At the same time as her beloved NSW Country Women's Association is about to celebrate its centenary, the CWA state president is quietly rising with great strength above personal disaster.

Just over a year ago, terror rained down in the form of fire embers on to what are normally green rolling hills that surround Bega, forcing Stephanie and her family to flee their Numbugga home in the last rage of the Black Summer bushfires.

It was the second fire in just 18 months to hit her small hamlet about 15 kilometres west of Bega.

In August 2018, Numbugga was hit by a blaze some described as a "nuclear blast". She was away at the time but her neighbour saved her house then. Three houses were lost in that fire.

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In the 2019-20 fires she was not so lucky.

Her house was the only one in her direct area, and among 448 houses lost, as fires raced through the Bega Valley over several months, her home lost to an ember attack on January 3 last year.

Her daughter and son-in-law lived in the Numbugga house as well. Their fire plan was always to leave if a fire threatened.

The disaster taught her a lot: who were her friends, how limited government departments were in delivering help - her daughter and son-in-law received just $1000 in compensation although they also lost everything in the fire but were classed as tenants - and how to rise from the ashes.

Stephanie now stands alongside her new kit home on the property her daughter reckons she should rename Phoenix Mountain. She's squeezed in between two dairy farms and dealing with, ironically, recent flood damage on her new driveway, and is busy getting the broad church of the CWA ready for its big 100th year celebrations to be staged at Randwick racecourse in Sydney next year.

She left her Numbugga property on New Year's Day last year as the second Numbugga fire moved in, hoping fate would spare her family again.

"I live on a fire plan that we will leave if there is fire as I believe my life has more importance than belongings. At the time we left, we thought the house was fine, but later we learned it had been burnt down."

"For my well-being I decided I would rebuild," Stephanie says.

She had lost all her possessions, and so had her daughter and son-in law. The insurance company came through with the insurance money quickly by March and she started planning a new kit home at another location of the 60 hectare property. So well did it go, she moved in the day before Christmas last year.

"I got there, it was amazing, a lot of people helped me find a kit home that I liked," she says.

But she had a lot of trouble, still facing council rate charges and problems with power companies on her fire-ravaged property.

While other communities rallied around Cobargo and Bemboka, she found she was isolated this time, as hers was the only house lost in Numbugga.

"It wasn't until later in the year that someone at Bemboka realised I was out there," she says.

"It was an unreal time. I was getting a lot of phone calls as CWA president, people wanting to help the fire victims, wanting numbers, and there I was having lost my own house," she says.

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Quilts, many sown by CWA members, arrived from all over NSW as gifts to fire victims. She remembers the great generosity at the time.

"One truckie delivered the quilts down from Sydney to us and would only accept a container of biscuits as payment."

Stephanie was born a long way from her present home, at Mullumbimby on the NSW Far North Coast, so it was heartening during the Black Summer fires to see the Mullumbimby Rural Fire Service crew as part of the Bega fire effort.

Her father was a teacher and she moved to Bega when she was seven. She left and later studied engineering before returning in 1990 to help run a dairy farm with her then husband. Her later life includes some public service work and volunteering.

She says it will take a long time for the South Coast community to recover from the fires. There were a lot of illegal dwellings destroyed in the bush and many houses were not insured.

"Because of the building changes, many people can't rebuild."

Meantime, she is helping prepare the CWA for its centenary. She's been invited to open the Crookwell show - the town where the first CWA branch was formed. Many CWA branches are arranging town hall balls leading up to the May conference.

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There's a wonderful book on the 100 years of the NSW CWA written by well-known author Liz Harfull that's in its last throes of production. Every branch is doing its "bit extra' for next year. It will be an emotional moment when Stephanie hands on the presidency at the Randwick conference.

The NSW CWA's proud history started in 1922. The main aim then was to address the poor health services in rural and regional Australia, and the battle goes on. Stephanie learnt at first hand how hard it was to access specialist services when her son needed treatment for the rare Kawasaki disease when he was young. The closest specialist was 300km away at Nowra and often she had to travel to Sydney. She says much more has to be done to encourage doctors to stay and settle in country towns.

Her philosophy on life has been to stare down misfortune.

"A friend visited me who commented on all the burnt trees on the way down. All I could see was the regrowth."

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