And in another amazing story of survival, Tim Barber has told how he and family members and friends trekked through police lines to search for his mother's remains, only to find her alive, in a 1sqm cavity under the stairs where she had been trapped for six hours.

The Cartas, caught in the belly of the raging Kinglake inferno, were each consumed by terror when they realised they had become separated in the embers, smoke and flames.

Just moments earlier they had fled their home as their neighbours' properties burned, Bill on a motorbike and Sherrill with their two dogs in a car.

They were forced to flee on Saturday afternoon, just minutes after arriving home from nearby Lilydale.

But in those minutes, the imminent threat they faced became apparent and the road on which they had travelled impassable.

As they desperately struggled to find a safe route out, a curtain of smoke and haze separated them.

Amid the chaos and the terror, they found themselves alone, each fearing the other had perished.

''The fire was so thick you couldn't see 10 feet in front of you. So we got separated, even though we were following each other,'' Bill said from hospital yesterday.

Both had been forced to leave their vehicles. Bill abandoned his motorbike and took shelter in a four-wheel-drive. Sherrill's car became bogged, forcing her to dash towards town.

''It was like a snowstorm of red embers and I was almost ... I felt like I was playing hopscotch at one stage to miss them all,'' she said as a nurse in The Alfred hospital checked her pulse.

''The wind was really loud and the flames really hot and you don't realise how hot and shocked you are until you get to safety I think.''

After the fire front swept past, Bill was able to see his wife's car and realised it was empty. She had managed to get out. There was a chance, just a chance, that she was safe.

Indeed she was. She had fled and managed to evade the flames, and was eventually picked up by a driver who took her to the local Country Fire Authority station.

But while she had survived, she was filled with terror that her husband had not.