Comment from foreign press has forced me to write something about the Victorian bushfires from my position in Melbourne. The capital city of Victoria.
I have read The Guardian going on about the inability of people to put caravans on land they might want to live on in the bush and therefore make it easier to move when a fire comes. Bollox. I have read Time linking it into global warming. Bollox.
Last Saturday was a extraordinary day, I use that word for its full meaning not the way sports commentators use it. I, who am not normally prone to biblical references started saying things like. ” It is as though the devil himself has come up from the depths of hell to breath a solid guttural wind of Hades upon us”. And “the sun of god is literally burning my lips” My lips were burning. It was not this record temperature that caused all the damage, more the combination of 46 degrees, and what happened around 6 o’clock. The cool change kicked in, the wind flipped around to the South and the temperature dropped to 30. Sweet relief, no smell of smoke in the air, all must be good.
We had been well warned before hand, the week before had 3 days of 40 plus and everything was bone dry, every TV report said beware it’s the worst weather conditions for bushfires since ash Wednesday 1983. I remember that day, I was a boy in Adelaide, a sand storm hit first then the smoke and the heat. This was different, a different city, and a very odd day. It was the dramatic change that was so odd. The absolute extreme heat and white out. I’m still not sure if it was high level smoke or vapour, but at about 2pm the blue sky whited out. Then the change and we even had a few drops of rain. I was more worried about dry lightening starting fires than anything that had already started.
Kinglake is a, was a, and will be again a wonderful place to live, 100 people died there. I had visited there a few times and would have, and would still love to own property there. So close to Melbourne 45min from central, and rural but suburban, trees everywhere of the rich green temperate forest type Melbourne does so well. I remember going raspberry picking in Kinglake national park a few years ago. That year there were also fires in the park, no lives lost. The raspberry farm won’t be there anymore, nor the main street of Kinglake. But in 3-5 years time it will be, and it will be the wondrous rural outer city oasis it always was. it’s a wonderful place to be.
The wind change did in Kinglake, 2 small fires merged and they had no chance. An extraordinary day.
There are bush fires every summer in Victoria, every summer! This was unusual. That happens, we go on. And in a way we were due, its been 26 year since Ash Wednesday.
And I doubt its ‘global warmings’ fault, and I doubt we should all congregate in the concrete suburbs, we are Australians, we love this place we take its risks with its beauty, and that’s why I love us, and this place.
DJ Campbell
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