Large parts of Australia are in drought & country towns are running out of water, making it harder in some places to fight the fires. Friends live in a small coastal village with tank water, fortunately they have a lake which was used to save the town, but other places have not been so lucky. Another friend lives in Cobargo - see thread BruceD created yesterday.

One of the best known poems in Australia My Country by Dorothea Mackeller has a line that everyone remembers about droughts & flooding rains, but a later verse that no-one remembers mentions fire, & the current fire season started much earlier & the fires have been bigger & longer lasting. We even have tropical forests from Gonwandaland burning that have never burnt in millions of years. (link to this story somewhere above)

news links, cartoons & memes - a burnt out fire warning sign, photoshopped image of a silo with pic of prime minister & his famous lump of coal. Silos have been decorated all around Australia for many years, & a couple of years ago Morrison brought a smaller lacquered piece of coal into Parliament, supplied by some mining group & cartoonists have utilised the coal ever since.)   

sandra