A resident of Batemans Bay, Australia described Tuesday's scenes which saw the sky turning to blazing red as "apocalyptic".
In a video filmed near the Hanging Rock evacuation Centre on December 31, Zoe Simmons is heard saying: "The smoke is really bad, it's hard to see, it's hard to see with ash. The wind changed a couple minutes ago and this happened. It's apocalyptic. This is the middle of the day".