Victorian Bushfires

Victorian Bushfires Make National Headlines

Looks like I spoke too soon.

I came home from working in Traralgon on Saturday evening, only to be greeted by huge plumes of smoke coming off the hills behind my home town.
I managed to get a couple of photos before I had to go back to work. These were taken at about 4.30pm:

I didn't have time to take more, but my sister's man took some video footage of the scenes form the front of our house:

There are others like it available on YouTube. Just browse through the "Related Videos" at the end of the movie, or click here.

By the time it got to 6pm, we had to turn our lights on, because it was so dark outside. We were covered by the smoke and ash from another fire happening about 60km away from us.

Basically, we got caught up in the middle of two different bushfires:

• the Churchill one, which never actually hit Churchill, but started in the Strzelecki Ranges behind the town, and spread rapidly south-east toward the coast, and
• the fire that started in Kinglake and swept across the region north-east of Melbourne, which was far bigger than the Churchill fire.

It was very very scary.

I had about an hour between shifts to decide what to do. My sister and her boyfriend were busy setting up the house for protection (incidentally, the safest place to be in a bushfire) and I scrambled around, gathering up backup disks and USB sticks - and wondering why the HELL I'd bothered collecting so much useless crap over the years! (I think it's cleanup time...)

We were listening to ABC FM for the latest fire news, but they told us that the local transmitter was in range of the flames, and that their signal may cut out. At about 8.30 we lost them, and also all of our local TV stations. I don't know if they have been restored yet.

The shop I work at was still open during the emergency, and we had customers coming in and buying all sorts of panic-related things, but mostly they were buying cigarettes. Yes, in times of crisis people latch on to the only coping mechanisms they have!

Outside, a cloud of smoke and ash set over the Valley, and by 6.30pm it was near impossible to see further than a kilometre. The whole sky turned a deep blood-red, then a dark ash grey. Small black particles and burnt leaves fell from the larger bushfire, all across the town. People came in to the shop covered in sooty black marks.
Then it rained - but only a little bit, and it left more streaky mess over the buildings and cars.

My co-worker and I didn't know what else we should do. Were we meant to close the shop? Evacuate? Get out the fire hoses? We didn't have a very good view from our position, and had to rely on everyone who came in to tell us what it was like outside.
We were trying to cope with this, while we had customers coming in and buying sliced ham! icy poles! soft drinks! I saw people wearing loose summer wear; some people were only wearing shorts! (When you're under threat of fire, you're supposed to cover your body with long-sleeved shirts and trousers, to protect your extremities from burning.)
Luckily, my boss was also in the town, and had a better view of proceedings - he said that he'd let us know if we had to stay or go.

The day had been very hot, but a cool change was expected late that evening. It came, and it was very cool by the time we finished work. The only problem was that the wind changed direction, and the fires turned north-east toward Traralgon. Fortunately, the conditions were better suited for the CFA to control that side after that point.

Eventually, the fires came under control, though some of them are still burning as I write this. And although our area ultimately made it through the crisis undamaged, many parts of Victoria were not so lucky.
I believe the death toll currently stands at about 130 people. One of them was a retired news reader for one of the major TV stations. Many of the others were people who left it too late to leave their houses, and were found inside their burnt-out vehicles.
This fire has been labelled as worse than the infamous Ash Wednesday fires in 1983.

The next day, our shop was very busy again, but this time it was customers using our carwash to clean their vehicles. There were people queueing up to use it two cars back, and both bays were used non-stop from start of trade until about 7pm. I left it until Monday to do mine:

It makes me very angry and upset to see all of this happening around where I live. So many people have suffered needlessly.
I want to do more to help, and hopefully some time this week I will.

New Stuff Appearing On The Right

I've been adding photos to my Picasa albums for your viewing enjoyment.
Try clicking on the "Nature Photos" image on the right! You can also comment on them if you wish.

Leah - Thank you very much for the cool Dubai-themed Christmas gifts! I like the camel-themed playing cards and fridge magnets! And Krissy really likes the silky scarf!
Sorry we didn't get to meet over Christmas, but I'll try to send you something really nice!

Boolarra Bushfire

So... the bushfires.

Here's some links to news articles about them:
ABC.com.au - Vic blaze destroys homes as town runs out of water
The Age - Bushfires destroy Gippsland homes
The Australian - Huge bushfire threatens power line, coal mine in Victoria
News.com.au - Gippsland fire now within containment lines

The fires started late Wednesday afternoon. I was at work at the time, and the weather had just turned nasty - as in, 40° Celsius. Most of the grass and vegetation that had grown during rainy December last year had turned to kindling by this stage, so a bushfire was probably inevitable... though I was hoping that we'd see the summer out without having a fire this time.
A customer came in during the early evening, and said "Hey, it looks like there's a fire somewhere..." and I thought, "Oh, no..."

I took some photos from the front yard, and the edge of town. These were taken last Saturday at about 4.30pm, while the weather was still scorching hot, and the huge smoke cloud coming from the fire was still visible. It got worse over the next three hours, until the whole western section of the sky was covered in a sickly purple-orange haze. Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of that because it was just too damn big to fit into 640x480 pixels...

