Dark Days of Summer…
Today’s one of those days you want to hate.
Sometimes hospitals can be so draining and visiting a loved one every day, just so. So after our visit today we loaded a picnic in the car and drove to the southern beaches area.
We had done part of it before, looking at the fire damage from last January. This time we took another turn-off and did the rest and in the process finding a very beautiful little beach to which I shall be bringing my kayak on the next hot north-easterly day.
You may remember in the Australian summer, December/January just passed, I blogged about the bushfires that surrounded us.
Today, my husband and I took a trip through part of the horrendously burned-out areas. Whilst we have yet to return to Dunalley, today we drove round Carlton River and the back of Forcett and Primrose Sands. The psychology of a fire is so strange. This one had jumped whole gullies, burning from one hill to the next, burning right to a house’s door but not burning the house down and yet on the next property, the house would be burned to the ground, farmhouses and sheds burned to ash but shearing sheds left standing.
It’s nearly the beginning of winter. Another month-ish.
Today it was 26 degrees at the farm, 78 degrees Fahrenheit. And I am back in shorts and a polo shirt. The wind is howling and we have a bushfire close by. Another one – nearly in winter!
Apropos of yesterday, this is what our farm looks like now that it is slashed to prevent fires. The word ‘Sahara’ comes to mind.
Bear in mind that 8 weeks ago, this was IRISH green!
Sheep as safe as we can make them in the home paddock we call the Ski Run.
As we sat surrounded by smoke last Friday, the little town of Dunalley battled the odds.
It’s a sweet town, situated round the Dunalley Canal which enables pleasure and fishing boats to shortcut into the Derwent Estuary from the Tasman Sea rather than chancing the exposed southern tip of Tassie and the Southern Ocean.