For a year my partner and I had been renting a tiny cottage perched high above the township of Chum Creek. Located between Kinglake and Marysville it would end up facing the wrath of three different fire fronts sweeping through one after the other.

The house was located deep in the forest and the only way to get to it was a steep driveway made up of a series of tight switchbacks weaving through the trees. It was so isolated that it was completely off the grid and when I first saw it I was attracted to its privacy, but I remember thinking that no-one could survive a bushfire if one ever came through.