Spared by the fires, NSW's south coast bushland now faces the bulldozers

Residents of the Shoalhaven are fighting to stop a housing development on one of the few unburnt areas in the district

Residents of a tiny community on the New South Wales south coast gathered at dawn on Tuesday as part of a last-ditch effort to prevent a small pocket of bushland that escaped the summer bushfires being bulldozed for a 20-hectare housing development.

Between 70% and 80% of bushland in the Shoalhaven council area was affected during the January fires. Now the local community at Manyana wants the state government to intervene to at least postpone the destruction of one of the few unburnt areas, with the chainsaws expected to start as early as Thursday.