It was New Year's Eve and Kim Yang and her friends had decided to welcome in 2020 by camping in Eden.
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It was an idyllic coastal village summer escape for the Canberra residents.
They arrived on December 30 to set up camp under blue skies. But everything drastically changed within 24 hours. As the smoke rolled in and the fires travelled across the border, Eden came under threat.
Although evacuation centres were set up by the Eden Fishermen's Club, Ms Yang and her friends were tourists and so unable to access the centre's resources. They were told to leave as soon a possible.
She said she and her partner tried to find shelter from the smoke and soot descending on the town.
"I was anxious and terrified at the time."
- Kim Yang
They decided to go to the pub to escape the chaos for a moment as they tried to find out which roads were open for their journey back to Canberra.
Ms Yang remembers feeling confused and shocked at the change in the town.
"Us travellers were sitting together watching the news and everyone was horrified, but still wanted to to help each other, there were share houses and people offering to host us but we went back to our tent.
"We were running around trying to get shelter and food, but there was only one IGA at Eden and it had very long queues.
"There were two families arguing over a loaf of bread. With one family saying I've got four people and the other saying well I've got five people.
"I really sympathised with the humanity in that kind of desperate situation, everyone was panicking, I was panicking myself."
At the time she did not know when she would be able to go back to Canberra as Brown Mountain was closed and she described the uncertainty she felt at the time.
Kim and her friends slept in the tent that evening but got very little sleep.
The next morning on January 1 2020, Brown Mountain was reopened and Kim and her friends made the journey back to Canberra with a broken car window taped up with duct tape.
As someone who grew up in Taiwan, the realities of the Australian bushfire season was a foreign concept to Ms Yang before she moved to Canberra in 2012.
But now she has made it her mission to try to gather more support for those affected by the 2019-2020 bushfires through her music.
Ms Yang has worked in corporate positions, translation services and in customer service but her real passion is music.
In her late twenties she rediscovered her love of music and began busking with her guitar and ukulele around Canberra.
She is now pursuing her music career full-time and is teaching music to students.
The story of Eden is now reaching those far and wide. Ms Yang's own family and friends in Taiwan are now aware of the impact of the fires to people all over NSW, but particularly on the Far South East Coast.
"At the time I had the music running in my head and I went home and started writing the story I experienced and it's all very straightforward because I just really wanted to express my concern.
"Everything [in the song] is told through imagery, I tend to imagine the picture in front of me and describe it in a visual sense."
Although she felt relieved being able to escape the fires and leave the area, she wrote her song Garden of Eden to highlight the situation for people there. A name highlighting the contrast of the place during the time.
"It was a beautiful place in Eden when we arrived, but then it turned into a living hell.
"I feel for them as I had been there in Eden but they all had a worse situation than us and it makes me feel a bit sad and depressed.
"But that just makes me want to play the song to people and help out and spread messages to help people in that region who are still suffering as it's been horrible."
Ms Yang is actively seeking to help spread awareness about the ongoing effects of the fires in South East NSW by speaking about her experience in Eden as well as supporting charities working in the area through advocacy at her gigs.
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She said that she also uses her platform to speak about the increase of natural disasters such as bushfires due to climate change.
Ms Yang will be performing this Friday April 30 as a supporting artist for Ben Lee at The Street Theatre in Canberra.
"I am currently recording my 2nd EP with funding support from ArtsACT, which should be released in September.
She then plans to tour the East Coast and hopes to play in the Bega Valley.