The AFAC position ¹on Bushfires and Community Safety states that ‘people usually have two safe options when threatened by bushfire: leaving early or actively defending adequately prepared properties’. It is highlighted that active defence is only safe if the household is prepared to a sufficient level. Therefore, it is important for householders to understand what is meant by ‘being adequately prepared’ for actively defending their property. State (and territory) fire agencies across Australia have provided householders with checklists of desirable preparatory actions, including property preparation, judging ability of individuals, and acquiring equipment and resources for active defence. Also, agencies agree that the levels of desired preparedness should be associated with Fire Danger Ratings (FDR), the indicator of fire weather intensity. However, no clarification exists concerning the exact levels to which a household should prepare to actively defend during different FDRs. This is compounded by a lack of consistency among the preparation checklists delivered across the nation. To address these issues, the authors conducted a pilot study for developing clearer checklists of critical preparatory actions under different FDR conditions. The authors first reviewed the preparedness communications distributed both within Australia and internationally to develop an inclusive list of preparatory actions. This was followed by a survey study in which experts across Australia were asked to rate the necessity of each preparatory item for active defence under different FDR categories (i.e. Extreme and Severe, etc.). Results showed many items had high inter-rater-agreement, indicating there is promise for developing an explicit measure of required ‘household preparedness’ for actively defending under different FDR conditions. However, results also indicated several groups of items that had low inter-rater-consistency paired with qualitative feedback, which highlighted a need for clarifying the necessity of these items under different FDR circumstances through further study.