It's taken about three days to get under control - fortunately, the weather has turned cooler again, but the wind has also picked up. During this time, the towns of Yinnar and Mirboo North also came under threat. When I popped in to work to get fuel, my co-worker told me that our town had been issued an alert for falling embers - I went straight back home and filled up some buckets to prepare. Luckily we didn't need them.

Boolarra was the worst hit, however - though no-one was killed, and the general township was spared, at least ten homes were destroyed by the blaze.
One of my friends from the mural project lives - or lived - out in Boolarra. Apparently, she has lost everything.
Her family had no time to grab anything of value - they just had to get out of there. When they came back, they found nothing recognisable. Their house was completely destroyed, as if it had never existed. The only thing they could identify was part of a stepladder.

I'm going to try and send her and her family something to help them get along. I know they'll be eleigible for emergency accommodation and relief packages, but what else can you offer someone who has lost their home and belongings?

This is crazy.
Even worse, there is suspicion that the fire was deliberately lit. If it was, the people who did it have yet to be caught.

I Figured It Out!

Not much new to report here, except that it is absolutely stinking hot today! After months of teasing us with wet cold weather, the summer has finally come in earnest...

Oh, and there's a new section on the right - I finally figured out how to put up a banner-link list! It turned out to be so simple anyone with basic HTML coding experience could do it. smacks himself in the head

I'll be looking out for more banners from my favourite sites, so keep your eyes on that space!

EDIT: God, I totally forgot about the bushfire burning out near Yinnar and Boolarra... I will be posting some pictures of the view from our place tomorrow. smacks other side of head

Bird Disturbing

As you probably noticed, I've retired Dinkycam because I have a nicer camera now.

The other day I went for a walk around town to try and take some nice photos of the area I live in, especially since the weather has been warm enough for me to do so.
I figured I'd be able to get some pictures of the many birds and animals that come in to town. I've seen many different ones, like rosellas, cockatoos, kangaroos and koalas, but have never had a camera handy.

So, I set out for the bushland on the edge of town.

There's a trail that goes up behind the scout hall, through the trees. You'd expect it to go on for some distance, but suddenly, when you reach the top, you get to a barbed-wire fence and you see this:

It's an empty field, that goes on to - nothing. You see nothing but the grass. It's eerie. It's like you are almost on the edge of the world...
So I turned around, and took some pictures of the bushland, which looks nicer than the brown grass in the field.

Much nicer. There were heaps of birds flitting around on the ground and in the trees. There were many rosellas hiding in the shrubs, but I couldn't get close enough to take a decent photo of them. The camera only has a 3x zoom on it, which meant I could have taken a photo of some blobby thing sitting something in a tree, but nothing better I'm afraid.

After trying unsuccessfully to capture a decent bird picture, I gave up. I figured pictures of trees were easier to get, the subject not being fussy about posing for me:

I kept going around the town, and eventually took some photos of less-colourful birds, such as this magpie who wasn't sure what to make of me:

I then heard a strange bird call coming from one of the trees in front of me. I looked up, and saw a black feathered head peeking out from the leaves, and I realised that it was a black cockatoo! These are supposed to be really rare, almost an endangered species! So I quickly tried to turn my camera back on... but before I could hold it up, the birds (there were two of them in the tree!) flew off behind me. (sad)
Here's a picture of the tree where they used to be:

Onward, and I found some more birds in a different area. Mostly magpies and other common types:

But most of the other birds flew off before I could get a good snap of them.

But, it seems that not everything was scared off by me. A little green bug landed on my hand while I was taking pictures:

It was so tiny! I tried to make it fly off, but I guess it didn't want to leave me so easily. I managed to eventually coax it onto a fence post, as it wouldn't have been very convenient for the bug if I'd squashed it or something.

Then, I saw what I thought were a couple of birds, sitting under a tree! I went closer, and they seemed unafraid of me:

Then I found out what they were actually doing:

I disposed of the "birds" thoughtfully.

By now, I had just about given up on seeing any decent bird life. I had plenty of trees to snap, but who hasn't seen a tree before? But then I remembered that there were usually lots of birds down by the lake!
So that was where I went next.

As you can tell by these pictures, it was starting to get late, so I headed off back home.
On the way, there was another little pond where water birds were gathering, so I took a couple of pictures of those - but it turned out that there was someone else watching what I was doing:

I moved around so that they could get a better look at me:

I left them to mind their own business, and took some pictures of an old house down by the lake:

And then I decided I'd had enough fun walking around town, and headed home (taking some photos of ducks on the way):

By the time I got back home, my feet were so sore, they were glowing (I could tell, it was really dark by then). I didn't mind - it meant that I managed to get some exercise, and have something to put up on the blog that wasn't just me bitching about my teeth or whinging about work.

If you want to see some more photos of the part of the world I live in, [here's the link to the Picasa album that contains the rest]. It also contains some photos of our backyard, and our cats, if you're into that sort of thing.

