Monday January – 2020 began with smoke billowing around the small Australian country town where I live. The smell was constant, and threatening. When the fire inevitably came, it destroyed everything in its path – houses, fences, orchards, stock and their poddies, cars and people. It was a disaster waiting to happen; no burn-offs had been allowed in the … [Read more...]
Batlow Fires Update
Tuesday So I got past the barricades and visited Batlow in a press convoy. My house is still standing, more, it is almost unscathed. The service station two doors down had gas tanks that exploded. It utterly levelled the house in between mine and the service station. All that remains is rubble and dust. He only bought it a few weeks before Christmas. His house is … [Read more...]
The Great Green Fires of Christmas 2019
Wednesday It will take Australians a long time to forgive the Greens for the damage that they have wrought to Australia this Christmas. Hundreds of homes across the Eastern States have been burnt to the ground and many people have lost their lives in the most dreadful circumstances imaginable. Even for those that survived, and with properties intact, their … [Read more...]
The Year – Past and Future
Wednesday I love Christmas. It is a time when my attention is off the business (closed for the day), and my children return home. My beautiful daughter who lives interstate walked through the door in a surprise visit on Christmas Day, which exposed my soppy old sentimentality. When the dust and merriment has settled, Christmas is also when I tend to ponder on the year – … [Read more...]