Not a sunset - the glow of a fire to the south west of Mt. Wellington. Poor picture quality is because of the smoke in the air Rain on the roof. What a wonderful sound! You can hear the entire state breathing a sigh of relief from our overworked firefighters to the humblest velvet worm deep underground. For weeks acrid smoke has blanketed the city obscuring both river and mountain as firefighters have fought to contain around fifty forest fires on the Central Plateau, in the South West, around the Huon and on the West Coast. Fortunately, there have been no lives lost to date and only a few homes, but many people were forced to evacuate and it is still an enormous tragedy given the loss of wildlife, trees and rare and slow growing plants. Unlike most of Australia whose bush does recover eventually after fire, this is not the case in our World Heritage Areas where the fires have consumed almost 200,000 hectares. Read Richard Flanagan's article in the Guard...
Practising Geographer - nature culture places people