'This is how I die': the day the bushfires came to Balmoral

The southern highlands hamlet was savaged by a blaze that one resident said was 'a thinking fire, like it was alive'

As the flames approached Justin and Helena's Balmoral home from two directions on Saturday afternoon, they still held out some hope of saving it.

"I thought a 50-50 chance," Justin tells the Guardian. "First it was [coming] from the south and I thought, 'we expected this, we can handle it'. Then it started coming in from the east and it was 'OK, now it's harder but still maybe'."