January 1858 saw "calamitous" fires, with the burning of settler's crops, the perishing of every morsel of feed for their horses and cattle, and the destruction to all kinds of property.

In 1909 "the most destructive bushfire ever experienced in this district" swept from the Cooradigbee to the Murrumbidgee, enveloping the town in smoke.

But it was the fires of January 1939 that merited the headline "Death and Destruction: 110,000 acres of country burnt."

"The fact that no lives were lost is a miracle, but the suffering inflicted on dumb animals, sheep, cattle, horses and the wild animals of the bush, is pitiful to behold.

"In timber country where sheep were trapped against fences and roasted alive, scenes were witnessed which are too ghastly to describe."

With fences burnt, livestock were free to roam without even yards left to sort them out and no feed to sustain them.

The Yass Tribune reported on the loss of homesteads and woolsheds and the courage of firefighters often armed with not much more than shovels, bags and beaters and ingenuity.

Mr Thatcher of Cavan mustered 1,100 sheep into a two-acre paddock round his home and set the sheep milling round until the paddock was a dust heap.

When sparks fell, he drove the sheep over them, and the sheep trampled them out.

He saved the sheep and his home, but the property was burnt out.

Women also dealt with the catastrophe of fire.

Mrs Ledger, Mrs Buckmaster and Mrs Abbey survived their gruelling experience by wetting towels in the dam and placing them round their heads.

At Narrengullen, the women stood behind a stack of bricks for the new homestead with a hose playing on them.

In town, Mrs Curll and Mrs Dabbs manned a round-the-clock food production line at the Church of England parish hall, cutting 100 dozen loaves of bread into sandwiches wrapped in grease proof paper and covered with a wet cloth.

Nothing quite tops the experience of Mrs Ray Dunn of Bookham, who in January 1940, gave birth two months prematurely, in a tin shed surrounded by bushfire, while the men tried to beat back the flames outside.

A young nursing sister Miss Ann Martin was fetched by Mr Dunn, who had been driven by Walter Gervens through falling trees, thick smoke and incredible heat in time to deliver the baby boy.

Next day, with telephone lines down, she caught a lift into Yass and summoned the ambulance.

Mr Donald Ross, the ambulance driver, braved the dangerous road and thick smoke to bring mother, and baby wrapped in a singlet and cradled in a suitcase, to Devonia hospital.