Wander around the house perched high on the hill and you see a scene typical of any home under construction. A few shiny nails lie in the building dust on the floor, ear-muffs sit on a seat and neatly cut holes in the walls mark the locations of future power points.
The work site extends beyond the glass sliding door and onto the deck outside, where a power miter saw occupies a spot that will soon be ideal for a comfortable outdoor chair.
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Returning to Wye River
One day after bushfires swept through the area, Age editor-in-chief Andrew Holden is among dozens of residents who come back to survey the damage at Wye River.
Look beyond the decking fence and through the towering gums nearby with their bushy green shoots of post-bushfire growth and the view of the ocean below is extraordinary.
It's no wonder then that the owner of this Wye River property, Peter Newland, is getting a wider deck built on his beach house this time, which is in fact the second time the same house has been built on this site in just seven years.
Mr Newland owns one of the 116 properties destroyed by the bushfire that hit the Great Ocean Road hamlets of Wye River and Separation Creek last Christmas.
"It was an incredibly hot fire, so much so that we had glass heated to a molten stage that ran and formed filaments like spaghetti hanging in the wind," he says.
The wider deck is one of only a handful of changes made to the original version of the house.
"I love the deck. The deck is the best room in the house. It's coming up beautifully," Mr Newland says, shortly before the saw roars temporarily to life.
"We have breakfast here, we have lunch, we have dinner, we have a barbecue on the deck."
The house will be one of the first, if not the first house to be completed in Wye River after the fire caused at least tens of millions of dollars of damage and smashed local tourism operators, who rely heavily on Christmas and New Year trade.
Mr Newland, who praises the work of the tradesmen bringing his new house to fruition, anticipates it will be finished soon. "We expect to be holidaying here some time in January," he says.
That progress on Mr Newland's house is so advanced is probably due to a handful of key factors. The house that was destroyed was approved and built after 173 people were killed in the Black Saturday fires in 2009, so had met the tougher new bushfire building standards introduced after the disaster.
While the planning permit for the original house had expired, Mr Newland says getting a new one was straightforward. The house was also insured.
Today, Mr Newland owns and runs a records and information management business, but he is also a qualified carpenter and used to be a registered builder, so knows the world of building very well.
For Mr Newland, the decision to rebuild at Wye River was an easy one to make. "There was never any doubt in my mind, none whatsoever. As soon as I knew it had burnt down I started thinking about how I'd go about rebuilding it," he says.
Figures released by the Colac Otway Shire show that 24 new applications for a planning permit in Wye River and Separation Creek have been received since the fire. Thirteen have been approved, including seven for a replacement dwelling and three for houses on previously vacant land.
A further 11 applications for planning permits for houses are being processed by council officers. Also, six planning permits to build a house which were valid at the time of the fire have been extended.
Council CEO Sue Wilkinson said: "Depending on the complexity of the permit, we have been able to turn permits around as quickly as 30 days."
While progress on the Newlands' new house is impressive, the rebuilding timetable for some home-owners could be much longer.
Just days ago federal Liberal MP Sarah Henderson blasted AAMI over its treatment of some affected residents, saying the insurer had been "making life extremely difficult" for at least six Wye River and Separation Creek residents who lost their homes. But a spokesman for Suncorp, AAMI's parent company, said the insurance provider was trying to "move as fast as possible", and that some claims were "very complex".