It was a day of unlikely and emotional contrasts.
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A green plastic-coated washing line left standing on a block where an entire home was gone.
Lush green grass coating the landscape as a mountainside of dead zones and black tree trunks stood watch.
A bloke from the tip - in bare feet no less - with a passion for restoring antique clocks.
There were tears of joy and more than a little nostalgia as a very special story unfolded on a rural block at Bemboka on the weekend.
An antique clock, damaged in the New Year's Eve bushfires and tossed out in the cleanup of Diana and Graham Armstrong's completely destroyed home, has been restored and gifted back to the couple.
Barry McAlister works at the Central Waste Facility at Wolumla supervising the unloading of trucks working on the bushfire cleanup and the burial of fire waste.
When a truck tipped out a load that contained an upright grand piano he thought it was worth a closer look and discovered the old clock inside.
Maybe the clock fell inside the piano as it burnt, perhaps it ended up there during the debris loading - no-one could really say.
What Barry could tell was that it had seen much better days.
"I grabbed it and put it aside for a few days before thinking I could have a go at restoring it," he said on Saturday.
"Mechanically it was pretty bad, all deformed and some parts were melted.
"The worst was the case itself. I had to make up patches as it's very difficult to veneer something when there's nothing to veneer on! One part was burnt so badly there was a hole you could fit a golf ball through."
However, other than the external veneer, a cog that controls the number of chimes and a shaft that controls the hands, Barry was able to re-tool and restore everything else back to working order - it even still has the original wind-up key.
"The movement is German, it's basic but unbelievably accurate.
"I spent probably over 100 hours on it. I really enjoyed doing it.
"It'll go for another 100 years now!"
Barry said the mantelpiece clock was from around the turn of the century, 1890-1900, and of a style that was typically a wedding present.
He has restored other similar clocks in his days, saying newspapers once published wedding present lists, helpful for families when matching up a date.
Diana said the clock was her grandmother's, her family among the original pioneers of the Bemboka area.
"I can't bear being away from here," she said of her love for Bemboka.
"I was away at boarding school from seven-and-a-half to 15-and-a-half and I decided never to leave again."
While the sight of her beloved family property with only a Besser block retaining wall - and the clothesline - remaining brings a tear to the eye, so did the return of such a sentimental family heirloom.
"It's so lovely to hear there are good people around," she said, giving Barry a big hug and peck on the cheek.
The story of how Barry found Diana is also worth telling.
After fishing the clock from the burnt debris being dumped at the Wolumla tip, Barry said one of his crew recognised the piano from the previous night's news coverage.
It just so happened that the Armstrongs' home had featured in the news coverage of the cleanup operations. From there Barry was able to determine which truck had worked that particular load and back tracked it to the specific property.
He called in some helpers in the district, including Mick Keys, who happened to know his neighbours Graham and Diana quite well.
As a result, Saturday's reunion of the clock with its owners was an overwhelming experience for everyone involved.