Flavors of Entanglement

After I went to the dentist, I decided to get myself another present for being such a good boy oh, all right, I just needed an excuse, so I went and bought myself Alanis Morissette's latest album "Flavors of Entanglement". It's pretty good - I usually don't "get" my albums until I've listened to them a few times, so I'll be listening to it for a while yet. Plus, it rounds out my CD collection nicely!

As a side project, I tried to look up some of Alanis' filmclips on YouTube - and I found some very strange clips indeed!
For instance, this:

A moodier and more, "dramatic"version of the Black Eyed Peas' single "My Humps"?!? WTF?!? Proof that the lady has a sense of humour!

Or this:

Alanis' first ever single, and it's NOT "You Oughta Know".
Warning: song contains early 90s hip-hop-stylin', plus that "Throw your hands in the air!" line that was lyric du jour, oh, about forty years ago... I particularly liked the "You gotta go for gold!" line in the chorus. Of course, it's not enough to keep your love at precisely the right temperature - you also have to somehow summon your inner Olympian! (Or at least a Commonwealth Games participant.)

Then, check this out:

Apparently she used to be known as the Debbie Gibson of Canada early on in her career... can't imagine why...
Bear in mind, she would have been barely out of her twenties here. And, I'll be honest - I actually like this song. Well, it's been stuck in my head ever since I heard it, so...

THIS...
is Alanis' "power ballad", complete with the moody film clip and the key change before the last chorus! This one isn't too bad, though she does get better at the ballads, I promise.

If that's not weird enough, check THIS out.
It's footage of a pre-teen Alanis, when she was a cast member of the Canadian TV show "You Can't Do That On Television"! I used to watch this show all the time when it was screened over here! Ha ha! Watch her and a bunch of other kids get green-slimed! ;P

Okay, it sounds like I'm picking on her. Not true! at least not entirely.
Who among us doesn't have some weird, potentially embarrassing stuff in their past? It's just that in Alanis' case, there happens to be archival footage of it on YouTube... and, though they are definitely relics of a bygone era, they really aren't that bad. You can definitely tell it's her, even in the early clips - there's no mistaking that distinctive voice!
The videos provide a nice contrast for where she is in her career right now, that's for sure. And I kinda wish her first two albums had been released over here...

Toothy Update

I finally got to see the dentist today.
I only went in to tell them that the tooth had broken, and that I needed to get an appointment as soon as possible. Just so happened, they had just had an appointment broken by a patient right when I was at the counter, so I managed to get into the chair straight away! Luckily I'd brushed before leaving the house!

It appears that, despite the tooth breaking in half, it was still salvageable. I think he's just going to put a cap on it once the root canal is finished, so that is good news! Although... I was kind of getting used to having a gap (well, half a gap) in that spot - I was always having to grab the dental floss to pull out chunks of food that got stuck in between that tooth and the next. Blech.

For round two of the root canal, I had to have a dental dam placed over my mouth, and he had to use a little MRI-type thing to test the depth of the roots. It was a weird machine that played different tones depending on how far down the probe went, and it's the first time I've been asked if I had a heart condition while sitting in a dentist's chair!

He's put in another temp. filling over the tooth, only this time it's a pink one:

PS. The second-most-disturbing question from a dentist I've ever been asked:
"Er, do you normally take a long time to stop bleeding...?" True story!

Stuff I'm Doing Right Now

Playing:

Castlevania - Portrait of Ruin (DS)

Reading:
The Lucy Family Alphabet, By Judith Lucy

Listening:
Past Masters, Vol. I and II - The Beatles

Watching:
...nothing at the moment - I don't really watch TV and movies as much as I used to

Wearing:
The T-shirts Ma made me for Christmas...

New Years' Eve, 2008

Another post-event post...

A New Year has begun... and unfortunately, I had to work for NYE (again!), but it was only for about five hours, and it was pretty dead at work after everyone had got what they needed.

We had a good time for NYE this/last year.
We had some friends over for a few Wii-ing contests in the living room, and played a few rounds of SingStar on a friend's PS2. I think my sister really wants one of those, now that she realises how much fun the game is!

But, after the clock ticked over to midnight, we went outside to see if there were any fireworks happening. I think someone might have let off a flare... but that was it.

It was at this point, when everyone was standing around on the front lawn in the dark waiting for stuff to explode, that I remembered I had some glow stick party favours reserved for this occasion...
They were a bunch of glow-bracelets, which eventually got turned into mini-frisbees, and we flung them at each other on the front lawn! I took some photos, but they were all dark and minimalist... so I turned them all into a composite image. This is it:

I think this picture best sums up the bedlam that took place out the front of out house!
We played for about half an hour on the front lawn, then came back inside all sweaty and grotty from running around the garden. Hey, it was better than watching that stupid Village People movie on Channel Nine. O_o;
We then continued the video-gaming, along with consumption of a ludicrous amount of food and confectionery (I'd brought some old Xmas stock that was RTC at work). And then, eventually, to bed, though I was one of the last standing (mostly because I didn't have to work the next day)!

As for the glow sticks, they all wound up on the shrubbery just outside our front door (those that didn't end up on the roof or in the garden). Most of them were still there for about a week afterwards, and some of them still had a bit of "glow" left in them!

I hope everyone has a good New Year!