7th December 2019

In my very first blog, I noted that my first experience on arriving in Sydney was to smell smoke; and several other blog entries refer to the bushfires too. Well, the bushfires are still a major problem here in New South Wales, but also in Queensland, Victoria and South Australia too. Near Sydney, four bushfires have joined to make a mega-fire, which is out of control at the moment. The fire-fighters try to stop these fires by ‘back-burning’: curiously, this means they start new fires! But what these back-burning fires do is halt the bigger fires, because when they reach the back-burned lines, there is nothing left to burn and so they can’t move forward. It’s very clever!

When we flew into Sydney from Brisbane during the week, we could see the smoke plumes from the bushfires really clearly from the plane windows. They were enormous, stretching from the fires inland, right out into the sea. And the smoke haze over Sydney has been really bad for days now. When we landed, everything that reflected sunlight (windows, cars, roof-tiles), reflected it in an eerie blood-red. We took some photos from the plane (see below) but they don’t quite capture the immensity of what is happening.

There are now bushfires north of us, south of us, and west of us – and the sea is to the east. But we are not in any danger, because our little apartment is in the city and surrounded by concrete. I am going on a ‘writing retreat’ to a bush camp tomorrow, with colleagues from Wollongong University. They have advised us to bring cotton clothing, including underwear, and leather shoes, just in case of fire. I have no leather shoes with me and no long-sleeved cotton top, so I guess I’ll just have to run fast. To be honest, I’m rather more anxious about potential close encounters with dangers of the reptilian variety, or arachnids (spiders)!

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