By Kate Aubusson
A schoolteacher has captured the terrifying moments an unstoppable bushfire threatened to engulf her family's property in Bilpin, north-west of Sydney.
Ella Hungerford Sheaves filmed the rising flames through the double-glazed picture window at the front of the wooden house in which her mother, Felicity Sheaves and her mother's partner Ian Muir, had lived for decades.
"Oh my god," Ms Hungerford Sheaves says as the fire advances towards them, electric pink flames licking the trees.
"We've got to get up the other end of the house," she says, turning and running through a hallway still filming, another wall of flames visible through the side door and window. "It's coming."
The dramatic footage that Ms Hungerford Sheaves posted under the name Ella Hush, was shot on the evening of Saturday, December 21, at the home on Bells Line of Road.
Embers from backburning operations around the town between Mount Wilson and Mountain Lagoon had blown past the containment area and into the valley.
A still from the footage shot at the Bilpin property on Saturday.Credit: Ella Hungerford Shreaves
Ms Hungerford Sheaves and her husband had taken time off work to help her mother and Mr Muir and a family friend defend the home as the bushfire climbed the gully to the property. They succeeded thanks to their meticulous preparation.
The ordeal was still terrifying, Ms Hungerford Sheaves said.
"You can hear I'm panicky as I was running," she told The Sydney Morning Herald. "That front room was so hot, we just ran out of there."
"We were hosing spot fires when we saw the fire front coming, so everyone yelled to get inside," she said. "It only took about 15 minutes for it to close in all around us."
Ella Hungerford Shreaves and her husband Gabor outside her mother and Mr Muir's house after the fire front passed. Credit: Ella Hungerford Shreaves
The sound of an explosion was a neighbour's fuel tank blowing out its base under the pressure of evaporating diesel.
The main power stayed on longer than they had expected, running the sprinklers on the roof as the fire front passed over them.
Mr Muir said it was the sprinklers - capable of sprayed water to eight metres - that ultimately saved the home.
"The southerly wind combined with the fire wind blew the water from the sprinklers back onto the walls and windows so the fire thankfully wet the house for us," Mr Muir said.
Mr Muir, a builder, had fitted them himself, along with myriad fire defence materials and strategies over the years since he bought the house in Richmond in 1983 and carted it up to where it now stands.
The power went out when the fire reached the top of the driveway. Once the front had passed, they ran back outside, switched on the generator and picked up their hoses.
"I was concerned but I wasn't terrified," Mr Muir said of the moments captured in the video.
"But I thought, 'Well, I reckon we can handle it,' " he said. "You have to be prepared. Having a plan is all important."
The RFS had been at the property earlier in the day, but couldn't get back to it once fire raced up the gully.
"It was all right the RFS not being there," Mr Muir said. "They knew how prepared we were and they had better things to do … we feel really sorry for all the people who lost so much."
The house survived within an oasis rimmed by scorched trees along the boundary fence, charred bush and paddock.
"We have a lovely little paradise of green in among the black and decimation," Ms Hungerford Sheaves said.
"We are very, very lucky. You can look at certain parts of the garden and pretend it didn't happen, but you turn around and it's really upsetting to see how much is lost ... all the plants and animals," she said.
It was the second time in a week she and her mother had helped defend the homes of their loved ones.
Her father, Eddy Hungerford, lost his orchard a few days earlier as the fire surrounded his place, and her mother helped her grandfather protect his property.
"These properties have been their life's work and so it wasn't a choice to stay and defend them, having grown up in the bush and spent a lot of time prepared for the bushfires and knowing they will come. But this was certainly the worst we have seen," she said.