Wedderburn group officer Jeroen van Veen led a District 20 strike team at the Batemans Bay fire, east of Canberra. The team returned on Saturday, after helping NSW crews for five days.

"The firefighting we did was the most extreme firefighting I have done since Black Saturday," Mr van Veen said.

"We had full-frontal attack from walls of flames. We had fires burning over the tops of houses. We had cars exploding, fuel depots going up, trucks burning down - not fire trucks, just parked trucks - things like that.

"It was 100 per cent concentration for the whole 12 hours of your shift. So by the end, you still can't sleep even though you're tired because you're head is still buzzing."

Read more: More Central Victorian firefighters head north to support NSW crews battling more than 80 bushfires

More than 870 homes have been destroyed in NSW this fire season, while 353 houses have been damaged. A total of 86 fires were still burning across the state this week.

Mr van Veen said the mood at the fire ground was "quite despondent".

"A lot of the instructions we were getting from the incident managers and the control centres were along the lines of, 'you probably won't stop it', or 'it will probably run away from you', or 'we probably only have a one per cent chance of grabbing that'," he said.

"It's not all over the place - there's a few that were making a real good, hard fight of it - but I just noticed that defeatist stuff had crept in some places."

Prime Minister Scott Morrison was criticised for going on a family holiday to Hawaii as fires continued to burn across the country. But Mr van Veen said the focus should turn away from the prime minister.

"People on the fire ground couldn't care less because they have a lot of other things to worry about," he said.

"All of that kerfuffle about our prime minister not being here in Australia during an emergency is very good talking points for the newspapers and for TV but on the fire ground, nobody cares. People just want to know what the fire is doing.

"In my personal opinion, I was hoping that Scott Morrison would stay in Hawaii for a lot longer because these are matters for serious people.

"We don't want a bumbling fool to be in the way on the fire ground. We would rather have some more American firefighters and Scott Morrison stay in America. That would be great."

With a number of fires already at advice level across Victoria, Mr van Veen said he expected Victorian crews to remain at home.

"I don't think the CFA will be back in NSW for the foreseeable future because we're going to get another heatwave coming through Victoria next weekend," he said.

Read more: Region's firefighters support Lexton fire response

"Seeing how quickly things light up at the moment, and seeing as the fires in Gippsland are not controlled, I would think we'd be turning quite a few strike teams to Gippsland this upcoming summer.

"We might be working still in March for all I know, so we need to spread out our efforts. We can't just go all gung-ho and go every week. People also have jobs and they need to look after their families."

Mr van Veen also had a simple message for people who wanted to help firefighters across the country.

"The CFA is well-stocked with crew and staff and volunteers in the area closer to Melbourne," he said. "But the outlying regions of Victoria could do with quite a lot more volunteers.

"So if you are looking at all this and you think you have a role to play, by all means put your name down. There are lots and lots of volunteer brigades. If there is one close to you, get trained up and help out."

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