Snow?! Pshaw!

I left the house this morning to walk my friend Kim to the airport shuttle. We were greeted by a cool, crisp, sunny, seemingly carefree morning. The only indication that there was anything amiss was a slight campfire-like smell in the air. It took me a few minutes to piece together that it was from the 12 bushfires currently raging in the State of Victoria (8 within 100 miles of Melbourne and the closest being about 35 miles).

There have been stories of property loss, people dying, cattle dying, thousands of hectares of land destroyed and beautiful parkland consumed all over the news but until it actually hits one of your senses, it might as well be on the other side of the world (especially being in the confines of the city).

I imagine this must be commonplace for people around here but for me, coming from Massachusetts, the land of the occasional hurricane, Nor’easter or REALLY cold day, this is a new experience. The crazy thing is that Southern Victoria is one of the wetter part of the country!