Across the valleys in the Sutton and Mulligans Flat region on Thursday, firefighters mopped up what little was left of a surprise grassfire that tore through over 500 hectares on Wednesday before being stopped by firefighter crews and six water bombers.
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It had come close to a lot of homes along Tallangandra Lane, the scorched earth marking a path almost to the door for some, the fire moving so quickly many hadn't time to evacuate.
Anne Scott was watching the tennis with her husband, Chris, when she noticed the sky turn a funny colour and when the pair came outside to look, the fire was roaring up the hill towards their home of 25 years.
"I was on the west side with a hose," Ms Scott said, Chris went to the south side of the property and used a tarpaulin sheet to beat out spot fires lighting up the grass on the driveway.
Ms Scott was running the hose through a pump for fifteen minutes before the power cut out, reducing the flow to a trickle but by then firefighters and water bombers had come to save the home.
Neither Anne or Chris had eaten or slept. Through the night, Ms Scott had sat in a lawn chair with the trickling hose until 2am, wrapped in a blanket for the cold, putting out embers when they popped up as the fire burned bushland just metres across the road from where she sat.
On Thursday morning Chris was down in the paddocks with vets to put down 30 of their injured sheep, while Ms Scott walked through the pines along their property with a water bucket, putting out small embers in the soil.
"On the whole I reckon we were able to save a lot," she said, they still had their horse, the ram and one of the alpacas.
She praised the hard work of the firefighters and water bombers pilots, and the generosity of her neighbours as she walked with the bucket past the fence, where across the road the land resembled a moonscape.
Paul Davis, his two boys and his wife were further east of Ms Scott and all their paddocks were gone. They'd didn't have time to leave, the fire, never more than chest height by most descriptions, had come down the valley so fast.
"We were saved by the helicopter," Mr Davis said, the bomber dumping water metres from the walls of his home.
Back south across the valley, Virginia Zardo and her family had a relatively easier night.
Michael, her eldest son, had been down by the front of the property when the fire started approaching.
"Scary, very scary. I was down at the pines," Mr Zardo said, as the fire moved across the other side of the road, he and his father, Nick, primed the pump for the firefighters.
Ms Zardo had been driving up from Queanbeyan, when her husband, minutes ahead of her, called her and said "Do you realise what you're driving into?" She'd heard nothing on the radio and saw the smoke rising over the hill.
Nick got up on a ladder, checking the gutters for leaf litter, while Virginia hosed down the walls.
"I didn't feel so threatened because of the wind direction," Ms Zardo said. "There's no use panicking."
The cows hadn't either, Ms Zardo said they had been close to the fire as it burned across the road, but still lay in the paddock before slowly coming towards the property.
The helicopters used the Zardo's two dams and she, like so many others in the region, praised the efforts of the crews.
"I just sort of take my hat off to those pilots," Ms Zardo said.
Smoke still floated over the valley as Nick, Michael and family friends helped move and contain burning hay bales in paddocks across the road from their home. But the real danger was over.
The pile created a smoke column only visible once you passed over a crest from the east, where the bush stained pink from flame retardant marked the edge of the moonscape.
