April 30 was a good day for Tracey Minton - it was the first time in months she could flick a switch on the kettle and boil the water for a cup of tea.
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That was the morning after Endeavour Energy turned on the stand-alone power system on the Mintons' Kangaroo Valley property that was razed by the Currowan bushfire in the first week of January.
The system is made up of solar panels, batteries and a back-up generator that operate independently to the rest of the Endeavour Energy network.
It's a godsend for the Mintons and means they don't have to wait for the ongoing repair work to the poles and wires infrastructure to reach their home.
"The power poles are still two and a half kilometres away," Tracey said.
"By us getting the solar, we got it a lot earlier than if we'd waited for the power poles to come."
And it meant Tracey could make an easy cup of tea on that April morning.
"The next morning I got a cup of tea in bed because I didn't have to get up and light the fire and wait for the billy to boil."
Tracey and Mark Minton left their property on January 2, just two days before the Currowan fire came roaring through.
They prepared the house before they left but they returned on January 6 to "utter devastation".
"Everything was gone, even the chimney didn't survive the fire," Tracey says.
"We had a double-brick house - all gone. It was so hot that when we were demolishing the house, if you picked a brick up, it broke in half."
While they also have a home in Sydney, they've been spending three or fours days each week on their Kangaroo Valley property.
They spent the first month after the fire living in a tent, then moving into a HiAce van before someone lent them a bus for a month.
Those early months were hard - Tracey craved a cold drink, because a bag of ice would only last a day. And the black, burnt landscape was creepy with nothing but a candle to light your way.
"Candles don't give you much light," she says.
"At the beginning, everything was black, there were black sticks everywhere. It was very, very eerie."
Endeavour Energy's General Manager Scott Ryan described the new power system as a "game changer" for people in remote areas.
"They deserve to have access to safe and reliable electricity regardless of where they live," Mr Ryan said.
"Customers using it will have the same continuous, high-quality power supply and will pay the same unit price for electricity charged by their retail energy supplier."
Glen Humphries
I'm an award-winning senior journalist with the Illawarra Mercury and have well over two decades' worth of experience in newspapers. I cover the three local councils in the Illawarra for the Mercury, state and federal politics, as well as writing for the TV guide. If I'm not writing, I'm reading.
I'm an award-winning senior journalist with the Illawarra Mercury and have well over two decades' worth of experience in newspapers. I cover the three local councils in the Illawarra for the Mercury, state and federal politics, as well as writing for the TV guide. If I'm not writing, I'm reading.
