It felt a little like the Black Summer all over again.
The latest fire season had barely begun when truffle farm owner Barbara Hill smelt and saw the smoke of a new bushfire arriving from the north.
During the Black Summer of 2019-20, her well-protected farm east of Bredbo had been an evacuation centre for local area residents during the Peak View fires which destroyed a huge amount of bushland and native habitat, and claimed the lives of three US airmen, killed when their air tanker crashed during a retardant drop.
This time the bushfire approached and swept around her and several neighbouring properties, largely as a result of having no fuel on the ground.
"It [the bushfire] came in from the north on the weekend and was all over the show, jumping around us," she said.
"Luckily we had ploughed up some fields and put seed down over the winter so there was nothing much on the ground to burn.
"We lost some radiata pines and native bush around us so it was touch and go for a while yesterday [Sunday]. We certainly couldn't get out.
"It got quite hectic; we had the helicopters circling around dumping water and all the RFS people out around the area dealing with the spot fires."
Richard and Barbara Hill had moved from Canberra in the mid-1990s, planting trees, enriching the depleted soils and investing huge amounts of time and effort in developing the truffle farm. The farm's locally grown Black Perigord truffles are now regionally famous and have featured on dishes served at Parliament House.
Barbara Mills said that her late husband had prepared the farm well for a bushfire emergency.
"We're like a little oasis out here," she said.
"We've got gravity fed water systems, solar and a battery system - and we've got an emergency sprinkler system on the roof," she said.
She believed that the worst of the danger had now passed for her farm.
"The road is now open but the weather is still not in our favour so we still have the utes hitched up just in case.
"I feel for the people over the [Monaro] highway at Shannons Flat. We hear that it's not too good over that way," she said.
Late on Monday afternoon, the NSW RFS reported there were still more than 50 volunteer firefighters attending the 420 hectare bushfire on Cappanana Rd. East of the Monaro Highway at Shannons Flat there were 60 firefighters and a helicopter attending a smaller but more intense fire in heavily timbered country. It had burnt 180 hectares and was heading south.
Bawley Point on the NSW South Coast had another bushfire scare on the weekend. The township had been cut off and threatened when the enormous Currowan fire roared out of the nearby national park during the Black Summer. The weekend's scrub fire in the Murramarang Range near Bundle Hill Rd had burnt 27 hectares but had been downrated to being controlled.
The main focus of concern for the NSW RFS and its aerial resources on Monday was Gulgong, near Mudgee, where over 100 homes were under threat. Evacuations of some residential areas had been ordered and about 180 firefighters, together with a large aerial tanker and several helicopters, were working to contain the fire.
