We first saw the dark clouds billowing from the wilderness to our north late Monday afternoon. Incredible. Just a few days earlier, it had been damp and unseasonably cool, and we were congratulating ourselves on the prospect of a pleasant summer without the usual worries about fire.

We checked the fire plan on our fridge, to kick-start us into action. You forget how long it takes to prepare — packing away the outdoor furniture and everything else that suddenly looks like potential fuel, finding all the buckets and anything else that might hold water, checking that the water pump is working, loading the tank onto the trailer, digging out the first aid kit, the long-sleeved cotton shirts and other protective gear.

We can’t find both pairs of goggles, and think of the farmer we met after fire tore through his place near Junee on News Year’s Day, 2006. When he took off his goggles briefly in the fire truck cabin, hot ash and dust blasted his eyes, leaving him without enough sight to help his wife and sons defend their home.

I also remember another farmer, who told us how it’s the little things you might not think of that can cause problems with fires spotting after the main blaze passes. The cobwebs trailing under our veranda will have to go. Yet again, I curse myself for planting a luxuriant hedge of rosemary so close to our veranda. It has grown so beautifully, I have not had the heart to yank it out, not even when I learnt in Junee of how well its oils feed a fire.

At first, the reports from the rural fire service were reassuring. But hot westerlies soon transformed the picture. From our home atop a hill, with sweeping views over Morton National Park, we have watched great plumes of smoke spread right across the horizon.

The update from the NSW Rural Fire Service last night said that more than 130 firefighters and support personnel, backed by 18 aircraft, have been working on the blaze, which has burnt more than 700 ha of bush. We have watched the choppers, looking like dragonflies from our distance, dipping bravely in and out of the smoke.

We have been grateful that the winds have kept blowing the fire and the smoke east, but guiltily grateful because we know this means they are blowing towards someone else. We are reminded to be careful what you wish for when the fireys came by late yesterday afternoon to tell us the fire has spotted to our south. We rethink our wishes for a strong southerly.

Our elderly neighbour, Win, who has survived bigger blazes than this and is our font of knowledge about many things, comes by, and tells us that the only hope for putting out the fire is if the promised southerly change eventuates and brings some solid rain.

Our last brush with bushfire was seven years ago when living in the Royal National Park south of Sydney. A neighbour woke us at 1.30am on Boxing Day to tell us to pack the car because fire was on the way. Photo albums went into our suitcases.

This time, there are no plans for evacuation. We now live in a more remote place, where the only real option is to bunker down. Now, saving the photo albums is about the last thing on my mind. Instead, I am worried about the pig — if the fire approaches, will we be able persuade Petal into the old pise house to shelter?

I am really not in the mood for jokes about roast pork, and am profoundly grateful when the firey (with the appropriate surname of Wise) takes my pig concerns seriously. I gush gratefully at him. Not just on Petal’s behalf, but also for my own cowardice. I cannot even begin to imagine why or how people volunteer to go fighting fires and risking their lives on behalf of strangers. Of such mettle I am not made.

At times like this, you rely on the kindness of neighbours and strangers — and the attentions of the media. I was irrationally angry when a radio report described the fire as being on “the south coast”. A small geographical glitch perhaps, but it means more than that to us on the Southern Highlands. It is strangely cheering to finally see our fire hit the national television news. Now people will know. Now the politicians will care, and there will be resources. So this is one of the reasons why the media matter in a crisis.

Sometime after 9pm last night, we sat on the grass outside and watched the mesmerising orange glow spanning our horizon. The fire is still several kilometres away, but has been edging closer, and the fireys have begun bulldozing a fire trail at the end of our road.

The worst thing about the watching and waiting is the emotional yo-yoing. One moment, the winds settle, the smoke is less threatening and we are encouraged. Half an hour later, there are new and even more vigorous mushrooming clouds, and the fire is climbing another ridge towards us.

We have only had a small inkling of the force burning before us, but even that has left us emotionally and physically exhausted. Heaven only knows what it’s like for those who’ve been so much closer to the fury.

This morning we woke to see cool mist where yesterday was smoke. The promised change has arrived. But the buckets won’t be emptied just yet. We know how quickly a change comes.