Retired Dubbo veterinarian Gordon Bentley remembers the NSW South Coast sky turning an unnatural red and then the afternoon becoming "as black as black" and knows he and wife Di were lucky to get away safe.
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The couple was spending time at their holiday home at North Narooma when the bushfire situation worsened on New Year's Eve.
"Luckily" Dr Bentley had filled up the car with fuel the previous day and they were able to escape the coast on January 2, and after a 12-hour trip arrived in Dubbo.
They are thankful to be home safe but their hearts go out to the community they've come to love.
"We feel deep sympathy for the people who have lost their houses around there," Dr Bentley said.
Their holiday house remains standing for the moment.
December 30 had been a "nice day" but "things changed just so quickly".
"On New Year's Eve, it went from a very red sky to, in the afternoon it was like midnight, it was as black as black," Dr Bentley said.
Early on December 31 the power was out and they walked to Narooma where the gravity of the situation became apparent.
"...we didn't have any radios that worked on batteries, we were shocked to find there were at least 2000 people there who had been evacuated from camping areas down south, and there was an emergency centre set up, and evacuation centre," he said.
Everything else was shut because of lack of power.
"...When you have no power, nothing for the petrol pumps to work on, the ATMs don't work, the mobile phones work for a limited time...," Dr Bentley said.
"There were two phone booths that worked in town... but the queues to get to those were about 70 metres long."
The couple left North Narooma at 5.30am, heading south and then across to Cooma.
"When we got up to Cooma, from Cooma to Canberra, there was a steady stream of traffic doing about 80km/h but you couldn't see any more than four cars in front for the smoke, it was just that thick," Dr Bentley said.
"So it went very black and it was very frightening, and we got out of there as soon as we could, and we were very lucky to do so, but we're good friends with the neighbours down there...
"It's only a holiday house to us, we could come back to Dubbo, but more of our neighbours just expected to lose their house that day.
"So that was very worrying from a distance, and I think we're still feeling the effects of watching the television and what happened at the time, a few days after getting home."
Dr Bentley praised the "amazing" local response from volunteer firefighters, Rotarians preparing meals for hundreds of people, and pharmacists and doctors on duty at the evacuation centre.
Back in Dubbo, he is advising friends and fellow Rotarians to always travel with some cash, a battery-operated AM-FM radio and a full tank of petrol, in case of emergency.