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4 years ago ·6 min. reading time · ~100 ·
A well known greeting here in Oz, also the first line of a famous Slim Dusty song, and a fair enough question about your mate's welfare. But, in normal circumstances, woe betide anyone who responds with anything other than "Good, thanks", "Fair to middling", or "She'll be right, mate". Because the last thing that any of us really want to hear, about anyone we're casually enquiring after, is how they're actually going.
For those few readers, however, who may be genuinely interested in how things are going' here, and who reside outside the Land Down Under, or for those Aussie residents who've been head down and bum up, following the yellow brick road, and living under a rock, I'll be less than the customary optimistic and flippant, should you enquire as to the health and welfare of myself and my fellow occupants of this island "girt by sea".
So ask me, "How's things?" and I'm likely to reply, after the last several weeks of less than perfect and uncharacteristically searingly hot, dry and windy spring weather, with a tentative, "Things have been better, mate."
You see, not only has the weather been unseasonally "dry as a dead dingo's donger", with the drought continuing in our outback and interior bushland, but our coastal fringe is also affected. Indeed, much of our near coastal ground cover is tinder dry and starting to add to the already large number of bushfires being experienced. These fires have been devastating large tracts of interior bushland and have recently ventured uninvited into parts of our tree covered coastal rural areas and outer suburbia. For the first time in our written history, many homes have been destroyed in our small and sometimes less than remote towns and even suburbs.
Without a doubt, this summer (which now officially commences in a couple of days) will see a long and relentless bushfire season, the likes of which neither our European forefathers nor our people of the land have previously experienced. Indeed, we've been fully into an already relentless and unprecedented bushfire season now for the last two months, commencing in early spring instead of the characteristic summer season (December through February). What's more, there's no hint of rain to quench the thirst of this greedy rampaging maelstrom. Never before have we seen such huge fires take hold on so many fronts, creating, in effect, their own subclimate of superheat and wind, so that those in their path have little chance of staying and fighting the red all devouring monster, but are lucky to flee by vehicle with their lives and a few chosen possessions and pets.
Tell me once more that the prolonged and extended drought, which we are currently and unprecedentedly experiencing in our coastal regions, and which we have been experiencing in the bush and outback out west for many years now, isn't real evidence of climate change and I'll add to the voices of all those out there working on the land, or living in the fringes of our suburban sprawl, that "You're fair dinkum dreaming," or, "You've got rocks in your head," or, "You've got a couple of roos loose in the top paddock." We don't need the joint evidence of some 11,000 scientists from 153 countries around the world who have signed a scientific paper declaring a climate emergency, we have generations of farmers and their kinfolk who, unlike so many of our politicians and our industrialso-called leaders, have no sand in which to stick their heads.
Here in Oz we've known for many years that "hot, dry and windy weather increases the risk of fires starting", but what actually provides the spark and initiates the flame which will inevitably turn so quickly into a raging bushfire. Well, based on fire investigations performed over many years by our various fire authorities, as reported by Nick Kelvert in his recent article in ABC Science, " the majority of bushfires are started either intentionally or unintentionally by people ", rather than by nature phenomena.
Here are some commonly reported causes which I've summarised from the above referred ABC Science article, but have also added information gleaned from less detailed and, I suspect, less fully researched articles, which I have recently sought out and read:
In Australia, the government funded and staffed, fully operational Fire and Emergency Services (FES) only provide fire fighting coverage for major urban areas. It follows that there is no full time fire service that covers rural, semi-rural and many of the outer urban areas of our states and territories. Hence it falls upon our various state and territory volunteer Rural Fire Services (RFS) to provide this massive task. In Queensland alone (my home state) 93% of the land area is covered by volunteers when it comes to fire fighting expertise and availability.
Queensland has a total of 33,000 volunteer RFS members distributed into 1400 rural fire brigades, while NSW has over 74,000 volunteers.
These are the men and women who answer the call to support and protect their community, fighting flames up to 10m tall, often in smoke where you can hardly see more than a few metres in front of you, surrounded by fast moving sparks driven by fire-initiated gale force winds that a car can have a hard time keeping up with. Have a look over these photos sourced from our 9 News and ABC News channels, and understand why we thank our lucky stars that there's an army of stalwart citizens, willing to put their hands up and say,
"I'll be there. You can rely on me."
Blogging > Ken blog > Well Strike a Light!
A well known greeting here in Oz, also the first line of a famous Slim Dusty song, and a fair enough question about your mate's welfare. But, in normal circumstances, woe betide anyone who responds with anything other than "Good, thanks", "Fair to middling", or "She'll be right, mate". Because the last thing that any of us really want to hear, about anyone we're casually enquiring after, is how they're actually going.
For those few readers, however, who may be genuinely interested in how things are going' here, and who reside outside the Land Down Under, or for those Aussie residents who've been head down and bum up, following the yellow brick road, and living under a rock, I'll be less than the customary optimistic and flippant, should you enquire as to the health and welfare of myself and my fellow occupants of this island "girt by sea".
So ask me, "How's things?" and I'm likely to reply, after the last several weeks of less than perfect and uncharacteristically searingly hot, dry and windy spring weather, with a tentative, "Things have been better, mate."
You see, not only has the weather been unseasonally "dry as a dead dingo's donger", with the drought continuing in our outback and interior bushland, but our coastal fringe is also affected. Indeed, much of our near coastal ground cover is tinder dry and starting to add to the already large number of bushfires being experienced. These fires have been devastating large tracts of interior bushland and have recently ventured uninvited into parts of our tree covered coastal rural areas and outer suburbia. For the first time in our written history, many homes have been destroyed in our small and sometimes less than remote towns and even suburbs.
