Bushfires are nothing new in Australia, but this season’s blazes have taken on a new dimension. Their vast scale is largely down to extreme weather conditions. Last year was the hottest and driest since recordings began in 1910.

More than 12 million hectares of land have been ravaged since the outbreak of the Australian bushfires in October 2019, that’s an area almost one and a half times the size of Austria. 1 billion mammals, reptiles and birds have died in the flames, many firefighting crews are working to the brink of exhaustion.

Heavy rain has brought relief to some areas but it’s already causing flooding in others, Austrailia was not prepared for a catastrophe of this scale, how could things get so out of hand? This film takes us on a journey that begins in the southeast in Broken Hill, New South Wales, where we hear from sheep farmer Brendan Cullen as he elaborates on the situation threatening his livelihood.