General News
20 January, 2026
A commitment at Carranballac
THE ruins of Carranballac Cricket Club this week became a symbol of the loss and destruction felt across our district. Where a community once gathered, there is now a scatter of twisted tin, blackened timber and the unmistakable smell of something ended too quickly. It was here, amid the remains of one of the district’s endearing institution, that Victoria’s Deputy Premier Ben Carroll stood last week, listening more than speaking, as residents moved through the wreckage of a fire that arrived with almost no warning and left very little untouched.
The Streatham grassfire ignited shortly after 1.30pm on Friday, driven by catastrophic heat and westerly winds that tore across open country at more than 80 kilometres an hour. In a matter of hours it carved a path through Carranballac farmland and pressed hard toward Skipton, forcing frantic decisions from people who had minutes, not plans.
By the time the fire was brought under control, homes were gone, fencing lay in coils across paddocks, livestock losses were still being tallied, and landmarks that had anchored the community for generations had vanished.
The cricket clubrooms were among them.
For locals, their loss was not symbolic. It was practical. It was personal. It was where meetings happened, where celebrations were held, where families gathered without ceremony. It was where the district quietly reminded itself it was still a district.
Standing outside what remains, Mr Carroll said the visit had revealed the full weight of what the fire took and what it threatened to take next.
“In the worst of times, you do also see the best of people,” he said.
But the remark, delivered carefully, carried an unspoken truth that everyone present already understood: community spirit does not rebuild fencing, replace machinery or restore places that held decades of memory.
Words, as residents know well, burn quickly.
Mr Carroll acknowledged that reality, saying that while compassion mattered, recovery would be measured in action, not sentiment.
“Words are one thing we know,” he said, “It’s about deeds and it’s about the action we take to make sure we rebuild these communities.”
Member for Ripon Martha Haylett, whose electorate absorbed the fire’s impact directly, said the visit was deliberately grounded in listening rather than announcements.
“It’s been really important for us today, to go around to the different communities impacted,” she said, “It’s so important to hear directly from those families.”
Ms Haylett said the scale of loss was clear, but so too was the emotional strain beginning to surface now that the immediate danger had passed.
“This community is hurting so much right now,” she said.
What struck observers most was not the choreography of a political visit, but its setting. There were no lecterns, no clean backdrops, no distance between decision-makers and damage. Just scorched earth, bent metal, and people trying to decide what comes next.
Mr Carroll described the response so far as largely driven by neighbours, volunteers, and local services who moved instinctively toward need.
“It’s quite a grassroots-driven movement,” he said.
Government, he said, had a responsibility to match that effort and to stay present long after the ash settled.
“We’ll continue to work really hard, to make sure we are here for the long haul to support these wonderful communities.”
For residents, that promise carries weight precisely because of where it was made.
Recovery in Carranballac will not be measured in press conferences, but in whether the places that once held the community are rebuilt, and whether support holds when attention moves elsewhere.
The fire has passed. The questions it leaves behind have not.
Among the remains of a cricket club that once stitched a farming district together, the future is being negotiated quietly, carefully, and with the full knowledge that resilience alone is not enough.
What happens next will decide whether this fire becomes just another chapter in a long history of survival, or a moment when words finally hardened into something that lasts.