Roger McCampbell still feels that jolt. Still smells the smoke. Even now, six decades later. “I remember vividly the smell of the dynamite and gun powder — that smell of the explosion,” Mr McCampbell recalls.

“And I was woken by the jolt. And there was no house.”

On July 29, 1957, on the outskirts of the NSW south coast town of Bega, the home containing police constable Kenneth Coussens, his wife Elizabeth, his seven-month-old son Bruce and nine-year-old stepson Roger McCampbell was blown to smithereens.

Constable Coussens, his wife and young baby were killed instantly. Somehow, Roger McCampbell survived.

Awake and dazed, the little boy slowly stands and then stumbles through the rubble and ruin, not really sure what has just happened.

People say it was a miracle he survived. “There was a big piece of wood stuck down into the bed right bedside me, and I got up and walked out through the wall, because there was no wall there anymore,” Mr McCampbell recalls.

“It was dark and I walked around — I could see the neighbour standing at his door with the light on.

“Where we lived there were two vacant blocks between us and the next house — they said that was a miracle in itself that I survived with the electrical wires around everywhere.”

Mr McCampbell’s stepfather Kenneth Coussens was a constable at nearby Bega police station in the 1950s, and during the course of his work had issued numerous fines and defect tractor notices to local farmer Myron Bertram Kelly.

Kelly, 32, formed a grudge against the young father and, in a rage, put 240 sticks of gelignite and a fuse into a 22-litre can, setting the bomb off on the front veranda of the Coussens family home while they slept inside.

At 2am on that fateful July day, Kelly lit the fuse.

The explosion demolished the house and caused damage to homes up to 1.6km away, shattering more than 100 windows at Bega Hospital.

Kelly was charged with their murders and sentenced to life imprisonment on December 6, 1957.

Presiding judge Justice McClemens said at the time: “One could only hope for the sake of common human nature that a crime as terrible and devilish as the Bega bombing on July 29 sprang from some deep-seated mental derangement. It is not a case where in the interest of the community one could recommend or hold out any hope for mercy.”

In his police statement, Kelly said he meant to do no harm to anyone, just superficial damage to Constable Coussens’ home.

“At about two o’clock in the morning, I walked up to Constable Coussens’ house and lit the fuse on the bomb,” Kelly said in his statement.

“After that I went back to bed. I expected very little damage to be done and a lot of noise. I thought it would go no further than to break some fibro off the walls and give the constable a bad fright, causing the Police Department to move him.

“I did not think that it would kill him, his wife and his child. It was the last thing in the world that I wanted to happen.

“I have all the regrets in the world.”

Kelly served 23 years of the life sentence, released in 1980. He died 10 years ago, having never reoffended.

Next weekend marks the shocking incident’s 60th anniversary — a day like any other for Mr McCampbell, who feels the tragic effects of July 29 every day, not just once a year.

The northern beaches father and grandfather says that losing his family at such a young age changed the trajectory of his life forever.

“It changed everything,” Mr McCampbell says, his voice heavy with emotion.

“It’s not a particular time of the year that brings it all back for me, it’s when something happens — like every once in a while you’re listening to something on the radio or watching something on television and something clicks in your brain and off you go.

“The wall comes crumbling down and you have to build the wall up again.

“I do remember my mother.

“Everyone says she was really special, a very gentle, calm person.

“I’ve now been married to my wife Rima for 42 years and we have two daughters and a granddaughter, and it doesn’t matter how old they are, you still worry about them.

“You still want them close to you and you do anything to protect them. And they are very protective of me.

“I’ve dodged a few bullets and there have been other things that have happened to me.

“My latest one was cancer and that was last year and I got through that all right and you think ‘OK, there is somebody up there who is protecting you, it’s not your time yet, we want you around’.”

In fact, the Bega bombing was already Mr McCampbell’s second brush with death.

His mother Elizabeth worked in the Red Cross during WWII and his father was an American sailor stationed in New Guinea, who came to Australia for a break.

The pair met and fell in love and when the war ended decided to go to America to be married.

“They were on a working holiday to Atlantic City and coming back when a drunk driver crossed over the highway and hit the car head on,” Mr McCampbell says. “My father was killed. My mother and I were in the back seat — she got a few cuts and was knocked around a bit and we had a few bumps and bruises, but we survived.

“I was under two years of age.”

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Then a widow, Elizabeth brought her young son back to Australia where they lived on a farm outside of Bega with family. “Then she met my stepfather and got married and had a house in Bega,” Mr McCampbell says.

“It was the jolt that woke me that night.

“I was dazed and I managed to make my way to the neighbour’s house and by that time everyone was out on the street … my uncle came and picked me up and took me back to my aunty’s place and all the family gathered back there.

“I remember before we went inside he said ‘you do know don’t you, that your mum and dad aren’t coming back, that you won’t see them again’.

“I was in a daze.

“When you’re that age, you’re not looking at it from an adult’s point of view, not in the light of getting a phone call and telling you that there’s been another accident.

“I once counted that I moved 20 times before I got married,” says Mr McCampbell, who turns 70 in October.

“There’s an old song I use as a motto in life, and that is ‘I get knocked down, but I get up again’.”

Peter Rogers from the Bega Valley Historical Society says the bombing incident is the darkest side of the small town’s past, and one that’s still talked about to this day.

“It was a devastating time, and one I can well remember,” Mr Rogers, 82, says.

“It was a massive explosion that demolished the house — it was miraculous that the young boy survived.

“There are still plenty of people around who remember it — it’s not the sort of thing you expect in a small country town.

“We don’t have a lot of violence or crime at all really.

“It has gone into the folklore a little bit.

“People still talk about the time Constable Coussens and his family were killed — it was pretty shocking, and there is still a service every year to remember them.”