03:07

This morning I travelled up the Hawkesbury river and Mangrove Creek.

The smoke was incredibly thick and getting heavier with little wind yet.

The Three Mile fire earlier crossed a narrow part of the creek at Upper Mangrove, and the fire front is just behind some riverside properties where we find Geoff Newlyn, who’s come up to defend his 23 acres at Lower Mangrove.

“I’ve been here for two days, I came up by boat so I’d have a way out if the roads shut, but I think we’re through the worst of it,” he said. “It was looking pretty ugly yesterday evening then that wind blew up and it sounded like a freight train coming.

“We’ve had weeks to prepare. Anyone who tells you, ‘Oh I didn’t know this was going to happen’, it’s not true.

“We’re just smashing down stuff and clearing around structures.”

He points at properties across the river where houses which were previously hidden in the trees, just as the owners liked it in this remote bit of river country, are now visible with metres and metres of cleared land around them.

Had the fire hit the river here, where it can stretch a hundred metres or more across, firefighters might have been able to hold it off, Newlyn says.

But it didn’t and now it’s joined with the Wrights Creek fire which still threatens homes around Kulnura.

“They just can’t put it out because it’s on such a big fire front,” Newlyn suggests. “Trying to get access to the bush is impossible … and this one will backfill [around here].

“But we’re not worried at the moment because it’s so slow burning. We sort of want it. It’s going to come, so it’s better now while you’ve got a chance of controlling it … so this is actually quite a good scenario.”