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December 14, 2006
The February Dragon came early this year.
When eight years old, I learnt the phrase 'Ash Wednesday'. I did not realise it was the name for the first day of Lent; it had a far more ominous meaning for me.
There had little rain for two years, and the land was in the grasp of one of the largest droughts recorded in Australia. On February 16, 1983, a Wednesday, and, coincidentally enough, the first day of Lent, the February Dragon was born in a pair of shorting power lines, sparking a blaze that ripped through tinder dry forests and fields. And they could not be controlled nor stopped until they burnt their way to the coast, two weeks later. The state was blanketed in smoke and the sun glowed a malicious red at dawn and dusk through the haze.
Where I lived, ash fell all around. The smoke haze restricted vision and the night sky was lit from the north east by the infernal light of the torrid conflagration.
I remember my father, christian, standing out in the rains that came towards the end, praising Jove. I always imagined that he'd exhausted all the other rain gods in the weeks before.
A total of half a million acres were burnt out. In many areas, regrowth was slow and even ten years later; the blackened trunks of surving trees were a scarred reminder of the fire. The animals suffered terribly, both wild and livestock.
In 2002, the current drought began, again the worst on record. Four years later, it has been declared a “1000-year drought event”.
Two weeks ago, the dragon returned. Jove has turned a deaf ear.
In some areas, the flames are stretching 50 yards into the sky.
The government department that tracks such things currently lists an area of 1.36 million acres - larger than Delaware – as ‘Going’, largely in national parks thus far.
A ‘Going’ fire is one completely uncontrolled and spreading.
Small towns are coming together, as they do, with pubs putting on free food, soft drinks and beer for the firefighters. The Country Fire Authority always bears the brunt of these fires. It consists of 400 full time fire fighters and 700 or so assorted command and control staff and administrators. And 58,000 volunteers. Thank you.
And because there is always a certain element of society that should have been smothered at birth but weren’t, police down there are hunting a several arsonists for lighting deadly blazes.
Here's hoping theres some bush justice before the police catch them.
And it looks like I'm not alone in that thought. Mr Dosser was killed
Mr Dosser, 48, died on Thursday night trying to help his friend, Liz McCarthy, save her property at Old Joe's Creek Rd from the Cooper's Creek fire.Best friend Colin Walsh said Mr Dosser was always helping others.
"He was one of the best blokes I've met in my life," he said.
"He knew it (the fire) was getting close to his friends. He was going to stay with them until it was over."
Mr Walsh said words could not describe his feelings for those who had lit the fire.
"You could not put it in print," he said. "I'd like those people in a round yard surrounded by Don's mates."
Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at December 14, 2006 10:39 PM
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