Hi everyone,

I am only about 20 to 30 kilometres from some of the affected areas. It is so tragic! Some of the towns gone are such beautiful small towns in paradise like bushland and forest. The human loss is way beyond imaginable.

Saturday we woke to our hottest day on record since temperature recording began in the 1850's - 47 Degrees C and the winds were high. So a recipe for disaster without idiot arsonists deciding they wanted some attention! Lightning has caused some of the fires which is unavoidable. By all accounts the fires behaved differently to what we have gotten used to and there was no warning at all in most cases.

Fires are still burning and the wind increased this afternoon but at least people in vulnerable areas now are getting better advanced warning and evacuating in plenty of time as necessary. Teams are now doing backburning and putting in containment lines to prevent advance to vulnerable inhabited areas.

We usually have things so good in this country but global warming seems to be taking its toll with drought in the southern (and the cooler parts) of Australia also! The northern areas of Australia (the tropics) are having so much rain they have floods at the moment! We wish we had some of their rain!