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Twelve months after devastating firestorms reduced his home to ashes, Eugene Howe contemplates the first anniversary of Australia's worst natural disaster with a mix of hope and dread.
Green shoots have begun appearing on his razed block and, after almost a year of waiting, the charred ruins of his home were last month cleared so he can rebuild.
But such decisions are difficult, he explains, when every day remains a struggle.
"I can't even think," Howe told AFP.
"Yesterday I was going to buy a shed and build it, the other day I was going to build a house. Another day I was going to sell the block, today I'm keeping the block.
"I'm just lost. I'm a lost soul with no direction in life."
Howe's story is not unusual among the hundreds of survivors still without permanent homes, though he has had a tougher time than most.
Uninsured and out of work when the February 7 wildfires swept through his home town of Kinglake, Howe had to rough it for 10 months on his charred land, erecting a lean-to and, later, moving a small donated caravan onto the block.
"It was horrible, it snowed here a couple of times. It was absolutely the worst time of my life," he said.
He turned to alcohol to escape winter's punishing cold, and says he will never forget the days of sleeping head-to-toe in a single bed with his daughters, 12 and eight.
"But a lot of people did it harder than me and it's getting better, it's greening up and people are smiling a bit. I just wish I had a home," he said.
The 'Black Saturday' fires thundered through 78 communities killing 173 people, including 23 children.
Another 20 children and 28 teenagers lost at least one parent, and 113 of the dead perished trying to take refuge inside buildings.
More than half the dead -- 94 people -- came from Kinglake and surrounding areas, which was the location of 1,242 of the 2,173 properties destroyed, according to the Victoria Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority (VBRRA).
Rebuilding permits have been issued for more than 1,400 homes and businesses, and VBRRA estimates 60 percent of those displaced by the fires wish to rebuild.
But more than 400 households remain in stop-gap accommodation, with Howe among around 300 people living in clusters of temporary buildings in the worst-hit towns of Flowerdale, Marysville and Kinglake.
Builder Dave Matthews, who managed to save his own home but has spent much of the past year helping others reconstruct, says many people are looking to Sunday's anniversary as a major turning point.
"I can't wait for it to happen, it feels like it will be a bit of a weight lifted off the shoulders, I can't really explain it," he said.
"We've had Christmas, and we've said goodbye to that year, but it isn't quite finished."
Thousands are expected to gather at Melbourne's St Paul's Cathedral for a memorial mass on Sunday, which has been declared a National Day of Mourning for the victims.
But Matthews says many locals are leaving Kinglake to mark the anniversary in private. There is a low-key local service planned, but "I think it's something we've just got to deal with ourselves," Matthews explains.
For some people the harsh reality of how enormous, and lengthy, the recovery process will be is just starting to hit, says Margaret Grigg, assistant director of the Bushfire Psychological Recovery Plan.
"Some people might be crying for the first time," Grigg said.
"People will be hanging onto this anniversary, the notion of 'I can let go and move forward' and for some people that will be true, and they will be able to do that.
"And (for) some people it will be really hard to get there and discover it doesn't actually feel any better. It's an extremely tough time."
More than 8,500 people have been offered counselling since the fires, and Grigg said the unprecedented loss of life was something authorities had not prepared for.
"One of the really, really devastating components of this was the death toll, it has enormous impacts," she said.
"You do all this planning, but 173 people? That literally affects the lives of thousands of people, and so the issue of bereavement and loss has been really significant."
Survivors report nightmares and flashbacks to harrowing moments of escape, watching as loved ones were engulfed in flames, and Matthews says the fear of another inferno is always there.
"You get a northerly wind going in the same direction as what the fires were last year, the same conditions, and it makes you edgy all right, yeah," he said.
Life will never return to the way it was for those affected by the fires, nor will they ever fully recover or forget, adds Griggs.
"These communities are inalterably changed," she said. "This becomes part of who these people are now."
