With a raging bushfire bearing down and the RFS facing a massive fight to defend Tingha, Armidale's mayor, Simon Murray, packed his overnight gear and made the trip to the town.
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He went for a number of reasons, but the fact he belonged to his local RFS brigade, which led him right into the middle of the fight was only one.
In his office at the Armidale Regional Council, Cr Murray had just received unofficial word that Toppers Wines may have been saved, and was relieved. He thought it was one of the nicest wineries you could go to, with some of the nicest wines you could get.
He was cheerful, but his eyes were bloodshot, probably from the smoke and lack of sleep in equal proportions, and he looked like hell.
"I went there for a couple of reasons. All requests had to go through the centre at Glen Innes, but if they're pressured to ask for more resources, being the head of council I could facilitate more things," he said.
"I went over there for that, but also to see the people and let them know that - they're people I know. They're friends of mine.
"It was a bit of a private thing as well. Going across there to see they were OK. I saw quite a few people I knew and caught up with them."
As the fire front approached, however, his roles began to overlap and his duties with the RFS began to increase.
"On the Tuesday evening, I was fortunate to meet a young family there who were on a farm to the south, before the fire front really hit them," he said.
"As the young woman said, they went through each bedroom just looking and saying, 'What's essential, what's not?' They got the kids out.
"If you had young kids out in the bush like that, you might as well be saying 'No, just let's go.'."
Cr Murray managed to catch up with ex-Guyra Shire Councillor Audrey McArdle, on Wednesday afternoon and said they had decided not to evacuate.
They do a lot of water bombing with choppers.
- Simon Murray
"About 2pm - 3pm was when it was really bad at Tingha. Just north of the MPS on the western side, there were flames just roaring through there. That's where it just kept jumping straight across. It was heading east," Cr Murray said.
"We were refilling with water behind the MPS and a chopper was going over the top of us heading up, and the next minute he's back. So, you couldn't see exactly where he was dropping it. A kilometre visibility would be all [we had]."
"There were a few tight moments when we were trying to protect houses from oncoming flames, but the flames - you would have to be running to keep in front of them."
He said with one hose and little fires breaking out all around the fire fighters, it came down to everyone watching out for their crew.
"You're trying to tell people to be very careful because the fire could be coming up behind you if you're focusing on another direction," Cr Murray said.
"We had a lot of instances of grabbing the hose and giving it a good pull to get the person on the other end to look around.
"We got a call to the car wreckers where I had left my council vehicle. So, I thought, 'Ah, better get it out'. When we went around the fire had got into some of the vehicles and a big, old bus was burning and we thought it was going to be very toxic."
That was a fear of mine.
- Simon Murray
Cr Murray said he believed noise from the exploding fuel tanks was heard all afternoon. He said he was relieved the fire did not get into the main street of the town itself.
"There are some old, wooden buildings there, but there were just so many fire trucks about, and a lot of them were stopping to get something to drink," he said.
"So, if something did happen - and Fire and Rescue were there with quite a number of trucks."
Cr Murray thought RFS volunteers did it to support others and he saw nothing extraordinary in what he did personally over the couple of days, but readily agreed all the emergency services had done an outstanding job.
"I operated a pump. I think I did that all right," he joked.
"The difficulty is, the team I'm with, we're three old blokes. Getting towards the end, you know, six or seven o'clock in the evening it was just climbing in and out of the truck. The age factor was there, which is common across volunteering.
"There were younger people there too, and they would have been pretty sore, but just not in our group."
Cr Murray was not certain at the time of writing if a house owned by him near Gilgai was still standing. The best information he had was that flames were seen in that vicinity by a neighbour.