Milly Cooper spent her childhood ambling around Canberra's magical bushland.
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So when she saw the damage the Orroral Valley fire caused to Namadgi National Park, it hit her hard.
"It hurts you to see the land suffering like that," Ms Cooper said.
Meghan Bergamin is a seasoned hiker who was also struck by the sheer devastation in the park.
"It's pretty confronting. There's some bits that are looking quite good really - you wouldn't necessarily know there'd been a fire earlier in the year - but then there's other bits where there's just been no recovery at all," Ms Bergamin said.
The pair were among around 20 Landcare volunteers who spent Sunday plucking weeds from the dense green undergrowth in the national park.
It was the third of eight events Landcare is holding to help restore the park, eight months after the fire - which ripped through more than 80 per cent of the park - was extinguished.
So far around 60 people have spent the day extracting weeds from the thick ground cover, although Landcare chief executive Karissa Preuss said more than 1000 people have put their hands up to help.
Every session has been booked out within minutes and they're seeking extra funding to run more.
"Namadgi is a really important place for a lot of Canberrans. The smoke haze and the fires affected a lot of people and being able to volunteer is a way that they can give back and be part of the solution," Ms Preuss said.
ACT Parks and Conservation Service manager Brett McNamara said weeds and feral animals were a huge threat to the park's recovery.
"What we're now seeing is deer right across these areas that were burned by fires up and down the east coast. Deer don't have any natural predators so where there's this green pick, you're going to have feral deer.
"Certainly in terms of weeds, weeds are a pioneer species, they're the first things that will bounce back. So the control that we're doing through contractors, through the rangers, through the volunteers, it's a collective effort, really, in terms of protecting and allowing the native plants to come back."
It is a different kind of recovery than after the 2003 bushfires, he said.
"Unlike 2003, where we had a lot of tree planting because the pine forest was destroyed, this recovery is really one about working with nature," Mr McNamara said.
Already there are encouraging signs that the park is coming back to life.
Ms Cooper said the last time she was there, it was a silent, charcoal landscape. On Sunday, she could hear the birds once again.
"Even though it's heartbreaking, it's really nice to be out in that environment and and feel that life coming back," Ms Cooper said.
However, the park's recovery will take time, Mr McNamara said.
"I say to a lot of people that we've just got to be a bit patient, and work with nature, as nature recovers," Mr McNamara said.
"I often think about it in terms of those granite boulders that we see out in the park. You know, they've been there for millions of years, they've been crafted and moulded by fire over millennia. So, you know, it's perhaps having an appreciation for the time that nature works on. We're in nature's hands, we really are."