Without a doubt, this summer (which now officially commences in a couple of days) will see a long and relentless bushfire season, the likes of which neither our European forefathers nor our people of the land have previously experienced. Indeed, we've been fully into an already relentless and unprecedented bushfire season now for the last two months, commencing in early spring instead of the characteristic summer season (December through February). What's more, there's no hint of rain to quench the thirst of this greedy rampaging maelstrom. Never before have we seen such huge fires take hold on so many fronts, creating, in effect, their own subclimate of superheat and wind, so that those in their path have little chance of staying and fighting the red all devouring monster, but are lucky to flee by vehicle with their lives and a few chosen possessions and pets.
Tell me once more that the prolonged and extended drought, which we are currently and unprecedentedly experiencing in our coastal regions, and which we have been experiencing in the bush and outback out west for many years now, isn't real evidence of climate change and I'll add to the voices of all those out there working on the land, or living in the fringes of our suburban sprawl, that "You're fair dinkum dreaming," or, "You've got rocks in your head," or, "You've got a couple of roos loose in the top paddock." We don't need the joint evidence of some 11,000 scientists from 153 countries around the world who have signed a scientific paper declaring a climate emergency, we have generations of farmers and their kinfolk who, unlike so many of our politicians and our industrialso-called leaders, have no sand in which to stick their heads.
Here in Oz we've known for many years that "hot, dry and windy weather increases the risk of fires starting", but what actually provides the spark and initiates the flame which will inevitably turn so quickly into a raging bushfire. Well, based on fire investigations performed over many years by our various fire authorities, as reported by Nick Kelvert in his recent article in ABC Science, " the majority of bushfires are started either intentionally or unintentionally by people ", rather than by nature phenomena.
Bushfire Ignition-Source-Ratio Pie-Chart
Here are some commonly reported causes which I've summarised from the above referred ABC Science article, but have also added information gleaned from less detailed and, I suspect, less fully researched articles, which I have recently sought out and read:
In Australia, the government funded and staffed, fully operational Fire and Emergency Services (FES) only provide fire fighting coverage for major urban areas. It follows that there is no full time fire service that covers rural, semi-rural and many of the outer urban areas of our states and territories. Hence it falls upon our various state and territory volunteer Rural Fire Services (RFS) to provide this massive task. In Queensland alone (my home state) 93% of the land area is covered by volunteers when it comes to fire fighting expertise and availability.
Queensland has a total of 33,000 volunteer RFS members distributed into 1400 rural fire brigades, while NSW has over 74,000 volunteers.
These are the men and women who answer the call to support and protect their community, fighting flames up to 10m tall, often in smoke where you can hardly see more than a few metres in front of you, surrounded by fast moving sparks driven by fire-initiated gale force winds that a car can have a hard time keeping up with. Have a look over these photos sourced from our 9 News and ABC News channels, and understand why we thank our lucky stars that there's an army of stalwart citizens, willing to put their hands up and say,
"I'll be there. You can rely on me."The author of the above, Ken Boddie , besides being a sometime poet and occasional writer, is an enthusiastic photographer, rarely leisure-travelling without his Canon, and loves to interact with other like-minded people with diverse interests.
Ken's three day work week (part time commitment) as a consulting engineer allows him to follow his photography interests, and to plan trips to an ever increasing list of countries and places of scenic beauty and cultural diversity.
#Australia #Oz #ABC Science #Light #RFS
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(continued from below) The longer we wait to reduce emissions worldwide, the worse things will get, and the more difficult it will be to adapt. We are past the point of arguing the finer points and the why's and wherefore's of the model's performance and predictability, for, as I've already said, there are many of us already living this problem. Why continue to count the deck chairs on the Titanic, when the damned ship's sinking? We need to plug the hole and hope that keep us afloat, instead of procrastinating endlessly about how quickly the water is flowing in, and from where, and why.
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Ken, as Don said in his comment, I don't visit beBee often recently, but your posts are always the first I stop by. I'm one of those few readers, who are genuinely interested in how things are going' down under. :) Climate change affects us all. In Croatia also, human-caused fires are the most common either caused by human negligence or malice intentions. Climate is changed evidently. In Croatia, the last two years have been extreme in terms of cold, heat and rain. What I said in my comment on your previous post is that I am not fully convinced about global warming which becomes a refrain of modern times. The basis of the idea is that humans, through their activities create the conditions of global warming and thus become enemy to the life systems of our planet and themself. To prevent this from happening, various restrictive laws and rules have been introduced, one of them is birth control. However, discussions among experts about whether Earth is warming or possibly cooling down, have never ended. According to some recent scientific research, global efforts to improve air quality by developing cleaner fuels and burning less coal could end up harming our planet by reducing the number of aerosols in the atmosphere, and by doing so, diminishing aerosols' cooling ability to offset global warming. I'm sure that such scientific "skirmishes" are not of importance to the people affected by these catastrophic fires. They demand answers and accuse the government of a lack of taking action to combat climate change. I wish I could send you somehow downpour happening right now in Split. Be safe my friend.
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I don't visit beBee often but when I do it is to read stuff from folks like Ken Boddie. If I were able I'd be pleased to ship some of our snow down under. Be safe friend.
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Ken, I feel your pain. Here, on the west coast of the USA we've just come through one of the most devastating summers of fire like you are going into and now air traffic across the continent is being scrambled by unprecedented snow fall in the Rockies. Any idiot that claims global worming "ain't happenin'' " is a just that, an idiot. And so it goes.
4 years ago #1
Real nasty stuff Ken Boddie Feel for you guys as we connect via the family Downunder. Pray the rains come soon for you folk (as well as for our own gutted farmers) in this world gone nuts.Perhaps Scotty, the 7m high equine wonder, at this year's Boonah ‘Clydesdale Spectacular’ June show, ...
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