ALONG a dirt road, among blackened trees and newly growing grass, the brand new $3.2 million Strathewen Primary School building looks a bit out of place.
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Twenty months after Black Saturday fires ravaged their town and burnt down their school, Strathewen Primary has reopened, in what the principal, Jane Hayward, describes as a bittersweet return.
Mrs Hayward said that by welcoming back its 38 students, the school had become a symbol of hope for the community to get back on track.
''This new school has come with huge loss. We've come back with absent friends and family members,'' Mrs Hayward said.
''But the kids are a resilient lot, and are very keen to get back into school, and to be at a normal and safe place.''
Strathewen student Van French, 11, is excited to finish her final term of grade 6 on her old stamping ground.
Staff and students had been relocated to Wattle Glen, about 25 kilometres away, since the February 2009 fires that claimed 173 lives and destroyed thousands of homes. Van said that although the other school was welcoming, she felt unsettled in an unfamiliar place.
School council president Darren Bradshaw, who still lives in a shed with his family after his house burnt down, said that despite many people not living in the area due to rebuilding or relocation, nearly all students had returned to the primary school.
