Fires!

This summer has been a particularly bad one for fires. We've had lots of 40 degrees + days that have really dried everything out. Combine this with windy days and it makes for bad fire weather! We had a fire threat a couple of weeks ago (in the national park up near the Belgrave shops, luckily the wind was blowing away from us and it was contained pretty quickly!) but on Monday we were faced with a pretty serious fire. It started in Birdsland reserve which is very close to our property and which kind of runs behind our property as well.

I had left to go out shopping and when I came out of the shops I heard about it on the radio. They were issuing an urgent threat message for our area and when I looked up to the mountain I could see heaps of smoke. I half panicked and headed back to our place to get the bag of important stuff (photos and stuff that couldn't be replaced) and the animals. Looking back it was quite stupid of me to go back but I couldn't stand the thought of leaving this stuff behind! And yes, we have contingency plans should this happen again, the bag of stuff will now be permantly located elsewhere during fire season! Anyway, I grabbed the stuff and our next door neighbour came round with a cage for the chooks. I tried to get the bunnies but was a bit stressed out and one of them jumped out of the cage while the lid was open :( Anyway, we headed to my Mum and Dad's. It took us over an hour to get down the mountain though as everyone was trying to leave at once.

We ended up staying the night at Mum and Dad's as they had closed our road and we weren't going to head back anyway with the fire threat still around (the wind had changed direction by this stage and was blowing the fire back towards us). The CFA worked hard on the fire and by 5am it was contained - we were happy to wake up to that news!! We headed home the next morning to a house that smelt like smoke, but we were just glad to still have a house to come back to! Now the yard has been raked and the gutters cleared. We just need to work on getting our roof sprinkler to work! Oh, and we were pleased to find Goofy the bunny still hanging around our property (just have to actually catch her now!!)

Friday is forecast to be another hot day with bad conditions for fires so fingers crossed that doesn't eventuate!