After bushfire devastated Wandella, unions and the area's community came together to build one young family a cabin to live in so they could get back on their feet.
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The New Year's Eve fire destroyed the house belonging to Toby Rixon-Gosch and Nicole Bailey, which meant they had to live in a tent on their property with no water or electricity and their five-year-old daughter just about to start school.
"When it first happened and people wanted us to explain what it was like, we couldn't comprehend it enough to explain it," Ms Bailey said.
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CFMEU state councillor Gary McCarthy heard of their plight and said it "just wasn't acceptable for anyone, living under those conditions".
He wanted to get the family into a "simple, emergency-type accommodation building" and began to organise the work for what they would call Unity House.
"It was going to be a long, long time before they could look at building a new house," he said.
"As union members, we help each other out. If one of us is in need, or one of our extended family so to speak, we don't turn our back on them."
Donations from the CFMEU and general public raised $20,000 for the cabin and almost all of the labour was from volunteers both from the union and local community - including one person who had also lost their own home in the fire.
"The camaraderie, everybody we've approached to give a hand, well they've given a hand," Mr McCarthy said.
The family has now moved into the 50square metre cabin, although there are a couple of parts that remain to be finished off.
"It's exciting, considering how fast it's gone up," Ms Bailey said.
"It's better than staying in a tent!"
Mr Rixon-Gosch said they were friends with all the people who had showed up to give them a hand with the construction and they "hadn't paid a cent" for the new home.
"It's been really good having these people here," he said.
Mr McCarthy has known Mr Rixon-Gosch's family for 20 years and said Mr Rixon-Gosch and his father were both in the union.
He said other people in the Wandella and Yowrie region were facing similar predicaments.
"Amongst all the primary producers out there and the farms, there's a lot of working class people on 10, 20acre blocks," he said.
"They're the ones I see life being very hard for, because they're on a minimum wage and a lot of them are under-insured.
"With the new fire codes in the construction industry and the new building codes council is stipulating, to pay for the costs of new houses is going to be beyond them."
The family runs a hobby farm with horses, cows and pigs, and Ms Bailey said it was a "miracle" to learn all the animals had survived the fire.
Now they have their new cabin to move into Ms Bailey said they will "try and get back to normal" then plan on starting to build a larger house.
