September 19th, 2026Windfall documentary
Brendan Hehir was running The Blackwood Times when the storm of June 2021 decimated the region, so, naturally he started reporting on it. Taking photos, getting stories from affected community members.
But after a while, like others, he realised it was bigger than one paper, bigger than a few news reports.
“About two months later, a mate of mine who’s got a holiday house in Blackwood, a film producer, came up and she hadn’t seen the damage. I took her out to see it and she was just astounded. She said ‘we’ve got to make this into a movie’ and rang a Daylesford-based cinematographer who had all this drone footage from day one. It was just extraordinary. And we said ‘here’s the start of the film’.”
Brendan received some funding from Emergency Recovery Victoria so he could “pay the professionals” and it has been a labour of love for years – and Windfall was finally released this year.
The final screening for the region is this Thursday, September 24 at the Glenlyon Community Hall from 6.30pm to 8pm, and then it heads off to the Dandenongs, where the storm also hit hard.
Brendan said along with being a record of a really important event it also carried an explanation of the freak storm with input from a range of experts.
“It is also the story of how a community gets through the isolation and the deprivation. We were without power and communication for 10 days in Blackwood, and we couldn’t even get in or out of town. It was pure isolation in the middle of Covid. It’s also about where to from here.”
Brendan said there were always tears but the movie had humour as the community fights back.
“It finishes up on a philosophical note in that up to a million trees statewide went down. When we consider that scale of damage we finally realise that it’s absolutely off the human scale for fixing it.
“And then we’ve got to turn and say, what’s the forest going to do itself? And as someone said, nature plays a long game, and it will be a long fix. It’s not going to be in our lifetimes. And I think that upsets people, but it will repair, and in some ways, it will help the forest.” Words: Donna Kelly Image above, Forest Fire Management Victoria | Image right, Brendan Hehir Tickets: www.eventbrite.com.au
