“We’re doing it because it’s a passion. It’s a brotherhood,” says Daniel Knox.

“When that photo was taken of me, I had done a 15-hour shift out there.”

He is one of the thousands of Australians who’ve dropped their ordinary lives to battle the nation’s raging fire crisis.

He’s part of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service (NSW RFS) which, with more than 70,000 members, calls itself “the world’s largest volunteer firefighting organisation”. They are extensively trained but, except for a few senior staff, unpaid.

For weeks, 22-year-old landscaper Mr Knox has lived around his phone, springing into action when called upon.

Five years ago, he joined his local brigade in Sydney’s south-west. He bonded with a senior member – Andrew O’Dwyer – over a shared love of football and photography.

“He took me under his wing, looked after me and helped me out so much. The respect he gave me, a young bloke, even when I made mistakes… he was my brother,” he told the BBC.

Last Thursday, Mr O’Dwyer and Geoffrey Keaton, the deputy captain at the Horsley Park Fire Brigade were deployed late at night to a massive firefront.

En route their truck was hit by a falling tree, which caused it to roll. Three firefighters in the back seat were injured but able to escape.

Mr O’Dwyer and Mr Keaton – both fathers to young children – were killed at the scene. They died five days before Christmas.

Earlier, bigger, more dangerous fires

Since September, close to 3,000 firefighters have been out every day in New South Wales battling blazes the size of small European countries.

More than 90% of those people on the the ground are unpaid volunteers, says the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS), the government-funded century-old organisation leading the fight.

This model is common across Victoria, South Australia, and Western Australia – Australian states which have traditionally had bushfires every summer. In recent years, sub-tropical Queensland has been more affected too.

Most of the 2,000 brigades in NSW are spread across the inland country towns and rural centres dotted among the state’s scrubby bushland. Members are almost always locals, stepping in to save their own communities.

Historically, the work has tended to be patchy, which has been a key factor behind the volunteerism. Fires don’t rage all year round, and there have been years when many areas aren’t affected at all.

But this year, the situation has changed. Intense blazes typically seen in later summer have flared in spring, forcing authorities to wage full-blow campaigns earlier than ever before.

They’re also dealing with hundreds more fires, burning simultaneously in hotter and drier conditions. NSW has been in drought for years, and fires are ripping through the state.

The monstrous Gospers Mountain blaze, an hour’s drive north-west of Sydney, has grown to more than 450,000 hectares in size in less than a month. Officials now consider it to be potentially one of the largest fires ever recorded in Australia.

‘Everyone’s working so hard’

Lucy Baranowski has been among the crews fighting that blaze, and others closer to her home in Kurrajong Heights, for weeks. She and her partner took leave from their day jobs a few weeks ago – and are currently skating by on savings, credit cards and support from family and friends.

She misses her children – she evacuated them to her parent’s home over a week ago. On Saturday, her crew helped save a friend’s property – but then watched as the wind diverted the front which tore through the neighbouring village of Bilpin.

The situation is extreme, but she has been buoyed by the community support, she tells the BBC.

Her friends have organised her children’s Christmas presents. Others have manned shifts cooking and cleaning for crews down at the station. As a prolific blogger, her recent posts about her fireground experiences have gone viral on social media.

“So many people aren’t making an income but are putting every part of their passion and blood into this campaign – it’s really, really rough on a lot of people,” she says.

She describes the RFS as her family – and in her case this is a literal statement. Out on the fireground she’s standing alongside her father and her younger brother, as well her friends, her neighbours, all of them communicating via radio.

They’re running on adrenalin, but the prospect of a long, drawn-out summer and a seemingly endless kilometres-long fire front has taken its toll.

“You can just hear the fatigue are in their voices and almost imagine their dirty, sweaty, ash-covered faces,” she says.

“Everyone’s working so hard to keep everything together but there’s no rain forecast, and there’s really nothing we can do to stop this fire,” she says.

“It’s like do we start to give up hope now that this isn’t going to stop?”

News of the firefighters’ deaths at Horsley Park, only a 40-minute drive away, “shattered my heart” she says.

“I didn’t know them – but that could have been my husband, my father, my uncle, my friend,” she said. “After all this is over, we’re probably going to fall down in a heap.”

‘What am I doing here?’

The mammoth and ongoing task has spurred a national conversation about support for firefighters, and calls for compensation.

Many Australians are learning for the first time the extent of the sacrifice made by the volunteers battling the nation’s fire crisis.

In the swing of the Christmas party season, shops and restaurants are donating profits to the NSW RFS. Online there have been fundraisers to buy masks, food and other resources for the “firies”.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is coming under pressure to promise some form of compensation for the volunteers kept away from their jobs for so long. But he has so far said he is “not going to make any knee-jerk responses”.

“What’s important is that we give our fire commissioners the tools they need to best support and raise that volunteer force,” he told journalists on Monday.

Typically, firefighters themselves have been reticent to speak out about any sort of handout. They’re not doing it for the money.

“People don’t get it, people think how do you risk your life and not get paid for this stuff,” Mr Knox says.

“And yeah, there have been times when I’ve been in the thick of it, and it’s so fierce you can’t breathe. And I’m thinking to myself, what am I doing here?”

On Sunday, he looked after Mr O’Dwyer’s young daughter while his widow met Scott Morrison as he was visiting the grieving community at Horsley Park.

He says he’s proud of the photo which went viral last week, which was taken in a controlled setting. Mr O’Dwyer had helped him put the finishing touches on the edit.

“Everyone has a choice in life, in what they want to do when they wake up in the morning,” says Mr Knox.

“When you’re on the truck, you’re with your brothers. I’d rather be out there firefighting, doing our part for the community, making those two boys proud of us for getting back out there.”

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