Saturday, February 14, 2009

Victoria, Australia, February 7

The state of Victoria, as everyone by now knows, is the site of the horrific Australian wildfires that exploded on February 7. We were never in the impacted areas and we left Victoria February 6, the day before the disaster struck. We visited dry plains dotted with gum trees, steep forested hills and mountains, traces of waterfalls and rivers, dramatic limestone cliffs. We saw lots of kangaroos and koalas in the wild, along with a lone emu. In contrast to the green east coast, Victoria, in the southeast, was brown and dry. Now in the twelfth year of a drought, there have been bans on watering for years. We tried to go to a car wash. It had been closed for three years. We took a detour to see the lake built for the rowing events of the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, a beautiful area according to our Lonely Planet. All dried up. There were signs everywhere, “Extreme Fire Danger”. There was evidence – physical and anecdotal - of massive forest fires in the recent past. The news had daily coverage of bushfires raging already in the area. Down at the coast, along the Great Southern Ocean, we were told, by the friendliest people so far in Australia, this kind of heat is not normal. It had brought a plague of annoying but harmless flies that sought you out wherever it was hot and sunny as if to say, you don’t belong here. The tourist sites were hard to appreciate because everyone around was doing their best to wave off the flies. Hiking was not particularly pleasant either. Bushfires, we have been learning, are essential to the ecology of Australia. The indigenous people engaged in controlled burning to allow germination of seeds for their food supplies. The white people didn’t fare so well. One of the most evocative pieces of art we have seen was a frightening Victorian bushfire at night, painted in 1898. We can honestly say the place was in high alert. After the week of extreme heat during the tennis tournament in Melbourne (3 days in a row over 108), the temperatures moderated a bit, staying just below 100. Days in advance, the weather forecast for February 7 was, “record heat and high winds…with the risk of catastrophic fires as in Black Friday (1939) or Ash Wednesday (1993)”, each of which left dozens dead. The policy is “leave early or stay to defend”. People were prepared – but not for this one, with flames as high as 200 feet roaring down the hills not 30 miles from downtown Melbourne, a city of 3.5 million people.

4 Comments:

Blogger Justin said...

About the main time when this can work to support you is if the advance accompanies 0% account for a period and you can stand to reimburse the whole advance back amid this period. An obviously better route for getting the least expensive auto credits and making an arrangement with the dealership is to bring out the obtaining with an authority site and after that run purchase your vehicle with the trade out hand. car title loans

6:59 AM  
Blogger Justin said...

Why would that be? Specialists battle that more understudies are progressively taking out a progression of understudy advances, hence intensifying the obligation proportion. payday loans

12:03 AM  
Blogger marko said...

Another choice for an entrepreneur who can't secure a business bank credit is applying for an individual bank advance. These credits are much simpler to get, and the assets can be coordinated towards the business. cash advance

3:23 AM  
Blogger Robbert said...

Voyaging is an extremely fun encounter particularly when you are going on a land excursion and driving your own car. Nonetheless, it can turn out to be extremely exhausting when you are as of now driving alone for how long with nobody to converse with and simply having a striking resemblance street. You have a tendency to end up tired and it can be destructive when you are driving.check cashing

11:22 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home