He described the situation as desperate and talked of the eerie moments when smoke blocked the sun turning day into night.

Mr Scott-Young is one of 20 Fire and Rescue NSW firefighters who were welcomed back to Port Macquarie with applause at the airport on Monday afternoon (January 6).

The exhausted crew was transported by a Royal Australian Air Force C-130 Hercules cargo plane.

"It was five days of deployment at Sussex Inlet, Bega and Eden. The last night we were very lucky to save the township of Eden," he said.

"The people on the ground were nervous and in Bega there was 2500 people in the evacuation centre. They were getting rained on by embers for probably about 12 hours.

"By 4pm it was absolutely pitch dark like it was midnight. I'm sure there were many people wondering if the world was going to end. We had a 20 hour pitch black night and didn't get light until lunchtime yesterday (Sunday)."

Mr Scott-Young said crews worked through the day and night with other Fire and Rescue brigades, NSW Rural Fire Service crews (RFS) and National Parks teams.

"We worked tirelessly with the RFS in Bega and Eden, the local people were just fantastic," he said.

"The longest day we did was 22 and half hours, that was a bit draining. At one stage we had three hours rest and went out for another day.

"The boss was looking after us and we had some relief crews come down. Some shifts were four hours on and four hours off."

Reassuring landowners of their property's status in the south-west and providing advice to residents to stay or leave were among the defining moments that will stick with Mr Scott-Young.

"I thought there was so much property there that was in danger that we would find it hard to defend. The area is so dry that you don't really have a hope of stopping a fire in some places," he said.

"A lot of the grassland near Bega, about 50kms is completely black. There's cattle in the corner of paddocks which have no feed, there are flocks of sheep who have ten square metres of grass under them."

Mr Scott-Young said the support of family, hometown residents and well-wishers is keeping spirits high.

"It means a lot to us and keeps you going. The support from home and the local towns keeps you going and makes you feel you've achieved something," he said.

"I was in the Sydney fires of 1994. It surrounded Sydney but these fires now are statewide and it's far worse.

"We need some rain and we need a lot of it."

The returning firefighters were relieved by other contingent of Mid North Coast firefighters who left for the South Coast on January 5.

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