How Australia's Tourism Industry Is Recovering a Year After the Devastating Bushfires
"As some of the season's first bushfires tore through southeast Queensland in spring 2019, burning the heritage cottages at Binna Burra Lodge — one of Australia's oldest ecolodges — to the ground, the loss was felt far beyond the devastated local community. "This is an 86-year-old enterprise that people all over the world have a strong emotional connection to," lodge chairman Steve Noakes tells me. "I had a call from one lady in Washington, D.C. who had donated a garden bench some years ago and wanted to fund a replacement. I'm still getting calls like that." As the first major tourism business hit by the fires, the lodge's reopening in September 2020 — just a week shy of the anniversary of the fires — was a pivotal moment for Australia's recovery." - Travel + Leisure Editors
