"All of a sudden there was this light that came from the sky - a bright, white light. We didn't look up, we just dived for the house."

Werner Theinert and his wife, Ursula, were among the "lucky ones" to survive the horrific Black Saturday bushfires on February 7, 2009.

The couple were at their home in Callignee, south of Traralgon, when the smoke from the Bunyip State Forest began coming towards them, just hours before the Churchill fire started.

"The wind change was coming through Wilsons Prom and Phillip Island - it was south-westerly, so all of that was going to come towards us and I thought, 'We've had it'," Mr Theinert said.

"We were outside watering everything, then we moved back towards the house when it got dark. We got into the house and we had to lean up against the door to shut it because of the pressure.

"We were stuck inside for the next 20 minutes while this firestorm blasted past our windows. Then the bushfire came and it was on."

The back of the couple's house started catching fire from the ceiling.

"We tried to put it out from the inside but we couldn't, so we closed the door to that room, which was our study with all the computers and our art, the hard drives, hoping that would give us sort of a buffer, because it was still on for young and old outside," Mr Theinert said.

Within minutes, they were driven out of their home by the fumes, by which time the fire had eased.

"For the next nine hours, we bucketed water out of our swim spa, probably about three or four tons of water, and we survived."

Mrs Theinert said the couple's collection of artwork was the main reason they chose to stay and fight the blaze.

"You're in shock. Initially, you're just so thrilled to be alive. It's afterwards when it all sinks in.

"It was three o'clock in the morning; we were holding each other's hand, exhausted that we'd survived it.