he spectre of the bushfi res of summer 2019 looms large over the garden at Keewaydin, the home of Rae and Guy Sim at Running Stream in the NSW mid-west. On one dreadful December evening, the Sims watched in horror as fi re surrounded their home on 40 hectares of farmland destroying 20 hectares of pine plantation and much of the garden they had spent almost 15 years developing. “We were coming off the back of three years of drought, so there was no grass in the paddocks and it was hard to imagine we could be aff ected,” Guy recalls. “But burn it did and in the end, the RFS (Rural Fire
