The Wairewa Public Hall has provided a focal point for the small valley since it was built in the mid 1950s.
It was originally built as rooms for the local tennis club but over the years, as interest in playing tennis waned, the hall morphed into a community meeting place.
It has undergone some renovations and extensions over the course of time but has always remained a community hall.
Christmas celebrations have been held there and the annual Wairewa New Year’s Day Bush Dance draws large crowds to the unpretentious building.
Its importance as a community hall will be forever etched in the minds of the 30 or so locals who gathered in it on the night of December 30, 2019, to shelter from the approaching fire front.
It’s now a beloved asset, after it not only shielded and protected the valley’s residents from the ferocious fire storm that was raging outside, but for the bonds it forged as people huddled inside waiting for one of Australia’s worst bushfires to pass.
IMAGE: Julie Saunders outside the Wairewa Public Hall last week, which provided residents a safe haven from the Black Summer Bushfires and morphed into a recovery centre following the fires. K290–4805
