More than a month after the most ferocious bushfire swept through Malua Bay, residents invariably talk of the best and the worst in human nature.
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One victim of the fires has painted in big letters on the side of his burnt-out home: "Looters, smile for the camera".
Others talk about gangs roaming streets at night looking for stuff to steal. There are roadside signs in the area saying, "Night Patrol Active".
"It was the best of the best," says Nathan Love, "and the worst.
"The generosity was outstanding and yet there's the element of the society that sees it as a time to prey on others - predators preying on people's misery.
The generosity was outstanding and yet there's the element of the society that sees it as a time to prey on others - predators preying on people's misery.
- Nathan Love
"Anything that wasn't bolted down was fair game for most people - chainsaws, generators, gas bottles, everything they could get their hands on."
But Mr Love is positive. The generosity was "phenomenal".
"Random strangers rocking up with gift cards, offers of water, ice, milk in that first week. People trying to help everyone get back on their feet."
He hasn't let the dark side colour his will to rebuild.
"You can either sit in the corner, rocking your head in your hands or you can get on with it," he said.
Three generations of his family lost their homes: himself and his partner, his parents and his grandmother. He and his partner have been living in caravan parks since.
On Friday morning, Mr Love was still walking on the crunched glass inside what was the bedroom of his own home, burnt-to-carbon possessions underfoot, an expensive camera lens just about recognisable.
More would have been lost if he hadn't returned at the height of the fire and cut the burning veranda off the main building with a chain saw.
He is typical of the suburb. Those who can rebuild are rebuilding.
But those who can't aren't. Businesses have been destroyed. Some are financially hurt - and also emotionally hurt.
Libby Buttress doesn't think she can rebuild.
Her eyes moisten as she surveys the wreckage of her Longridge Equestrian Centre.
The heat was so fierce that it buckled steel girders in the shed where she kept saddles and equipment. She also put valuables there in what she thought was a strong box - they melted to nothing.
"I can't operate. I don't have any equipment. It was obliterated, saddles, everything."
Mercifully, the 34 horses, including 10 brumbies, survived at her two destroyed properties - but she is giving some of them away or leasing them because she can't afford to feed them with no income coming in.
And she still doesn't have electricity and the internet so it's impossible to run a business.
She pays an emotional cost as well as a financial one. "It's having the energy to rebuild. We had just started to break even."
Others in the area are more optimistic. The fire destroyed and they will rebuild.
The club house at the Malua bowls club was razed to the ground. "The fire ripped through everything except the bowling greens," said bowls co-ordinator Jay Breust.
But fire never stopped a determined bowler and on Thursday morning about a hundred of them were out on the greens.
As they bowled, rebuilding was taking place alongside. They plan a temporary clubhouse in a grand marquee until the permanent one is rebuilt.
Bushfires are meant to happen in the bush - the vivid pictures are usually of flames ripping through dense forest, perhaps with kangaroos in the foreground.
But the one on New Year's Eve ripped through the crescents and new-build plots of classic coastal suburbia, and that's why it seems so incongruous in the suburbs now.
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Vince Place, for example, now looks like a row of teeth with some knocked out. incongruous. Some houses were burnt down to the foundations and the ones next door still stands untouched.
One of the reasons is the quirk of wind direction. Sometimes it whipped between houses and took the one at the back.
Another part of the reason is Joe Ashby and his hero comrades.
While others were leaving, he stayed with "my lovely wife", Colleen. "My good mate, Blake" came to help as others were leaving, he said. And also his friend, Andrew (Mr Ashby insists everyone gets a mention).
Together, they hosed down his house and those of neighbours as the beast of a fire raged.
"We were told to get out but I could see it was on the ground so I thought I was staying," he said, reasoning that the low fire was manageable (except that turned into a much higher fire - the trees around the tightly-packed houses are burnt 30 metres up the trunks).
Why did he stay? "I was too fat, too old and too lazy to leave," he said.
He says he chased looters for the next three days. Men with torches were spotted looking into ruined empty houses.
On the generous side, though, he said that local shops offered credit. One "grog shop" ran up a tab of $15,000.
Mr Ashby's neighbour, Anthony "Sid" Greenham, set up a camp kitchen in his back garden for the rest of the street. "Everyone's pitched in to help each other," he said.
He also said there was looting.
"The house at the top of the hill got looted. The fellow across the road lost a generator. People I know lost a generator and an electric fridge."
But he adds: "You get the absolute best of most people and the worst of a few."
Heroes of the Home Front: It has been Australia's lost summer. Drought, hail, floods and, worst of all, bushfires have ravaged communities all over the nation. But the selfless actions of friends, family, neighbours, strangers, local groups and volunteer organisations have inspired us and strengthened the bonds of community. Please join us in saying thanks to the heroes of the home front by sharing your stories of gratitude. To salute a person or a group, please use the form below.