More than 9000 hectares of koala habitat from Balickera Twelve Mile Creek and Karuah has been burnt with little hope of many survivors.

"It could very well have wiped them out," Port Stephens Koalas past president Sue Swain said.

"The firies have told us they saw koalas running from the flames but there was nothing they could do to save them."

Rescuers have retrieved two koalas so far, one of them fire ground itself.

Koolah clung to a blackened tree off the Pacific Highway near the Karuah exit on Monday.

He was transported to Port Macquarie Koala Hospital on Thursday for intensive care to treat a serious chlamidia infection.

They will keep him there for some months until the habitat near Karuah recovers enough to release him.

The group's rescue and care coordinator Simone Aurino said the fire and Koolah's care arrangement further demonstrated the need for a Port Stephens hospital.

Meanwhile, she said the fire ground was "still active".

“We’re expecting the animals that have been injured or displaced in the fire to start emerging shortly,” she said.

Dungog Rob was found at Glen Oak on Monday. The young alpha male was found quite a way from the fire where he was hit by a car.

Rescuers believe he might have been smoked out. 

Time will tell if there are more and the search for others hasn’t yet begun.

“It’s usually a process that takes a while and we actually can’t get on the fire ground until it’s handed over from the fire brigade and deemed safe,” Ms Aurino said. 

Only then will the group's volunteers have the chance to survey the burnt area yet - a practice known as a black walk - to see how many koalas the fire might have claimed.

Even then, it's a task too big to contemplate.

"We can't do a black walk across 9000 hectares it's too much," Mrs Swain said.

"We can only assume it was too intense for wildlife in the centre of that fire for any wildlife  to survive and we can only hope to find some koalas alive around the edges."

Like most carers Mrs Swain is pragmatic and talks about the problem in numbers.

"You need 150 adults to breed your way back," she said.

"If there's 150 left in that area I'd be surprised."

But she hasn't given up.

"When I started 13 years ago people told me there would be none left to look after in Port Stephens within five years," Mrs Swain said.

"They're still breeding and having babies, and more and more adults turn up every year that we haven't seen and tagged before.

"It gives me hope."

Port Stephens Koala rescue: 0418 628 483.