Today I’ll be sitting in my west London garden, enjoying the Bank Holiday sunshine. All around me, my neighbours will be firing up barbecues, the smell of grilling wafting over the fence.

But I can never again smell a barbecue without being taken back to the terrible evening when, at the age of 17, my face and body were horribly burnt just as I was about to launch my career as a model.

We lived in an expensive area near the beaches of North Sydney – and I had a shoot for a fashion brand booked in Thailand two weeks later.

I was so excited to enter this new chapter and felt my whole life was ahead of me, but a moment’s drunken recklessness was to send my plans – literally – up in flames.

I’d always dreamt of working in entertainment. From the age of four, I’d attended the Johnny Young Talent School – the alma mater of Kylie and Dannii Minogue – and loved drama, singing and dancing.

In my mid-teens, I was living with my mum, stepdad and three siblings. Most nights someone was having a barbecue somewhere.

One evening, my boyfriend John invited me to one at his friend’s house. His parents had gone out, so it was just us teenagers.

The boys were using an old-fashioned Weber barbecue, still common in the UK, where you kindle the fire with a naked flame rather than using gas.

Someone had suggested they soak the briquettes in petrol and methylated spirits to get the barbie going, and – mad as this advice was – the early evening passed off without a hitch.

When horrible accidents happen you look for sliding doors moments. I was supposed to be home by 11pm but my parents were out for their wedding anniversary so I stayed longer and, by midnight, the boys, who had been drinking, started to get hungry again.

A couple of them went to the shed and thought it would be a good idea to pour some more meths on the fire to get it going. One in particular thought it was hilarious as the flames leapt into the night sky.

‘We should probably stop this,’ said another member of the gang, ‘but let’s do it one more time.’ Everyone agreed.

The next thing I knew, I was thrown from my chair. I briefly passed out. Regaining consciousness, I saw that the shed was in flames – but then came the horrifying realisation that I was lying on a pile of burning boxes.

I had been hit by a fireball which had leapt off the barbecue and engulfed my face and body.

I wasn’t in pain, but something had happened to my eyesight. Through blurred vision, I could see everyone was running around in panic.

Then, all at once, I was aware of an agonising burning sensation as my PVC jacket melted into my skin. ‘Someone get a hose,’ I shouted, as I tore it off.

I knew I had to get into cold water, so I raced upstairs and jumped into the shower fully clothed.

The parents, who had returned from their meal and gone to bed, came out of their room. When they saw me, they screamed.

By then, I was freaking out. Instinctively, I avoided looking in the bathroom mirror and my vision would have been too blurry to see much anyway. But to my horror, I could feel my lip and ear hanging off and that my hair and eyebrows had been singed.

Ambulances take a long time to come in Australia, so my friend’s sister drove us to the hospital.

The pain was now unbearable and I could smell my burned skin, which was sloughing off onto the car seat next to me.

I was shaking from pain and shock, as well as freezing cold, which I later learned was a reaction to my burns.

On arrival at hospital, I was put on morphine and oxygen as the doctors were worried my lungs had been damaged. They feared for my sight. I was beside myself. No one could tell me how bad this was, or how permanent the damage would be.

Over the next 24 hours, medics determined my injuries. Thirty-two per cent of my body had been burnt. I had second and third-degree burns on my chest, and was told I would need an operation to graft skin from my thigh, which I eventually had a month later.

The doctors put me in a burns vest made of tight mesh that covered my whole upper body, from my elbows to my hips, and up to my neck.

It was incredibly hot and sweaty and I had to wear it for two uncomfortable years. Plastic surgeons put sutures in my lip and my ear to reattach them, but my face was so swollen I still refused to look in a mirror for fear of what I would see.

When I got home, I asked my mum to cover all the mirrors with towels, but ten days after the incident I caught sight of my reflection in a pane of glass and burst out crying at how distorted my features were. I even started vomiting.

Everything I hoped for in my life was now over. Forget modelling or the stage, how could I even be a normal teenager after this?

It was my mum who kept me going. ‘You will be fine,’ she said. ‘You will achieve your dreams.’ But 17-year-old me with a burned face and body was not so sure.

My parents paid for me to see a cosmetic surgeon, and I had a series of procedures. It turned out my facial burns were only first degree, not as bad as I feared.

