The image to the right is the bushfire "hotspots" around Canberra for the past 72 hours (different colours for the different days). I got this off the CSIRO site - they have a site called Sentinal (actually spelt Sentinel, but it appears people have been mistyping it into search engines and coming up with my blog - scary! currently located here) which has all the bushfire hotspots around the country.
My heart goes out to all those people who lost their homes and loved ones. Not much else I can say about that - what a tragedy .. 400 homes in one go and 4 deaths (so far) with hundreds of people injured, many badly burned.
I'm also kicking myself for not going to Mt Stromlo a couple of weeks ago when I was down in Canberra. It was on my list of places to see, I just didn't have the time to get there. Now it's all gone :(
Liz Morgan
Dear Kazza,
I was actually searching for a book concerning the fires up and down the east coast called The ring of fire, when I came on your website.
My parents lost their home in Duffy and everything in it, and I lost all my school photos, baby photos, etc., since I didn't take them with me when I moved out. Because of course, you don't expect something like that to happen. My dad used to work up Mount Stromlo and as we'd lived in Duffy for many years, the observatory was very special to us, in fact I'd only had Christmas lunch in the cafe up there in December, only a few weeks before the firestorm of 18 Jan.
Thank you for putting this info. on your website as it tells people how really bad it was, it is not an experience I ever wish to have again, and, quite frankly, I would not wish it on my worst enemy.
Thanks again
Liz
kazza
Thanks for posting. We had lots of friends lose their houses in the Jan 94 bushfires, and our church also. It was all quite traumatising even for us. It's still actually painful seeing footage of bushfires on tv.