Yesterday the fire came up the gully behind the house with the wind driving it from the north east. It was blown away from us yesterday, and today it is being blown back towards us.

The sun rose a scary orange and the air is thick with smoke. A big plume of smoke announced the fires return with the hot wind and lower humidity.

My neighbours were not able to return home after work from the previous day, so I rang them and offered to feed and water their dogs. The asked me to bring the dogs to Mittagong for them, but if I leave I won’t be able to return here, as the village is in lock-down.

We made an agreement to meet in neutral territory at the road block. Stop and park and walk to the neutral zone and hand over the dogs. It was like a James Bond movie. The spy who came in from the heat. The hardest part was trying to get two German-sheprds into my ute cab. The dogs don’t take orders from me. It was quite an effort, but we got there and managed the hand over. The cops were nice, but strict.

I made another arrangement later in the day with Janine to meet her at the border. She had purchased another roll of al-foil for me to complete the garlic bread like wrap-up of the front of the house. I took a photo for ‘Christo’. I now have all doors and windows facing North and West, plus the weatherboards facing west.

Luckily for us, there was an early and concerted effort by both air and ground crews to keep the damage to a minimum. No houses lost that I know of at the moment. But the total stands at 20 houses lost, two firemen dead and 5 in hospital badly injured.

We had both of the large ‘Elvis’ water bombing helicopters working over us all day. They lumber over with their jet engines screaming louder than the heavy percussive pulse and thud of the rotors. They fly very low and quite fast. I can hear them way before they appear from behind the trees, a sweep over.

I wasn’t aware that there were two of the large ‘Elvis’ style helicopters. They flew so low that I could read the numbers on their fuselage. We had Nos. 730 and 520 here yesterday.

We also had three large choppers with water buckets on long lines. They seemed to make less motor noise, but more percussive rotor ‘thud’. Its amazing how I could feel it in my chest when they approached, but this disappeared when they wore over head. Then there was more motor noise.

I had the roof sprinklers on from 12.30 when the ember started to fall, till 5.30 when it had more or less stopped. I learnt something. My fire pumps can run for 5 hours on low throttle, running the roof sprinklers on one tank of fuel.

Wetting the roof like this kills the energy of the embers as they pass through the spray, but the water also keeps the gutters filled with water, as it is collected and returns back to the tank through the gutting system.

I used 1/4 of my water tank storage and 1/4 of my petrol reserves. I can hold out for 3 more days at this rate.

We are surrounded by fire now on three sides, West North and East. Todays wind will be 40 km/hr. from the West. Very bad. I plan to set the pumps and roof and wall sprinklers going and evacuate to the fire shed, ‘safe area’ in the village as soon as the big black plume appears.

Embers to the left of me, embers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle you fuel.