Soon after the accident, I had steroid injections to lessen my raised scars. When my burns had healed enough, I started laser treatments which re-burned, broke down and repaired the damaged tissue. These cost about £4,000 a time, so I only had them every 18 months, and still do to this day.

All in, these procedures cost a fortune, and I will be forever grateful to my family.

Later on, I started to tattoo my lips and eyebrows every 18 months as the burns had taken away the natural pigment in places.

For the first few days after treatment, I look like a freak, with a bright red border to my lips, but it soon calms down.

Three months after my accident, I returned to my drama class in my burns vest and with bright red skin and bald patches where my hair had been. Tears were rolling down my face. ‘I can’t do this,’ I told my drama teacher.

But she told me I was top of the class, and that gave me the determination to keep going.

Carrying on as a normal teenager was tough. I was desperate to cover the scars on my neck but the doctors told me not to wear make-up. I refused to go to the beach or wear a swimsuit, and wore polo tops all the time.

I felt disgusting. I’d look into a mirror and cry and think, why me?

For a few years after the barbecue, I continued an on-off relationship with my boyfriend. At first he was very sympathetic, but he didn’t seem able to deal with my trauma. I had lots of therapy. Conventional trauma counselling didn’t work as rehashing that night made me feel like I’d been hit by a bus.

I tried hypnosis, but had the best results with Neuro Emotional Technique, which helps release trauma and retrain the brain’s response to it.

My boyfriend and I broke up in 2008 after ten years. After that, it was hard.

I felt too ashamed to show my body to a new man, and I didn’t have many sexual relationships until my late 20s.

At times, I felt cheated, angry. I wanted to hide and cover up. At first I thought I’d be too scarred to be in front of cameras, so I trained as a make-up artist.

But as time went on – buoyed by my therapy, the effects of the steroid jabs and my assiduous use of vitamin E cream and rosehip oil – I thought, 'I’m going to perform again. I’ll train as a singer and do some modelling'.

But first, I had to get back to the beach.

I plucked up my courage, covered myself with tinted zinc and stage make-up, both to protect me from the sun and help conceal the scarring on my chest. As time went on, I became more comfortable with it.

I made small changes such as gradually wearing lower-cut tops and once I started feeling better, I threw myself into everything, from DJing to TV presenting, even a bit of swimwear modelling.

The trauma didn’t disappear, exactly, but I realised I could manage it, and when opportunities came my way, I chose to take them. Then, when I was 30 and back to full body confidence, I met a 29-year-old Brit called Adam on Bondi Beach.

I was covered up at the time, so he didn’t see my body. I told him the story later, during a Skype call, and he was very sweet about it, especially after we eventually became intimate.

After Adam went back to the UK we kept in touch and, in 2013, I moved to London and we got married. In our nine-year marriage we had two girls, Aria and Gigi, but we split four years ago.

Because of the girls, I decided to stay in the UK. I loved performing but I decided to team up with my mother to set up an interior design studio called Element One House.

Mum is sadly no longer with us, so I run the company in her memory. Life is good. My burns have mostly faded but I still need to tattoo my lip a dark, flesh tint.

I also tattoo my eyebrows every two years, though I’m not sure if it’s the burns that have made them thin, or endless plucking in the 90s.

I’m single at the moment and, while it’s always something I’m aware of, I no longer feel as nervous about undressing in front of other people.

I feel confident within myself now. My accident and the aftermath has given me perspective. So many people worry about a pimple, a fat roll – but you can see, you can breathe.

I was lucky to be able to afford cosmetic treatments and therapy, but I also learned you have to rely on more than just your appearance to be happy.

I looked around and saw my amazing, supportive family. My father has also died, but I have my wonderful girls.

If you’re firing up your barbecue this summer – or letting your teenager go to a party with a barbecue – consider my story a cautionary tale.

My girls are bored of my fire safety talks – how they should avoid boiling water and be careful of silly boys – but it’s an important conversation to have.

If I hadn’t rallied after that night, I could easily be in a dark room now with a bottle of booze.

But my experience has shown me you can rebuild. Surround yourself with good people. Keep going no matter what and stop focusing on the things that don’t truly matter.

Follow Jordana Ashkenazi @elementonehouse

As told to Miranda Levy