already arrived at the hotel, set up camp, and cracked a beer, only to be told the celebration was off. With characteristic resilience, Byrnes shrugged, "Another week's all right."
From Wedding Bells to Relief Efforts
Instead of a wedding reception, the couple spent Saturday repurposing their celebration. They turned wedding flowers into bouquets for Country Fire Authority (CFA) stations and boxed up surplus food for relief centres. Their perspective was shaped by the scale of the disaster around them.
More than 100 buildings have been reported destroyed and over 300,000 hectares (74,000 acres) burned across the state. In Ravenswood, Harcourt, and Longwood alone, dozens of homes were reduced to ashes. "So many are way worse [off] than us," Wolstencroft noted. "People have lost their houses... We are lucky."
Her niece had heard a woman crying in the showground toilets after losing everything in Bonnie Doon. At the Mansfield recovery centre, evacuees slept in cars or on camping mattresses, facing an anxious wait to discover the fate of their properties.
Heartbreak on the Firefront
The human and environmental toll was stark. CFA volunteer Lisa Reynolds, stationed near Longwood where the bushfire of greatest concern started, had to deliver the devastating news to friends that their home was gone. "There was nothing left for them to come back to," she said.
Reynolds and her husband, who stayed to defend their property, managed to save their main house but lost another dwelling, their shed, and a car. "I feel really guilty that our main house is still there," she confessed through tears, highlighting the random cruelty of the fires.
She described scenes of widespread wildlife death, including kangaroos caught in broken power lines and birds suffocated by smoke. "One house just had a whole lot of dead parrots in the driveway. It was just heartbreaking," Reynolds recounted.
For a third consecutive day, a total fire ban remained in place across Victoria on Sunday. CFA chief officer Jason Heffernan warned, "Conditions have eased, but we have a long way to go to get the current fire situation under control." As the state braced for a prolonged battle, stories of personal sacrifice, like that of a postponed wedding after 22 years, underscored the community spirit rising from the ashes.
