Far from bringing relief to North Coast bushfires, now burning into their third week, storms on Tuesday night delivered miserly moisture while lightning strikes ignited more country.
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The Bees Nest complex in the Upper Clarence north of Ebor now covers 100,000 hectares. Ignition along multiple fronts near Drake has blackened more than 62,000ha.
At Hernani and Marengo, where the Bees Nest fire roared out of national park on September 6, graziers are counting the cost and looking to authorities for answers.
Manager of Marengo Pastoral, Mick Kelsall, said he spotted the Bees Nest fire four days before it roared out of the Guy Fawkes gorge and began preparation immediately, brushing up fire trails, moving cattle and trucking a bulldozer from Tamworth to help scrape breaks.
However, he was surprised at the lack of local knowledge expressed by visiting fire crews who fought the blazes valiantly but showed a poor understanding of local geography.
"They knew that Friday was coming but they didn't do enough preparation to get a handle on the situation on this side of the gorge," he said.
Ebor beef producer Rob Perkins was spared the effects of fire but spent plenty of time fighting them. He said he was surprised to find 10 volunteer brigades already on hand at Hernani when the Bees Nest fire lipped the plateau on the Friday afternoon.
"A lot of those brigades were from Sydney and it would have taken them a day to get up here so someone knew what was going to happen," he said.
"People like to throw rocks at National Parks when something like this happens but the weather conditions on that day were extreme."
Mr Perkins said in his 20 years on the property there had been three fires follow a similar path but none of them as large as this one.
East of Glen Inness the alternative Wytaliba community has spent the week on high alert, as fires in the Brother State Forest claim nearly 20,000ha
Glen Innes Severn Council mayor, a Wytaliba resident since 1980, said well-trained second generation alternative community members, creating the youngest fire brigade in the region, had worked well to protect homes and properties in the forested community.
Conditions in the Mann River Valley, like everywhere on the North Coast, remain extreme with trees shedding leaves and contributing to ground litter while adding fuel to fires.
Like Drake, the residents of Wytaliba were now re-considering how they will live in the bush, and what materials they will use in construction.
"People are thinking more seriously about what they will build with," Mayor Sparks said.
