Fire and heat

While I really need to be writing about the state of education for Aborigines in Australia, the news right now is overwhelmingly about the fires that have consumed towns (Marysville is gone and Kinglake has had many people perish), killed over 100 people and destroyed houses, cars, heaps of bush and no doubt a lot of wildlife. There's a lot of coverage in the Melbourne paper The Age that's worth reading. There are calls for donations to the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, blood banks, and numerous other organisations that can help those who've lost everything. In this morning's paper, the news was bleak. One picture in particular from the Yarra Valley (home of Victoria vineyards) was shocking as we were at that very winery (which was somehow spared) only last week. The surrounding bush is black sticks.

We had gone to Port Campbell which is located along the Great Ocean Road (a glorious drive and a must if you visit) over the weekend. We stopped in Lorne on the way back to Geelong on Saturday for a quick swim. The temperature was lovely -- about 25 degrees and the water was cool-ish with big waves. Within minutes of getting out of the water, a north wind blew in bringing with it blast furnace hot air and an instant rise in temperature to about 47 degrees. That wind and the heat started a lot of the fires, but there are reports that there were also firebugs who started the fires -- casually tossed cigarette butts into dry, dry conditions -- people are describing this as mass murder. However it shakes out, it's tragic and shocking.

The wildlife will have been particularly affected by the heat and there were reports on ABC news all day Saturday, encouraging people to leave out bowls of water or small kiddie pools filled with water for any wildlife as they'd need to drink. Wildlife hotlines were set up in case anyone came across injured or stressed critters.

We came across this koala on Sunday morning who fortunately had found a puddle of water from the morning rains from which to drink. The fact that the koala was drinking at all was unique, given that they normally get all their fluid from eucalyptus leaves. The pictures are a bit grainy because I didn't want to get too close. The koala drank from the puddle for at least the 10 minutes we were there and probably long before and after that.

The 'change' (a change in wind direction to bring cooler air) had happened on Saturday, but later in the day. Melbourne recorded its hottest temperature EVER at 46.4 degrees. We were staying near Geelong in Meredith, with Michael and Chris Wood (Michael was at our library for about 6 months back in 2001) where the Sunday morning temperature was 13 degrees. The change definitely changed the weather quite drastically.