After The Fires: Revisiting Australia's Sapphire Coast

Australia’s devastating bushfires raged for months from mid-2019, scorching vast swathes of land and killing or displacing billons of animals. Faced with no water, electricity or internet, communities turned to each other for help rebuilding their lives. A year on, the situation is dramatically improved.

- Justin Meneguzzi

“We’re basically sitting on a bomb,” says Karen Touchie, nervously laughing into her gin and tonic.

Behind us, in a wooden shed Karen and her partner, Gavin Hughes, have converted into a boutique gin distillery, thousands of litres of pure alcohol are stored in a tank. The three of us are seated on the verandah at the North of Eden distillery, in New South Wales’ lush Bega Valley, sipping their award-winning artisan gins while looking out over freshly cut green grass. The scents of oranges and lemons, which are just coming into season, linger in the air and Highland cows low gently nearby. Karen and Gavin’s three-legged border collie, Jim, hobbles closer for a pat.

It’s hard to fathom that this is the same spot where, on 30 December 2019, Karen and Gavin watched as a fiery noose closed in from the surrounding mountains and tightened around their hilltop farm, the alcohol essential to their thriving gin business now threatening to burn it down. With routes north and south blocked by fires, and the road west to Canberra — the closest city — closed by authorities, the couple had few options but to stay and fight.

Although Karen and Gavin’s predicament may sound extraordinary, it was anything but. On my drive along the Sapphire Coast, 300 miles south of Sydney, I meet dozens of locals who recount their own tales of that day, vividly recalling when the sun disappeared for 40 hours and magpies fell from the sky, dead.