"It is an old home, we are trying to save it." Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video In the rural setting, to the state's north, residents were "strongly advised" to leave on Monday afternoon, ahead of extreme fire conditions predicted on Tuesday. Emergency services have remained reticent to use the word "evacuate", but by Tuesday they might. "I'm not leaving, not yet," Mrs Clarke said. "My life is important, I know that and if [there is] a danger to my life I probably would have to go but I will try and stay. We just need to prepare."

Loading Residents all over the surrounding towns of Kempsey were doing the same on Monday, clearing roof gutters, chainsawing low hanging branches, moving anything that could possibly fuel a flame. Bales of hay, never more precious than in a drought, were entrusted to a local truck driver to be transported to safer ground. "If even a cinder gets into that shed ... the shed can go, but not the hay in it, because that feeds the cows. We've got no feed anywhere," Mrs Clarke said. In the surrounding towns of Kempsey landowners gathered at meetings with police, council and emergency services, where they were "strongly advised" to relocate to evacuation centres.

Over in Macksville caravans and tents dotted the local showground from the early hours of Monday. Among them was Tracey Coulter, who nursed a cup of tea on a camp chair as she took another nervous phone call from her husband who was home preparing to defend their property near Bowraville. Leaving with her three daughters and her grandchildren on Friday, she had hoped to return on Sunday, but quickly decided the risk was too high. “It was that eerie at home, the burnt trees, you don’t know where they are going to fall,” Mrs Coulter said.

“I’ve bawled my eyes out, the kids have been crying because their dad’s at home protecting the house. He’s never seen something so frightening. He actually thought our house was gone.” Loading Mrs Coulter said the home was safe “for now” but with catastrophic conditions forecast for Tuesday she was “petrified.” Local firefighters around the area told the Herald that NSW was lacking in resources because Australia had sent water bombing aircraft to the US to help with the Californian bushfires. One firefighter said the region had access to a single water-bombing Erickson Sky-Crane, however the aircraft was being shared across the state.

“We've only got one. I reckon we need six. There's a lot of choppers and planes but you need that big water crane." A Rural Fire Service spokesman said further water bombing aircraft was being examined,“but given the [United] States' [fires] have still been going, this has been the problem and the reason that we’ve bought our own.” “There are a fair bit which are in the country now and more will keep arriving.” In Congarinni South landowners took advantage of cooler temperatures and lighter winds to clear their property and bulldoze tracks for fire breaks. “At the moment, with the drought, hard containment is the way to go. If we can put as many tracks in as we can, we’ve got a better chance of taking out as many blocks as we need to [before the fire returns],” said Ben Donnelly, as he bulldozed fire trails behind a 200-acre property.

"Between the fires at Kempsey and the fires near Macksville, I’ve been bulldozing everywhere and anywhere.” Mr Donnelly spent Monday "dozing" side-by-side with local landowner Brad Edge to protect the perimeter of his property before conditions worsen. “I’m just here clearing up as much as we can,” Mr Edge said. “I’ve got eight-year-old twins. We got them out already. But if it gets really bad I’ll just get out. I don’t think it’s really that defensible.” Back in Dungay Creek Mrs Clarke is helping her granddaughter Alice pack her favourite things into the family car, just the cuddly essentials.