In the swathe of land to the east of Canberra where the fire has swept through, local people notice a strange phenomenon: swarms of flies.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The birds notice them, too - and they eat them. It's a bonus of bush fires.
The fire prompts insects of all types to rise, and the wonder is that birds feast on the windfall (or perhaps wind-rise).
"There's always someone who benefits from a disaster," is the way Andy Taylor in Bombay puts it as he crosses the charred earth around his house swatting away far more flies than usual.
He said birds seemed to gather and wait for the insects.
When fire surrounded his property, he also noticed kangaroos emerge from thick bush.
But he says that they were often singed. Because of the sporadic nature of the fire, the terrified animals had searched and searched for safe ways out until none was left except going through flame.
He is an expert on conservation and is now waiting to see which types of plant grow back.
There are indigenous species which, if not quite thriving on fire ravaged landscapes, know how to cope with it. They reappear after bushfires but in this case there hasn't been fire for many years in his area so he hopes that some native plants he hasn't seen in his lifetime in the area may reappear.
Some of the firies have noticed the way living nature and raw fire interact, particularly the new abundance - over-abundance as far as humans are concerned - of flies is concerned.
READ MORE:
"The smoke pushes them up out of the grass and bushes and the birds wait for them to eat them," said volunteer firefighter Richard Thorek.
He said it was the same with rabbits and mice. "You see hawks and eagles hanging around to pick them off," he said.
He was working near a line of pines through which the fire was sweeping - but leaving some of the trees barely touched. Every so often a single pine would go up like a candle doused in petrol but others around it were barely ignited.
That, he said, was because the fire was sweeping through undergrowth but live trees above were harder to ignite. The odd dead or dying tree was much better tinder so it would go up in spectacular but fearsome flame, filling the air with noxious smoke as fire trucks circled.
This fire started about a week ago but took a lot longer than most to come to be tackled effectively.
It began in remote and inaccessible terrain, said Mr Thorek, and that meant that it built up size and ferocity before it threatened people and property. It has meant it's been harder to bring under control.
Many said that the fires seemed to mark a new pattern of weather in the area. They couldn't remember fires this early.
Apart from birds benefiting from new bush tucker, others may also gain. Some in Braidwood said there were now ducks in the park and they hadn't seen them there before.