A family clung to a jetty for more than two hours while fires raged around them in Tasmania

A TASMANIAN family that spent a harrowing three hours clinging to a jetty as "tornadoes of fire" swirled around them have become the face of the bushfire tragedy.

Pictures of Tammy Holmes and her five young grandchildren huddled beneath a Tasmanian jetty as flames roared about them at Dunalley have raced around the internet.

Mother Bonnie Walker had left her five children, aged 2-11, in the care of her parents, Tim and Tammy Holmes, while she attended a funeral in Hobart.

As the fire closed in on the coastal town, cutting off the family's escape route, Mr and Mrs Holmes had no other choice but to shelter in the water under a jetty with their grandchildren.

"We saw tornadoes of fire just coming across towards us and the next thing we knew everything was on fire, everywhere all around us," Mr Holmes told the ABC.

"We lost three houses and by that time I had sent Tammy ... with the children to get down to the jetty because there was no other escape we couldn't get off.

"We were relying on the jetty really. And the difficulty was, there was so much smoke and ember and there was only about probably 200mm to 300mm of air above the water. So we were all just heads, water up to our chins just trying to breathe because it was just, the atmosphere was so incredibly toxic.

Mr Holmes said the fire raged around them for three hours along the wooded point.

"So everything was on fire and it was just exploding all over the place. Yeah, amazing. Just scorched," he said.

Mrs Walker was cut off from her family as fire cut across roads.

"We just waited by the phone and received a message at 3.30pm to say that mum and dad had evacuated, that they were surrounded by fire, and could we pray," she said.

"So I braced myself to lose my children and my parents."

Fortunately, she did not, the decision to shelter in water saving them. Mr Holmes took the pictures and sent them to his daughter to show her her family was safe.

Pictures of the family huddled terrified under the jetty have gone around the world, with the family becoming the face of the Tasmanian fire tragedy.

The photos have been published on The Guardian and The Telegraph in the UK and the Huffington Post in the US.

Around 90 properties were razed in and around the small fishing town in a blaze that started at Forcett southeast of Hobart and burned 23,000 hectares.

