As public schools in Canberra close down for the year, direct highway access to one of Canberra's traditional South Coast holiday areas remained shut because of ongoing bushfire-related hazards.
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The NSW Rural Fire Service confirmed the Braidwood to Nelligen section of the Kings Highway would be closed for the fourth consecutive day on Thursday.
Araulen Road from Moruya to Braidwood is closed, not because of impact of fire but due to unsafe conditions.
As of Thursday afternoon, Princes Highway is closed in both directions between Ulladulla and Lake Tabourie.
Braidwood Road between Turpentine Road and Oallen Road is also closed in both directions.
Motorists can use the Snowy Mountains Highway via Bega and Cooma as alternative routes to the South Coast.
Firefighters hold grave concerns as Thursday's forecast is for high temperatures and low humidity, coupled with north-westerly winds of up to 80km/h.
On Thursday morning, a new state of emergency was declared in NSW for the next seven days.
Firefighters singled out the fires at Currowan, Green Wattle Creek and Gospers Mountain as the ones which posed the greatest risk.
"That wind speed will place enormous pressure on the south-easterly edge of the fireground," Rural Fire Service spokesman Brad Collins said.
"The Kings Highway will definitely stay closed tomorrow [Thursday] and we will review it on a day by day basis.
"Certainly the high winds will again raise the strong possibility of trees falling onto the roadway."
The Kings Highway has had a troublesome on-again, off-again record of closures in recent weeks following the passage of the Currowan Creek fire, which swept through and into the beachside South Coast holiday areas of Bawley Point and North Durras.
After an intense mopping up effort by volunteers, the highway had been re-opened on Friday.
However, on Sunday a sudden flare-up in the eastern flank of the fire sent it uphill toward the Misty Mountain Road and Government Bend areas, forcing the NSW Rural Fire Service to close the road again and send in aviation assets to deal with the outbreak.
Despite being well-controlled for a time, the smouldering eastern side of the Clyde Mountain forest near Government Bend again became a problem for firefighters on Tuesday and helicopters were deployed to water-bomb the area, while remote access crews and heavy plant were brought in to follow up.
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Meanwhile, a completely different and sudden outbreak occurred at Butmaroo Creek, much further up alongside the highway and just 10kms from Bungendore.
This grass fire caused its own set of issues but was quickly extinguished under the weight of a fierce assault from 32 massed fire tankers and several helicopters with buckets.
In total, the Currowan Creek fire has now burned through nearly 100,000 hectares.
A total fire ban remains in place across the area and the RFS is now flagging Saturday as potentially being rated as "catastrophic", the highest possible fire danger ranking.
At the exposed northern-eastern fringes of the fire, there's a grim sense of foreboding about what is to come with the weather.
RFS and State Emergency Service volunteers have been doorknocking around rural residential areas such as Woodstock, Woodburn and to the west of Milton.
