Stephen Dailey spent all of Wednesday afternoon watching the fire creep closer to his hilltop home. But when a fireball erupted, he decided it might be time to move.
Mr Dailey and his wife are now in a cottage a short stroll from where their central Queensland home stood before it was consumed by flames.
"I was sitting out there watching it all afternoon because you could see it out there, you could see the smoke," he told AAP, near the ruins of his home at Kabra, near Rockhampton.
"The wind was coming from the south, then it was going north, then it'd go south and back north, so I thought 'I'll hook a few things up."
He hooked up his boat and caravan and drove them a few hundred metres down the hill to his daughter's place from where he watched the fire claim his house.
"I won't say a fireball, but it was pretty close to a fireball coming at me," he said.
"We were lucky to get out."
The family home with wraparound verandahs and unrivalled views of the valley is now a pile of burnt metal, crumbled terracotta pots and reminders of what lay before.
"We used to walk out in the night and you could see all of Rockhampton," he said.
Mr Dailey and his wife Fiona count themselves as fortunate.
"No one died," he said.
Down the road on the Capricorn Highway, publican Joe Lidster is serving up beers. She has a generator parked out the back of the Kabra Hotel.
Ms Lidster fled when the flames got too close but got stuck in traffic, so went back to Kabra and spent the night sipping beer in a friend's pool while watching the fire come through.
"I was assured when I left that there was no way they'd let the pub burn down," she told AAP on Thursday.
"I was more than confident in everyone's ability to keep the old girl safe.
"People get jobs here, the deals that are struck at the bar, the women that they take home, we can tell some stories.
"It's one of those pubs that's for everyone.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk spoke to journalists outside the pub but did not step inside, unlike the locals who stopped to check Ms Lidster was alright.
Not long after Ms Palaszczuk left, residents were told to leave because the fire was heading their way once again.
The premier is touring the fire damaged region of the state on Thursday, a day after almost 10,000 people were evacuated due to fire threats, including 8,000 from Gracemere, 6km from Kabra.
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