The Department of Sustainability and Environment was conducting two burns in the area, a 177 hectare burn and a 74 hectare burn, both of which were ignited on Tuesday night.

Just before 3pm yesterday they advised the burns were out of control and shut down all access to the popular camping and hiking area.

Campers in the Middle Creek camping area were evacuated and while there were no reports of any houses lost, a small private property was impacted.

Wildlife such as wallabies, eagles and sheep could be seen fleeing the area.

Last night about 75 crews from the Midlands region were working on the fire, either burning or blacking out, or patrolling the area.

During the day five aircraft are called in, including two fixed-wing water bombers, two water bombers and one fixed-wing observation aircraft.

DSE overnight planning officer Peter Livitsanis said although things had quietened down after dusk, it could still be days until the fire was fully controlled.

"There's still a lot of smoke around the neighbourhood, but there had been a bit of drizzle and the wind has dropped,'' he said last night.

"The fire has progressed quite a bit in the park but it's still west of Mt Cole Rd.

"Tonight the objective is to do a bit of back burning on Mt Cole Rd to consolidate a control line.''

Mr Livitsanis said the main concern for DSE would be ensuring backburns were in place before the weather heated up again.

"The forecast looks pretty good for the next couple of days to complete backburn,'' he said.

"But given fire activity today and the unpredictability of the fire behaviour, that could be a concern later in the week.

"We have what we think is a reasonable containment strategy and have identified control lines but still requires a significant amount of work before we would call it under control ... that would probably happen on Thursday night or Friday."

Mr Livitsanis warned residents that although you could see a glow on the hill, the fire was not travelling fast.

Smoke will be visible to the towns of Beaufort, Raglan and Buangor for days.