Black Saturday; Eight Months On

A couple of weeks ago, we went down to visit my sister in Healesville. We decided to go the back way, down country roads and through small towns (it looked shorter on the map, but took us twice as long....whole other story) It turned out to be a tour of the devastating Black Saturday fires that raged in February. Our home town was hit hard, sixty homes and countless more buildings burnt to the ground, and one tragic loss of life. The fire was about two kilometres away from our house, it burnt into suburbia, randomly choosing one house while the next escaped, it's unbelievable more homes weren't lost. It burnt right up to the Hospital where Liam was born, can you imagine the job they had evacuating patients that day...
We drove down through Redesdale, Kilmore and district, more burnt out homes and property, but after some good winter rain green grass and new shoots from the trees had appeared. Then we continued on through Whittlesea to Kinglake, oh my god, black mountains as far as the eye could see, no green tinges. Driving through the small town brought tears to our eyes, the loss of life was devastating, and that's all I could think about. Australians aren't overly patriotic, but every house, those still standing and those burnt to the ground, all had an Aussie flag hanging. Everywhere you look, hundreds of kilometres of new fencing, new sign posts, dangerous trees along roads being cut down. They still have a big job to do, and the next fire season is only a month away. When we arrived at Leah's, to look at the blacken hills surrounding them makes you realise how close it was, too close.

More Visitors

Last weekend our friends Mick and Bev came up from the "big smoke" to visit, it was so lovely to see them both. Bev had lots of cuddles of Liam, Ryan was a bit harder to cuddle, it's that three year old attitude (who says it's terrible two's) Fortunately Liam didn't throw up, unlike Ryan who drenched poor Mick when he was about 10 days old. Sorry about that Mick. Looking forward to catching up again soon!!