Macarthur CFA captain Tom Fleetwood, known to friends as Rick, was among two strike teams in the UNESCO World Heritage Budj Bim National Park on Thursday.

He said his family had volunteered for the brigade for 50 years, and no one could recall a fire ever entering the crater of the site, also known as Mount Eccles.

"We have seen fire in the bush itself, but certainly not in that area," Mr Fleetwood said.

The fire burned mostly in inaccessible terrain and firefighters were posted at areas where they could "black out" embers, stopping it from reaching unburnt country.

Aircraft were expected to drop water on the unreachable areas in the crater.

Mr Fleetwood said none of the park's amenities were burned on Thursday morning, including the tourist information area and Lake Surprise's boardwalk.

"With the help of (forest firefighters), we will hopefully knock it on the head," he said of Thursday's efforts.

Peter Nield, the second lieutenant at the Macarthur brigade, fought the blaze until 5am on Thursday morning to protect properties overnight as the fire pushed out of the national park.

"There were a lot of tired people out there," he said. "Dead trees on the perimeter were falling over, onto the line."

He said many were lucky as the fire had reached "a couple of hundred yards" from their houses and sheds.

"You couldn't get close to the frontage," Mr Nield said. "There was definitely risk to property."

He said there were large fuel loads in the national park, which he believed hadn't been sufficiently managed.

"There's dense undergrowth because of no controlled burns during winter, it's terrible," Mr Nield said.

"The department should be managing it."

Forest Fire Management deputy incident controller Mark Mellington told a community meeting at Macarthur that crews had been unable to contain the fire "largely" due to dry fuel loads in the bush.

"The bush has had really dry winter on it, we all know that, and last year wasn't a particularly great year for winter rainfall. We're seeing this moisture deficit ... it makes fuels more readily available to burn.

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