The water stopped. But the fire kept coming

In the lakeside village of Conjola Park, residents relive memories of houses seemingly spontaneously combusting, birds dropping from a black sky, a roaring wind and taps with no water, as a firestorm enveloped them on New Year’s Eve 2019.

Trauma comes with seething anger in this New South Wales south coast community, where one in every three homes has been destroyed and three men lost their lives.

Residents had no warning, no road out, no power or phone lines, and a failing water supply when an inferno ravaged Conjola Park and its tourist-thronged neighbour, Lake Conjola.

The villages were among a string of towns along the NSW south coast and Victoria’s north-east that were isolated that day, as power and telecommunications outages across the region sent them into chaos while they were ravaged by fire.