Fires and floods

After writing my post yesterday, I followed the news as the toll from the Victorian Bush fires rose to 35, 65, 84, 104 and have just heard via the 10.30 NZ news while talking to sister Kay on Skype, that the toll has now reached 130+. I have not seen any TV here today nor heard any news reports as I have neither a TV or radio at my place. I did watch two news specials last night and what I saw was more than I can comprehend. Whole towns are ash and rubble. There are cars burnt where they stopped and one can only imagine the people in them are included in the death toll. There are some amazing stories of survival but more of devastating loss. Witnessing the pain the survivors were going through, the shock and disbelief as some of them tried to make sense of their losses was enough to bring tears to my eyes. It was made more poignant as the news people at the report I watched at 10pm, had just been told that one of their own, a retired news reader - Brian Naylor and his wife were two of the casualties. There was a sensativity shown in some of the reporting yesterday when news often looks for the sensationalising of situations like this, that somehow made it seem more impacting to witness.

Alongside that, NZ losing the cricket seemed pretty small potatoes. I did get to see an amount of the game and it was a good match with what I would call a narrow loss. At least it keeps the competition more interesting.

With Australia being such a land of contrasts, as I was watching the news last night, after the reports on the fires, it then went to reports on some very severe flooding in North Queensland with 12m floodwaters south of Darwin (if I remember correctly) There was also a story of a 5yr old thought to be taken by a crocodile as he and his brother walked beside a flooding river, and two more people caught in the floods in a vehicle also probably eaten. Not something one has to worry about in NZ (crocodiles, not floods!).

The fires have touched people here on site. Some have family close to where the fires are - it got to 25k from the CBD of Melbourne, and one of the staff has many ex-pupils in the Kings Lake area and surrounding areas. Most likely there will be people he knows amongst those who have lost their lives.

It is a full moon here tonight and just glorious with the moon a perfect circle and large. The evening had a pinky tinge on the horizon at sunset against a blue background of the sky. We are due for some temps in the 40's later in the week - its a comfortable 22C inside my kitchen with the aircon on at 11.30pm at night so all is well.