Port Vila: The once lush hills around Port Vila look like lumpy hectares of firewood.

It is, as Foreign Minister Julie Bishop remarked when she met Australian troops, officials and aid workers in Vanuatu's capital on Sunday, the clearest sign of the sheer scale of the devastation wrought by Cyclone Pam.

"The fact that these enormous trees have been corkscrewed out of the ground and buildings flattened and, tragically, lives lost gives us an indication of the extent and the breadth of the damage," she said.

In the capital, the clean-up has begun. Two-thirds of the city has power and the supermarkets are open, but fresh food is scarce. The longer-term damage to the economy and the infrastructure is clearly going to need a sustained effort to rebuild.

Jack Naulas, 29, sat under a flimsy shelter in Port Vila Bay. Nearby, a group of men hammer at coral rocks in a laborious bid to free a catamaran – owned by a Melburnian, they say – that was smashed onto the rocks during the cyclone.

Mr Naulas is a security guard for the island resort in the bay. It is closed. There is no power and no tourists.

He estimates it will be at least a month before the tourists come back, and he hopes the resort can survive.

His wife and three daughters are in Tanna, one of the worst-hit islands. He hasn't been able to speak to them but he has heard second-hand that they are safe.

"I don't know when I will see them again. But I have to stay here and work."

On a hilltop where the headquarters of local chiefs now stand a ruin, some young men sit resting from their work cleaning up their rickety houses on the hillside, which, they say, will take another week at least.

One young man points at the solid-looking Presbyterian church, where several hundred people sheltered during the storm and for several days afterwards.

"It was cosy," he says. "Very friendly."

Zoe Marshall, 18, who has made headlines as one of the Australian volunteers who was missing for days after the cyclone, said all she wanted to do was go back and help the school where she was working as a teacher.

"They need new water tanks. They are so focused on survival right now," she said. "At the moment, their immediate needs are water and food. Their power can wait, their school books can wait, they just need food."

Australian officials are impressed about the way residents have responded to the disaster.

One tells Fairfax Media of the efforts by Terry Firiam, the local program manager of the Lattitude volunteers organisation.

Mr Firiam, despite not knowing the fate of his immediate family, spent days with Australian officials flying over the outer areas, using his local knowledge to identify the places where it was believed Australians were waiting to be rescued.

"I had an obligation to the volunteers," Mr Firiam told Fairfax Media with a shrug.

He has since been given good news about his mother and sister.

"They are safe," he said with a smile.