The growing anxiety around dozens of fires that were enveloping the Mid North Coast in 2019 was matched by the desperation to breathe in clean air, as a wall of smoke lingered in the atmosphere from lunchtime on November 8.

It was the day the sky turned red.

Read more: After six months, 270 witnesses and 80,000 documents, here's what the bushfires royal commission found

It was eerie. It was ominous and the moment we realised the fire situation was much bigger than anything we were throwing at it.

The red sky stopped people in the streets. The air was silent. There was a sense of something awful.

Here are some of those images that defined that day, shared by our readers.