It has been almost 18 months since a raging fire ripped through more than 3000 hectares of land and destroyed 11 homes in Carwoola.
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But, more than 531 days on, landowners like Geoffrey Bartram are still paying the price from the Carwoola bushfire.
The date, February 17, 2017, remains raw with locals, including Mr Bartram who has lived at the property for more than 18 years and had "never seen anything like it".
Mr Bartram has spent tens of thousands of dollars to cut down and chip pine trees that were destroyed by the fire.
"The bush fire came across the back of us, up high, the wind was blowing in that direction so I thought we were safe - I thought it was going to burn above us and not come down and then suddenly it turned and came down and at that time I thought, maybe my thongs and garden hose wasn't enough so I evacuated," Mr Bartram said.
"When we left, police wouldn't let us through of course and there were signs that houses had been lost and all that sort of stuff and then we came up just on dark and I could see that my house wasn't alight but all my paddocks and trees were.
"The fire came within 20 metres of our house on all sides, so all this was burnt."
Mr Bartram said about 110 trees were damaged by the fire, most weren't salvageable and needed to be removed as there was a threat they would fall onto the road.
"The estimate that we were told was there was about 110 tonnes of wood, so you can imagine what 110 tones of trees laying on the ground would have been like," he said.
"We had to chip it, if it wasn't chipped, it would have been a nightmare."
Specialised Arbor arborist Russell Snedden was called in to cut and chip the 35-metre-tall pine trees.
"The trees were beyond repair, if they weren't we would focus on the repair and retention of the trees if it was possible, but in this case there was catastrophic damage," Mr Snedden said.
"With any trees, in particular the Radiata pine, if it was dead there's the likelihood it would fall so they'll topple over with the wind."
Mr Snedden said it took six days to dismount 85 trees that were beyond any sort of retention and remove them from site. He said a number of other residents were waiting to have the same done to their property.
The wood chips won't go to waste, Mr Bartram said.
"What we're going to do is once the log is cut to ground level, I'll spread the chip over the logs and hopefully that will enable the log to decompose," he said.
"I'm part of the scarlet robin project, a project in our area to plant habitat for the scarlet robin ... pine trees of course, nothing lives in them, so we're going to replant with native vegetation for scarlet robins."
