On the first anniversary of Black Saturday, Flowerdale, Kinglake and a couple of other communities between them put up signs asking the media to respect the need for private commemoration.

Kinglake set aside a designated media area.  Flowerdale asked the media not attend at all.

It was not really a day for gawking, especially in towns still healing from the destructive forces of last year's bushfires.

It is presumed these signs applied mainly to TV, radio and newspaper media.

Did they also apply to SOCIAL media?

I'll put it to you this way:  if you were some young, late-teens, up-and-coming social media person who'd never have heard of these towns before this week and you came to the service wanting to live-blog, you'd have been the least welcome.  If you'd been a Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr star just blowing in for yesterday with any form of Twitvid, Tweetmic or big camera, you'd have been lumped in with the old media.

You had to at least have done something tangible during February and March last year or been part of helping recovery in the months afterward to have even felt welcome joining the locals at these community services.

At Flowerdale, Pete Williams would have been the most welcome social media identity because of his links to the town through family, also for his major role in helping the town pull itself back up by its bootstraps.

I have only a very small link to Flowerdale through last year's Twitter relaying of emergency tweets.  I remember especially the night I first saw Pete's tweets coming through, telling of what was happening in Flowerdale and the obstacles they were facing there.  I made a small trip to there in early March last year.  Pete knows me from the #bushfires hashtag during that time and also from July when he needed someone to film a sustainable housing workshop in Kinglake.

Pete and I had a brief chat at the Flowerdale service yesterday, but only he was entitled to take a photo or two of it, for the Flowerdale community's blog.  Anyone else doing that would have been intrusive.

It's one of those times even social media must use commonsense and discretion.  It didn't matter whether you were old media or new media yesterday at Flowerdale.  You couldn't go there as ANY sort of media person.  You could only really be there supporting someone you knew from there.  Only as a mate or a relative.  Only as a private person respecting the day and the people.

Even at Kinglake, yesterday wasn't the day to be a rubber-necking gawker.  If you walked down the street to the Kinglake CFA and saw a sign indicating a private function for the CFA's own observance of the day, you walked away and respected it.

There was only one place one was invited to look, down the road at the Kinglake West hall, where an art show was taking place. 

Various works by local artists were here,  in a variety of different artistic media, including one unique material.  The most unique image used garbage bags to show a blackened tree and its surrounds.  When you stepped back you saw how effective it was at conveying its message.

There were some artworks on local flora and fauna.  However, a majority were about Black Saturday.  The most common color was orange and red, indicative of the intensity of the flames a year before.

One painting stood out though.  A painting of a phoenix, the mythical bird of ancient times known for rising anew from the ashes of its own destruction.

That's the best metaphor for these communities.

They're too tough to die, as a sign on the outskirts of Kinglake puts it.  Especially up at Flowerdale.

They don't let things like Black Saturday dim their hope of the future.  They crawl out of that time and pull themselves up by their bootstraps with a little help from their friends, expecting only a hand UP, not a hand OUT.

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes.