Butcher Tom Freeman says - and says again - that he's no hero. But he is. He definitely is.
Just before dawn, he came out of his house when he smelt smoke nearby. He thought it was odd so he drove around and spotted a garage ablaze, with thick black smoke billowing out, so he bashed down the front door and shouted to the family that they needed to get out fast.
"I nearly ripped the door off the hinges," he said. "They came to the door, and I gave them the instructions that, 'You need to evacuate right now, and I'm not messing around'."
The family of three, including a young girl, had been fast asleep.
"The girl grabbed her cat," Mr Freeman said. "She'd just been woken up out of a deep sleep. Everyone was woken up. They weren't exactly happy to see me. After the fact, they probably were happy to see me.
"So I called triple zero and the emergency service workers were absolutely A1."
Four fire engines, including two with water pumps and one with breathing apparatus, arrived quickly at the single-storey house in Polwarth Circuit, Dunlop.
The rescuer works at Elite Butchers in Kippax. Just another day became extraordinary after he got up early to go to work. He took a jug of hot water out to defrost the car and went back inside.
"I kissed my wife who was asleep at the time. I said goodbye, like I do every morning, and went back out, and I could smell something that wasn't quite right, that I didn't smell when I was out there five minutes previous.
"No, this doesn't seem right. Not at all," the 41-year-old butcher thought. "So I thought: 'Well, I could fob it off and just go to work and think it's someone's fire pit smouldering out. It's wintertime in Canberra, there's going to be smoke in the air.
"Our street is a little loop street, like an unfolded paperclip. I just did a loop around just to make sure that everything was okay. Not everyone's up at 6 o'clock in the morning. And I came to see a garage that was billowing black plumes of smoke."
So he didn't just "fob it off". He went and looked - and saw the emergency and did something about it.
So, is he a hero?
No, he said.
"I just feel like - hopefully - that everyone would have done the same.
"I just want to make it very clear that my heart goes out to the family who could have lost everything."
He hasn't seen the family since. The house was uninhabitable on Wednesday morning, but Mr Freeman said the mother of the man had got in touch and thanked him.
Police and the fire brigade were investigating the fire but both said they didn't think it was suspicious. Mr Freeman thought it had been caused by a scooter battery fire.
