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“The worst part of it was the waiting. We knew the fire was coming a few days out. It was exhausting. I said to Angela, just bring it on. I wanted it over with.” Bill’s words – delivered so matter-of-factly – stuck with me as I nursed a cuppa in my hands. We had retreated to a sturdy wooden table under a corrugated tin roof, as a cool wind whipped up more ash and dust, threatening the collapse of dead branches in the forest. Through charcoal stakes of eucalypts, the valley below disappeared in the haze. Enclosing us physically and emotionally within a unique time and place. We had reached Bill and Angela’s farm from the small township of Adelong, nestled in the golden foothills of Australia’s Snowy Mountains. The landscape along the way initially offered a good deal of pastoral charm. Small homesteads sat snugly within the contours of the land, their windows looking out over a picturesque valley floor. Occasional congregations of cattle dotted the fields, evoking a reminiscence of somewhere someplace in England. A tranquillity both unexpected and reassuring. Of country life ticking along as normal. It proved a normality abruptly shattered, a contrast as stark as the line between yellowing grass and blackened ash on a distant hill. A border where, for some reason or another, the fire had come to a sudden halt. Before long we were traversing through ground that had been subject to some of the worst bushfires of the worst Australian summer. Following Bill’s ute up a dirt track through a forest stripped of vegetation. Just mud and ash and blackened logs coating the floor, like the coals of a barbecue the day after the night before. A night of absolute carnage. You are probably justifiably thinking this is hardly the ideal scene for a holiday. Not exactly the shimmer of an opera house or the sensation of sandy toes wallowing in a pristine ocean beach. And, fair enough, this is no holiday. It goes far deeper than that. It’s also far more strenuous than lounging by the pool. I find myself with three strangers and a farmer we have only just met ready to fix up some fencing. It’s all part of volunteering for BlazeAid, an organisation which sets up camps in regions affected by natural disaster. It’s my first time and I make an enthusiastic if not naturally gifted clipper of wires and puller of posts. But each metre of progress quickly turns to ten, and then a hundred. And before you know it, you have made a visible, material difference. And there’s a great deal of satisfaction to be had in that. As each charred and warped fence post gets pulled down, the trust Bill has in us goes up. And this is where the magic happens. We get to know one another, we find out about life on the farm, we exchange good humour and warm banter. We develop rapport. We build connection. We are offered tea and refuge as the winds strengthen. Stories are shared and a world opens up. A world that almost inevitably, naturally comes back to the fires. The intense battle to save the house. The sheds. The garden, lovingly tended by Angela and now crisped brown. The anxiety. The alarm. The flames arriving over the hill. The exhaustion. The relief. The uncertainty now faced. The paradise that this once was and will hopefully be again. With a little help from friends. For we are no longer strangers, but mates helping mates. Ready to share a cold beer at the end of the day, as large droplets of rain plop into the bare earth. Enriching the land much the same way as this experience enriches the soul. We take so much from travel that is so often superficial. Perhaps it is when we have the chance to connect and give back that it becomes an endeavour more meaningful. More than just a beach holiday or a nice tapas bar or a great railway journey. But something that touches you in ways you didn’t expect. And something that will stick with you long after the scars of fire have faded from a forest far away.