Heidi (00:00):
My name is Heidi and this is my story. I grew up in Lochiel, living on a small acreage. I live there with my mum now, and it's really peaceful. Every morning, I kind of sit out on the veranda and just embrace everything of a morning before I think about going to my day and doing everything like that and I think it's just a part of me, I guess. Something that I have to do, just sit there and listen to peaceful and, yeah.

Heidi (00:38):
The first fire started, it was about eight k's away from us. We kind of just smelt the smoke at home, saw it drifting a little bit, got the alert on the app and, within an hour, it escalated to emergency warning. The sun started to turn orange and we started packing everything up from home and that's something we hadn't even planned it yet. And yeah, we evacuated in town. And that was one of four, five evacuations that we did. We got told later on that the fire at Chalk Hills was... They were waiting for the wind to change and it would have swept right through the gully and right through our place and everything would have been gone. So, we're really lucky. And I don't know what I would have done if we lost everything because I've always lived there and it's a property that my parents bought from their parents so it's always been in the family.

Heidi (01:49):
Usually, my big support is my music and it always has been. Being surrounded by a lot of grief and other forms of just strong events in my life, music has always been there for me and also it connects me a lot to my brother and my dad because they both did heavily like music. And also, just me being connected with Headspace in their youth reference group beforehand, I've learned a lot of things and it's just been a really great experience and I'm glad that I made that connection.

Heidi (02:28):
And just having different experiences and me, myself, it's helping me just know that what I'm feeling is fine and be able to share that and uplifting other people to be able to reduce the stigma of mental health is a big thing. Yeah.

Heidi (02:50):
What gives me hope is that I've been through this process before but now I have more time to prepare and I have connections with Headspace and other agencies and other people that I can talk to and help to get prepared for the new season.