He has just retired after decades studying fire, having overseen 18 reports to the NSW Bushfire Inquiry in the wake of the summer from hell.

Those millions of hectares and months of destruction are tough on a human, but also rich with data for a scientist, to understand how to mitigate the risk.

"For many of us who were very experienced in doing scientific work to do with fire, it was very confronting and challenging," Professor Bradstock told the Mercury.

Read more: Fuel load in bush last year was 'nothing special', says UOW expert

"There's also a certain element of, we wanted to help out, but I'm not a trained firefighter, so there's a certain level of frustration. But as I say to many people, we knew our time would come after the fires are out, because that's when we swing into action.

"When the fires are out, that's when our work begins. So much information has come from these fires. That's one of the positive things - it will help us build better knowledge which may help us to be able to deal with such things in the future a little bit better."

Aged 65, the now former director of the UOW's Centre for Environmental Risk Management of Bushfires, and the NSW Bushfire Risk Management Research Hub, said he was drawn to fire as a young ecologist.

"To understand our local flora and fauna you really need to understand fire, because fire is part of the furniture, and the life cycles of our plants and animals have evolved to deal with certain types of fire," he said.

"So fire is intimately bound up with ecology. Understanding fire, understanding how plants and animals can come or go according to different types of what we call fire regimes, is a fundamental question. And it's fundamental to conservation as well."

There's hope that the coming season should be less cruel than last.

"The landscape has been heavily affected by fires last year - risk is relatively low because there's not much fuel there, and that takes a few years to start to accumulate," he said. "Many of the areas that were heavily affected are not facing much bushfire risk in the next few years ... but that can change very quickly."

Information released by the inquiry showed no significant fires had been caused by arson, and all the South Coast fires were started by lightning strikes.

While not surprising - lightning-ignited fires are likely to be in remote areas, and hard to stop - some investigations were not complete.

"There's some human-caused ignitions, and some of those might have been arson, but still a lot of those have yet to be definitively attributed," he said. "It takes a while for the investigation to be complete. [Some are] subject to coronial inquiries.

"[That information] was what the RFS had in about May. There was still a lot of undetermined causes of fires at that time, and some of that will be rectified.

"One of our reports analyses the sheer area burned due to lightning fires, and it was overwhelming. The Currowan fire and Badja Swamp fire which caused so much damage on the South Coast were lightning-caused.

"One of the fires which affected Batemans Bay was from a human ignition source. And another one which merged with the Currowan fire was suspected of being human-caused. Some of these things are still under investigation."

But he suspected the constant awareness may have kept arson rates down.

"Because of the magnitude and duration of the fire season, there's some possibility there was a feedback effect - all the drama about we had really bad days, the catastrophic fire danger, some of that may have acted to suppress arson. It's just speculation, but the level of awareness and anxiety might have acted to put the lid on some crazy activities."

While he is retiring, Professor Bradstock will still be involved in fire research with postgraduate students and other projects. A genuinely curious mind can't rest.

Finally, he said he was pleased climate change was taken seriously in fire analysis.

"If you go up through the system of fire management, climate change is being taken very, very seriously by fire management professionals, throughout the bureaucracy, throughout the volunteer movement, throughout the professional land management ranks ... also to their great credit politicians in NSW who are involved in it are taking it very seriously too," he said.

"There are some elements in the political milieu who perhaps aren't, and who are being dragged along by the current. But I don't think [there's] any denial about what's happening. It's now a question of the political will to really deal seriously with it."

We depend on subscription revenue to support our journalism. If you are able, please subscribe here. If you are already a subscriber, thank you for your support.