It's been a surreal month for Adam Stevenson, whose photo of a kookaburra surveying the bushfire damage across Saltwater has gone international.
Australian Geographic, National Geographic, ABC, BBC UK, NBC US, a newspaper in France, New Zealand, the WWF, Greenpeace International and even Hillsong have all used the image in some way.
The attention has come as a surprise to the Wallabi Point resident, who took the iconic shot while assessing the damage near his family's home, three days after fire tore through the forest and came frighteningly close to homes in the village.
"I'm getting lots of messages about people who are using my image without crediting me but I haven't been too concerned about it," he said.
"I haven't taken any money and I haven't charged any licensing fee. All I ask is for those organisations to donate to the RFS or Wires or any organisation assisting with the bushfire."
He's quick to point out he's not a photographer. "I'm being referred to as one, but I'm not. I took it on my iPhone. I'm an avid phone user."
The day before he took the photo, Adam, his wife and two young children had returned home after evacuating.
"We'd just got back home. We'd evacuated to Taree and stayed with my parents and got home on Monday."
They had watched on television as the flames came perilously close to their street and home.
"On Tuesday we went for a walk to assess the damage.
"There was a fair bit of wildlife. We saw an injured kangaroo. I returned later that night with a vet but he bounced away okay.
"As we were walking this kookaburra landed on a tree and started laughing next to us."
His wife suggested he take a photo.
Adam started walking closer, taking lots of photos with his iPhone each step of the way, thinking the kookaburra would fly off.
"We got up to him real close. When I got closer he turned and looked back at me.
"It was like, there's nothing you can do that's going to be worse than this. He and I had a moment, then my six year old came up and scared him away.
"He flew up to another tree to another kookaburra and they were both having a laugh in the tree."
Adam said his main interest had been in taking photos of the sunset, the smoke haze behind the trees back over Saltwater.
"There was a big red sun, I was admiring that. It was really about the sunset, the kookaburra was an afterthought."
Thinking he had a nice photo, he posted it on the Old Bar Community Facebook page, which he is an administrator on.
He certainly didn't anticipate the reaction.
"The next morning I could see that it had 20,000 views and an hour later it was up to 40,000 views and I think the most recent tally was 1.3million views, just on that post," he said.
Then it started being used internationally.
"At the time, I thought, what's going on... it's a bit weird.
"I've got people messaging me, they've painted a picture of it.
"One good thing is that it's created a lot of awareness around important causes including climate change and the impact on local wildlife and the image has gone to use for good causes."
Adam printed a few copies of the photo and had them framed by HowsThatHouse for the 'Thank a Hero' fundraiser at Club Old Bar. Four were sold.
The fundraiser raised close to $35,000.
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