Friday, December 08, 2006
Bushfire season is here
The worst bush fire threat in seventy years the authorities are saying tonight. More than ten major fires are burning in the east of the state of Victoria currently and the fear is they will merge over the weekend making a fire front more than one hundred kilometres long. Living in Melbourne I’m a fair distance from the danger, but everywhere over the city lingers a thin veil of light grey smoke. The smell is both sweet and acrid, and you can’t escape it. The sunset was surreal tonight, there was a diffused bright orange glow everywhere caused by the smoke. Even though we are not in immediate danger here in the city, it is worrying. The towns near the fires have been to told to evacuate or prepare to fight the inevitable firestorm. Not a nice choice to make – abandon your home to the possibility of being burnt to the ground, or stay and defend it with whatever means you can find, and possible die in the process. So far the fires have destroyed over 150,000 hectares of bushland and the temperatures are set to rise up into the high 30s centigrade tomorrow.
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2 comments:
Which do you prefer - Australia, or the UK?
I am a Melbourne girl myself, wanting to move to London.
www.practically-perfect.net
That’s a hard question for me. I love Melbourne and London. I stay in Melbourne because of circumstances (and maybe a fear of change when I consider my responsibilities here) but I still plan to give London a full time go at some stage – because there isn’t anywhere else like it.
If you want a carefree lifestyle with plenty going on, an endless cycle of pubs and parties mixed with a good dollop of culture and style, then there is no better place than London – as long as you can put up with bad weather for months at a time, crowds everywhere and paying too much for, well, almost everything. My advice is to give it a go – the experience will change you.
As Samuel Johnson said “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.” It's a bit of an overused quote maybe, but very true.
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