It's too late to leave for residents of a rural village south of Canberra with a 4600-hectare bushfire burning at emergency level south of the capital.
Residents in Canberra's southern suburbs of Banks, Conder, Gordon and Calwell were told to activate their bushfire survival plans but there was no immediate threat.Caloola Farm manager Ralph Hurst-Meyers was desperately trying to convince three men still on the farm near the blaze to leave as they planned to defend the property.
"It just looks like a dragon, it's unbelievable. It's like a mushroom cloud with a red eye," Mr Hurst-Meyers told AAP on Tuesday. He said firefighters had told him the farm would become a trap if the fire reached there and said it was too dangerous to defend it. Mr Hurst-Meyers said he had been in Canberra for the catastrophic 2003 bushfire and he'd learned it wasn't worth holding your ground.View of Orroral Valley fire from our verandah tonight.
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