Bushfire season
Bushfire season is the name given to the height of the Australian summer, when temperatures hover in the high 30's and often hit 40+ degrees. This hot dry weather coupled with winds and lightning strikes makes the risk of bushfires higher than normal. We are still in Australian winter so when we saw thick smoke billowing into the sky near our house this weekend we assumed there must be a house fire.
As we got in our car to drive to Sydney we got closer and closer to the smoke. We realised that an area of bushland less than 1 kilometer from our house was burning. We counted 3 Fire Engines and multiple Firefighters still using hoses on the burning trees. The area of bushland was running behind a street of houses and some of the burning trees were actually in peoples back yards.
We had so nearly bought a block of land to build on across the road from where the fire was but had changed our minds at the 11th hour to the land we are now living on. It is still only 1km away but there are less trees directly around our house.
We have seen many news reports on bushfires since we moved to Australia but have never actually driven along a road where the trees are in flames. There has beeen nothing in our local news this morning about any injury or loss of houses so hopefully it was minor in it's damage.
Hey Gina,
I was told they were back burning the area. I saw the smoke too as i was driving home from Glendale and i must admit my heart was in my throat the whole way home....
There were a lot of Firefighters there and it did seem controlled but it seemed dangerously close to the houses... Hopefully it was back burning to prevent a more serious fire in the summer. It wouldn't have taken much for the sparks to have blown across the road to the Buttaba trees. You must live even closer to it than we do?