Kiwi Paul's Night Of Horror

Facing the fiery inferno

- Cloe Willetts

Samara and Paul Hedges call themselves the family that lives in the trees. They have an outdoor aerial yoga studio in their New South Wales backyard, which sits on the cusp of generous native bushland.

Over a week ago, studio guests could hang in yoga hammocks and peer up into a canopy of soaring tree tops and out at thick greenery, packed with thriving wildlife.

“You can still see the tops of the trees because they’re unburnt, but at eye level it’s all grey ashen patches and blackened tree stumps,” tells Samara, 32, a part-time secondary school teacher.

“It was all bushland, but now you can see down to the highway. And I’m not hearing the birds and animals the way I usually can.”

On January 4, the couple and their son Quinn, 18 months, almost lost everything at their property in Tomerong, Jervis Bay, because of the ravaging Australian bushfires. But thanks to an extraordinary effort by South Auckland-born Paul, 36, only the outskirts were left damaged.

After two massive fires, hundreds of smaller ones and 12 exhausting hours circling his property with hoses and water on a dune buggy, the Kiwi dad saved their home and business.

“Paul’s so brave and would’ve been running on pure adrenaline,” beams Samara, who met her hubby in London in 2009. “Thank goodness he started planning and prepping in case there was a fire because he was right.”