How the children of Cobargo are moving on from a year marked by bushfires and a pandemic

When 11-year-old Lincoln Alderman started writing a song about his experience during last summer’s bushfires, one memory stood out.

“I can see a fire, it’s just over that hill,” the lyrics read.

“But if we stick together, we’ll be fine.”

“I remember evacuating because there was holes in the tents from the ashes,” Lincoln recalls.

“We went down to Bermagui, down at the boat ramp, and I remember my dad saying if we stick together, we’ll be OK.”

A year on from the fire, that message still resonates for Lincoln’s small community of Cobargo in regional New South Wales, which was left devastated on New Year’s Eve.

Some of the students in his class lost…