Currowan used to mean the name of the Shepheard family's farm and the State Forest west of the beautiful Clyde River.
It has come to mean the ravenous bushfire that has chewed up and spat out vast tracts of land from Batemans Bay to north of Nowra since November 26.
Jenny and York Shepheard have thanked Forestry Corporation crews for helping them a month ago to save the River Road property they share with children, grandchildren, Arabian horses and cattle.
However, they remain in an epic battle to save their second farm at Paradise, on the other side of the Kings Highway.
The original Currowan blaze began west of the Clyde River on a Tuesday and by the Sunday it had jumped the river. A day later it had burned out East Lynne and was pushing to the coast.
Then its ferocious younger sibling was born. Fire broke across the Kings Highway and became the Clyde Mountain Fire, which, on New Year's Eve, burned through Mogo and Batemans Bay coastal villages leaving a trail of devastation in its wake.
When the fire first jumped the highway, the family knew they would have a fight on their hands to save Paradise. They moved 150 cattle into a centre paddock and got feed.
When it came back in the dying days of December, they were ready.
"Wow! What a nightmare," Mrs Shepheard told Australian Community Media.
Their first task was to ensure their drought-stricken cattle had feed.
"We got up early on the Monday to get hay as we knew we may not get any for a few days," she said.
They were back home by 9am for a meeting with forestry authorities.
"They wanted us to open the track from our paddock up to Bolaro Mountain Fire Trail," Mrs Shepheard said.
"We went 100 metres on the bulldozer and blew a seal; there was oil everywhere."
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With a fire coming, they worked until 4pm to fix it and wash the flammable oil from it.
They dozed the track and went back for a quick shower.
The bushfire wasn't interested in anyone's personal hygiene and they were soon back in the paddocks with three water firefighting units.
It was to be a long night, as the images in Mrs Shepheard's gallery show.
Not everything could be saved; a structure was lost but they again prevailed.
They knew all about long nights from trying to save their home farm in the first week of the Currowan fire.
"Forestry was fantastic," Mrs Shepheard said.
"I really want to thank them. They came in with three units and skidder and a bulldozer."
Two forestry firefighters were in each unit, but Mrs Shepheard only got the names of two: John and Katie.
The family also feared for neighbours.
"Next door only had a son there to fight the fire and he wasn't well equipped," Mrs Shepheard said.
"We asked [Forestry] to send one of the units up to him. The skidder and the bulldozer went between the four houses in the valley.
"My daughter left with the kids and her husband stayed and fought with us.
"I had a leaf blower, a really strong leaf blower, blowing back grass fires coming up to the house.
"My daughter-in-law was spraying the house down. We just worked solidly and saved everything."
Without Forestry's effort, the family believes "something or someone" would have been lost.
"It was so dry and there was so much fuel," Mrs Shepheard said.
"My son and husband were buzzing around in utes, stopping the bigger flames as they came across the creek."
Forestry defended them from spot fires in the adjoining forest and from ember attack.
The leaf blower came into its own again when anything ignited in their well-grazed paddocks.
"[If] it's not a wall of flame, blowers are very good at blowing that back onto itself and putting it out," she said.
"If it got a bit overwhelming, one of the boys in the ute just raced up and doused it.
"We were all constantly in contact with each other and knew where each other was."
By 10pm, things had settled but "the whole valley was just an orange glow 360 degrees around us".
"They took it in two-hour shifts driving around with the spray unit constantly checking and putting out spot fires, while the others got a bit of sleep, then the next one would take a shift," Mrs Shepheard said.
The family has had no landline since December 2 and have been running on generator power.
The couple's sons rallied to the cause, flying in from far afield knowing the threat was not over.
Now she is ready to take on the government.
"We are primary producers and the drought's killing us; the government - I'd like to give them a good kick up the arse - because all this talk about money and how they're helping farmers, they're doing nothing," she said.
"It's costing us thousands and thousands of dollars every week trying to keep the cattle alive. I've spent weeks and weeks on the computer going through all the garbage you've got to go through to try to get emergency money."
She is proud of her Arabian horses.
"They were so clever when the fire came, there was no panicking," she said.
"If the fire started coming that way, they'd just walk around and go somewhere else.
"We opened gates to other paddocks and they went around to the west side, the last place the fire would get to.
"I can't say the same thing for the cattle. They came over to the east side where we were fighting the fire and a couple of them even went into the bush. I don't know how they didn't get cooked. None of them have died.
"Buy a Bale gave us enough hay for our animals to keep us going."
