Australia is facing its worse bush fire season for many years. Parts of NSW are badly hit with over 60 fires and at least 200 homes lost so far. There is a 300km fire front. There is no relief in site and the weather conditions are repeating itself with high heat and wind happening in the South (32C in South Australia today) that will hit NSW in a day or two.

It is not yet summer here.

Any and all good wishes are welcome. Our fire fighters are mainly volunteers. I pray they are and will be safe.

SA has had only 'small' fires so far. Our turn will be in a month or so. With heavy and unusual winter rains the fuel load is extreme.

It will be an interesting fire season.

As Dorothea MacKellar wrote:

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

But it has its problems!

Indeed, it was a bit apocalyptic in Sydney last Thursday - even some 100+km from the fires the city was bathed in an eerie orange light from mid afternoon on and the sun appeared blood red in the sky. About 24km closer, out where I live, there was a broiling black tube of smoke stretching across the sky. I haven't seen anything like it. As Cindy says, it's not even summer here and we already have what looks like the worst fire season on record. I'd make a comment about global warming but it's not the place.

Kudos to all the fire fighters!

That's awful! I'd not heard about this and my heart goes out to all the affected families!

Sometimes I can forget the devastating effects of natural disasters since I live in Michigan, USA. We don't get forest fires, earthquakes, hurricanes etc. Just the occasional tornado but none that affected my family. I'll never take that-or our firemen-for granted again!

Thanks for sharing that beautiful poem too.

And to think I want to live and die in Australia. My thoughts on those who fight the fire and those who face loss from it.

My thoughts are with everyone affected by this. I can only imagine how scary it must be to face such things, and the consequences of them.

My thoughts are with peoples living in regions that suffer with the effects of these fires. It's harsh in places like Aus and California.

Canada has forest fires, but, the thing is Canada is also a very wet country so the potential of the fires is matched by our ability to beat on them.

Part of the problem with the US in dealing with our lumber exports, is that we simply have such massive potential to produce lumber, and an ability to be casual about forest fires. To us, a 300k fire front is 'just some trees'. It takes days to drive through our wooded regions. Some provinces like Manitoba and Ontario are mostly trees. If we were to uproot the needed sum of trees to completely cover every square foot of Australia, we'd likely still have more than the US.

I hope no one in your circle of family and friends have any trouble from this Cindy.

I am in nsw but safely in the city.  The newspapers here are covered with titles like 'firestorm'- 'NSW burns' and other apocalyptic messages.
The moon was orange last night again.  Pretty dramatic stuff.

An Australian bush fire is a horrific thing.  The eucalyptus in the trees is highly flammable and causes them to explode- so fires can travel faster than you can sprint.  Combine this with underfunded and mainly voluntary fire fighting services with vast areas to cover and your looking at major disasters.

A state emergency services friend of mines said a few years back that terrorists dont need bombs in australia to take out our capital city- all you needed to do was light fires at the four compass points- there wasnt enough resources available to stop it.

At times like this, I wish I could send some of Blighty's infamous soggy weather your way.

The news this morning contained phrases like 'megablaze', because apparently a couple of forest fires might merge to form one enormous front that could threaten more heavily populated areas, including western Sydney.

Those affected are in my thoughts.

50% chance of rain today... hopefully it hits the affected areas before any major damage.

I hope these fires are over soon! I have a friend in Wodonga, and another in Wagga Wagga. Are these areas close to the fires? Hoping all people affected by the fires are keeping safe