I'm spending the day waiting for a piece of ironwork 'sculpture' to be
delivered that I bought down the coast. :-))

A big lump of rusty barb wire in the shape of Tyranosaurus Rex?


i hope folks in Aussieland NSW are being
careful and keeping safe.

Thank you Bird. I've been wondering if David is OK as he's closer to
fires than I am from what I can see on our rfs fire map.

We do have a strong smell of smoke at night here so the wind is
spreading the smoke around all over the place.

We have not had any dangerous fires nearby but much smoke. Several days of
the last two weeks we have been house-bound due to smoke. Thankfully the
local firebugs have not been too active except down at Heatherbrae where an
11 YO boy has been charged (and refused bail!!!) with lighting two fires
that caused extensive property damage.

The big risk is at the Blue Mountains where the decadal wailing and gnashing
of teeth is going on over the levels of fuel around. The country is so
rough that you cannot get in to get control, so when the fires are in the
valleys they wait on the ridges to defend houses in case of a wind change.
The possibility that building (and in some cases re-building) villages in
forests at the head of deep valleys full of trees that have been burning
regularly for millennia might instead be the source of the problem does not
seem to have crossed their minds. Those who stand in the way of those
firestorms despite the risk and the low chance of success deserve our
support, those who make such stupid planning decisions that it is necessary
do not.

D