On Facebook he has just posted the photo above, saying the fire has "woken up" after being fairly benign today.

Yesterday, the area was getting westerly wind gusts of up to 100kph, the kind of horror scenario that people expected would lead to the fire racing eastwards towards Darkwood and Thora.

But instead, Mark says, a unique feature of the geography seems to have played in our favour.

"The escarpment is aligned slightly off east-west," he said. "And this is the steepest and deepest section of The Great Escarpment.

"Because the winds was due westerly, it seems as though a giant back eddy along the escarpment has prevented the fires from spreading to the east as we'd expected and instead pushed it mostly towards the west."

With the help of friends, Mark has been prepping his property for fire if it comes, mowing, raking and leaf-blowing to clear space around his house, and installing a sprinkler system on his roof.

But he's also hoping extensive patches of Antarctic Beech, "one of the most fire retardant of all our vegetative communities", standing between his place and the fire 12km away will serve to either stop or reduce its intensity if it comes towards him.

The latest bulletin from RFS Mid North Coast, issued today at 3pm, said that "despite strong winds on December 2, the fire has remained within the proposed natural containment lines".

The RFS said the fire is expected to continue to grow to the containment lines over the next several days to cover around 2500 hectares.

The advice for people living in the areas of Bishops Creek, Darkwood and Thora is to prepare their properties for bushfire if they have not already done so.