Bush fires

My keepers (still staying with a friend’s family) turned on the TV this morning to find Discovery Channel had an American documentary on bush fires. It was quite surreal to realise that the subjects were Australian. Bush fires are such a part of Australian life that they hardly require a documentary, but to see someone from the other side of the world had come across to make one seems like overkill.

Until last night, the friends I’d been staying with until recently were worried about their house. The fires have come very close and their local football field is full of helicopters refueling before water dumping trips. But then it started raining last night. We were sitting under an annex in a restaurant on the harbour for a friend’s farewell, when the storm came in. Lightning flashed across the water and the rain became rivers to pour from the annex’s corners. It wasn’t the monsoon rain of January storms that I remember, but neither was it the misty rain of Brussels. Better still, it kept it up all night, an inch of water soaking into the forests and soil and hopefully flowing into dams. If all goes well, the fire fighters will have an easier time of it now.