Currowan: A Story of a Fire and a Community During Australia's Worst Summer

An insider's account of surviving one of Australia's worst bushfires, and how we live with fire in a climate-changed world

Currowan is the gripping account of the massive fire that engulfed the south coast of New South Wales in 2019-20. Ignited by a lightning strike near the Currowan state forest and burning for seventy-four days across nearly 500,000 hectares, it was among the largest and most ferocious infernos of Australia's Black Summer.

Journalist Bronwyn Adcock fled the fire with her children. Her husband, fighting at the front, rang with a plea for help before his phone went dead, leaving her to fear- will he make it out alive? In Currowan, Bronwyn tells her story, and those of many others- what they experienced, saw, thought and felt. The pacy, immersive reportage is braided with much larger themes - what we know about how fire behaves, how that is changing due to climate change, and how communities can cope with natural disaster and prepare themselves for an increasingly dangerous future.

Currowan is about tragedy, survival and the power of community. It is the story of a fire, and of a nation in the grip of an intensifying crisis we must all work together to solve.

About the Author

Bronwyn Adcock is an award-winning Australian journalist and writer. She has worked as a radio current-affairs reporter and documentary maker for the ABC, as a video journalist for SBS's Dateline and as a freelance writer, including for Griffith Review and The Monthly.