{"id":790054,"date":"2026-07-09T22:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T22:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/790054\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T22:04:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T22:04:12","slug":"australia-mental-health-sam-died-by-suicide-months-after-surviving-the-black-summer-bushfires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/790054\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia mental health: Sam died by suicide months after surviving the Black Summer bushfires"},"content":{"rendered":"

Exclusive: Sam Hill was 20 when the Black Summer bushfires<\/a> tore through his family\u2019s dairy farm in Cudgewa, Victoria<\/a> and reduced hectares of land to a smouldering ruin.<\/p>\n

Less than a year later, he took his own life.<\/a> The hardest part for his parents is that they will never fully understand why.<\/p>\n

\"Regional<\/p>\n

Sam Hill was 21 when he died by suicide, leaving his parents and younger brother heartbroken.\u00a0Hill family<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people assume everyone that takes their life has some sort of mental illness<\/a> […] but it\u2019s not always obvious,\u201d Elise told nine.com.au.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that\u2019s probably something that I find a bit challenging.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sam had no history of depression or anxiety, but he was traumatised by the fire that reduced 90 per cent of their property to ash, and he wasn\u2019t the only one.<\/p>\n

Have you got a story? Contact\u00a0reporter Maddison Skipper:\u00a0mskipper@nine.com.au<\/a><\/p>\n

The Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20<\/a> devastated communities across Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and beyond, destroying thousands of homes and claiming dozens of lives.<\/p>\n

Australia is now staring down the barrel of possibly the \u2018strongest ever\u2019 El Nino, <\/a>bringing with it drier weather and hotter temperatures across Australia\u2019s east.<\/p>\n

The Hills have faced such threats before. They\u2019re not afraid to do it again.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a big fire in Victoria somewhere every year […] so we have a pretty good system in place,\u201d James said.<\/p>\n

Many in the Upper Murray region, where the Hill family still lives, struggled to rebuild after the fires and access to specialised mental health support was limited.<\/p>\n

The community was rocked by the first suicide in February \u2013 a young man who had attended the same primary school as Sam \u2013 as bushfires still burned across parts of Victoria.<\/p>\n

They had no idea two more would follow.<\/p>\n

A farm boy who \u2018loved his animals\u2019<\/p>\n

The eldest of two sons, Sam loved fishing, showing cattle and helping out on the farm as a boy. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe was overly caring, loved his animals,\u201d James told nine.com.au.<\/p>\n

After finishing Year 12, Sam went to university to study agribusiness. Elise imagines he would have worked at a rural bank after graduating.<\/p>\n

\"Sam<\/p>\n

Sam spent his formative years on the family farm with brother Jake (top right), dad James (bottom left) and mum Elise (bottom right).\u00a0Hill family<\/p>\n

When the fires <\/a>hit late on December 30, 2019, Sam helped his family save the house and nearly 300 animals, then checked on neighbouring properties for the locals that had evacuated.<\/p>\n

The Hill family were without power for 18 days and had no time to process what they\u2019d lived through; there was too much work to do, and too few hands to do it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very isolating, really, because they were restricting people moving in and people moving out,\u201d Elise said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had no phone reception and limited power, and everything was sort of word of mouth. It was a very challenging time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like many who witnessed the carnage of the Black Summer fires, Sam struggled.<\/p>\n

A few months later, his long-term relationship ended.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Sam<\/p>\n

Like many in the Upper Murray region, Sam struggled to cope with the aftermath of the Black Summer bushfires.\u00a0Hill family<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was certainly a point then when we knew that he wasn\u2019t coping that well,\u201d Elise said, but \u201cit was more than just the fires\u201d.<\/p>\n

Even in their worst nightmares, she and James never could have imagined what came next.<\/p>\n

\u2018You remember it all\u2019<\/p>\n

The sun rose over the farm on August 8, 2020 like any other day. By the time it set, Sam was gone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was nothing to tell us that that was going to be the end for him,\u201d Elise said.<\/p>\n

While she, James and Sam\u2019s younger brother Jake fell apart, the rest of the world kept spinning. That only made his death harder to process.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t cope really, you\u2019re a bit numb at the start. It certainly doesn\u2019t feel real for a very long time,\u201d Elise said.<\/p>\n

Isolated by the fires and the COVID-19 pandemic, the Hill family had limited access to bereavement and mental health support that could meet their needs.<\/p>\n

Aussies in regional, rural, and remote areas face complex barriers to accessing mental health services, including attitudes, cost and digital factors.<\/p>\n

When James tried calling a support helpline a few months after Sam\u2019s death, he got an answering machine.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just hung up. Didn\u2019t try that again,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This \u2018mental health gap\u2019 often leads to worse outcomes and rates of self-harm and suicide increase with remoteness.<\/p>\n

There are some organisations<\/a> bridging the gap by providing specialised assistance like Farm Angels<\/a>, which supported the Hill family after the Black Summer fires and contributed to Sam\u2019s funeral, but they alone can\u2019t solve these inequities.<\/p>\n

So when a third young man in the Upper Murray community died by suicide in May, 2021 the Hill family took things into their own hands.<\/p>\n

Keeping Sam\u2019s memory alive<\/p>\n

Nearly a year after losing Sam, Elise and James starter Corryong Spirit with the families of the other two young men who took their lives.<\/p>\n

The community event brings locals together and raises awareness for mental health by honouring all those who have died.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrief is such a big thing in people\u2019s lives, and we thought if we could actually help support people along the way, that would be a benefit,\u201d Elise said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause some people feel very unsupported.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite years of work to raise awareness and education around suicide prevention, Australia\u2019s<\/a> age-standardised suicide rate for men has not dipped.<\/p>\n

It breaks Elise\u2019s heart to know that even with so much more discussion and support around suicide, the numbers remain so high.<\/p>\n

So she, James, and the other locals keep Corryong Spirit going and keep their sons\u2019 memories alive in the hope of a better future.<\/p>\n

\"Regional<\/p>\n

Sam will forever be 21 in his family’s memories.\u00a0Hill family<\/p>\n

The Hill family have also stepped up as ambassadors for Farm Angels\u2019 Flanno for a Farmer campaign to raise much-needed funds to support Aussie farmers.<\/p>\n

The charity still sends James a Father\u2019s Day gift every year, in Sam\u2019s memory.<\/p>\n

Sam\u2019s ute still sits on their Cudgewa property. The house is still full of photos of him. The family still sign all their Christmas cards with his name.<\/p>\n

And James still talks to Sam as he goes about each day on the farm they saved together.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody takes their loss differently,\u201d James said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we think of our good times we had together, instead of being angry and all the rest of it. And we had a lot of good times together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Learn more about Corryong Spirit here<\/a>. Support the Farm Angels \u2018Flanno for a Farmer\u2019 campaign here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you or someone you know is in need of support contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue. In the event of an emergency dial Triple Zero (000).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Exclusive: Sam Hill was 20 when the Black Summer bushfires tore through his family\u2019s dairy farm in Cudgewa,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":790055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-790054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=790054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}