Australia experiences a range of disasters, but during the prolonged drought, one of the most common and devastating natural disasters has been that of bushfires; even when floods were covering some parts of Australia, fire was destroying other areas. Does awareness of one's level of risk make a difference to our preparedness to combat future fire risks? Or is it that we have to personally encounter afire on our own doorstep before we take action to ensure that the next time it happens we know that we have clone all we could to avert the fire danger? A larger study on rural residents' responses (N Euro Surveillance (Bulletin Europeen Sur Les Maladies Transmissibles; European Communicable Disease Bulletin) 713) to a survey on preparedness for, and experience of bushfires was conducted a year after one of the worst bushfire seasons in Australia and after ongoing devastating grass, forest and fire storms in South East Queensland. A report on the descriptive data from that survey has been published elsewhere. The analyses presented here focus on risk, exposure, and experience factors relating to bushfire preparedness in rural areas with a bushfire history.