Bushfires: A Tragedy

"Australia's Darkest Day"

"The worst natural disaster in Australian history"

"The greatest loss of Australian life during peacetime"

These are a few of the many jaw dropping headlines floating around Melbourne as the bushfires continue to rage through Victoria and New South Wales. It all began on Saturday, when the scorching temperatures combined with tremendous winds created a perfect haven for this hellish destruction.

While the causes of many of the fires are still undetermined, arson has been suspected for at least some of them and is only now being confirmed in a few cases. Anyone convicted of these crimes is to be considered a mass murderer as there have been 181 confirmed deaths up to this point. They expect this number to "rise steeply" as more towns are uncovered. The coroner is expecting 300 bodies.

Arson has been ruled out for the largest fire so far in Kingslake, and for many smaller fires around Victoria. Kingslake and Marysville are reportedly completely destroyed. Kane and I went to Marysville for our birthday last year. So it goes.

It seems that most people have died either while trying to escape (crashing their car in the smoke, smoke inhalation while trying to escape, car being overtaken by flames while driving) or as the fire approached their town too quickly to escape. One man's account described a huge crash sound that was the fire coming over the nearby hill, and only seconds after that he was being burnt by the flames. He somehow managed to escape. Obviously many others did not.

One woman said she heard someone describe the sound of the fire as being like a locomotive. She corrected this by saying it was like a locomotive the size of the horizon; a great roaring that consumes the universe. She huddled in the river under a wet blanket with her daughter. I cannot imagine the fear, intensity, or heat.

Many of those who have escaped with their lives have lost loved ones, pets, homes; entire lives. News hour on tv this week has been grim.

The outpouring of support from the community has been tremendous. Large companies are donating millions, and the Red Cross is collecting from civilians. Over $46 million has been raised so far, which is incredible. I encourage anyone who can to make a donation to help the people affected. Over 750 homes have been completely destroyed.

As mentioned previously, Kane and I are near the fires, but far from any real danger. They are still burning today, but many of them are now under control. The majority of the casualties happened in the first blast on Saturday when the weather was so heinous and entire towns were overtaken. The weather is cool now, even a bit of a sprinkle today, which hopefully is helping the firefighters. All those affected are in our hearts and thoughts for the weeks to come.

115° F - Come On

I think this is the beginning of the apocalypse. At least, I imagine that it might feel a bit like this. The heat is unbearable, just like last week but now with an added symptom of world-endliness: extreme winds. I made the mistake today of asking Kane to accompany me to the City Museum. It's right in the CBD and it's one of the many "tourist" attractions in this city that we've never bothered to attend.

We have Marc and Alana's car, so I thought it wouldn't be too bad since we'd be in the air conditioned car on the way there, a quick stint in the open to get into the museum, then we'd be exploring the undoubtedly air conditioned facilities for a couple hours, then repeat backwards. The assumption that this would be tolerable may have been correct if it were, say 95° outside, maybe even 105° with a breeze. This assumption was incorrect with 115° temperatures and body-slamming, bird-inhibiting, volcano-blast-like winds.

Second mistake: parking the car about 3 blocks from the museum. Seemingly an innocuous choice, but again, in the conditions, nearly fatal. Getting into the museum wasn't too bad since we caught the free tram from the car. The museum was not air conditioned as far as I could tell, but it was relatively cool since it's the old Treasury building; a stone bunker from the 1800's (mental note: probably not a bad place to be during an actual apocalypse). The place was nice but really nothing terribly special.

As we left to head back to the car we were accosted by continual bombarement of head-on, fire-hot wind. Kane's hat blew off. Dirt was lodged into my eyes, nose, ears, etc, etc. Airborn leaves, sand, and other debris pelted us vigorously on our three block journey back to the car. We couldn't really speak for fear of opening our mouths and having a bird or plastic bag blow in. I felt utterly helpless.

It took, quite honestly, about seven minutes to trudge from the museum to the car and as we pried open the locks and melted into a smaller, more personal oven, we both started sweating. The massive winds had kept any previous sweat instantly evaporated before we could detect it. But now that we were in the car we were both completely drenched. Walking for seven minutes in this weather was equivalent to riding a bike up a hill for hours. I rarely can understand how someone can die of exposure. It's not hard to imagine on a day like this.

Amongst all this, I had a variety of thoughts, most of which included, "Dear Lord, get me to the car, get me to the car now", but some of which included things like, "How can those pigeons be fighting over a hamburger bun when it's this hot outside?", and "At what temperature does metal start to melt?". Actually the person I felt most sorry for on this fine day, was the pretty asian woman stepping out of the fancy car in her wedding dress. This miserable day happened to be the one she and her mate chose to remember for the rest of their lives. I think that's guaranteed. I commented to Kane that I would personally rather have monsoon rain on my wedding day than heat/wind like this*.

On our way home one of the traffic lights was off, which made me start to fear the power going out like last Friday's heat wave madness. And that's how my brain stumbled onto the whole apocalypse thing - what if the power went out, then the water? What the heck would we do? I live on the 14th floor in a huge city with millions of people, not exactly a situation where you can make it too long without a visit to the grocery store. City people effectively have no survival skills outside the confines of our urban environments, which is a bit odd and a bit scary.

But since the world was not ending, we proceeded to arrive safely back at our apartment, worship the air conditioning, take multiple showers to cool down (and get the dust off), and continue with our internet-based, happy lives. This extreme heat did inspire me to do something I had never done before: put ice in my orange juice. They always offer ice in your OJ on planes, and I'm like, "Uh, no, the juice is already cold, why do I want to water it down?". But today was good cause for change. I still don't know why they offer the ice in your milk on the plane though, why would I ever want to water down my milk? That's just gross.

To be fair, the rest of this past week has had particularly fine weather; it's been sunny and warm (you might have considered it to be hot, but certainly not life-threateningly so) with generally no awful surprises. Today was just another freak spike in temperature, a fad that I hope is rapidly going out of style here in Melbourne.


*Note to the wedding gods: For my hypothetical wedding in the distant future, I would technically prefer to have perfect sunny 80° with a light breeze, not either of the aforementioned heinous weather conditions.

Heat Wave

You're sitting on the couch after coming home on a Friday night at the end of a long, hot week. The weekend has finally arrived. You have plopped down onto your couch to bask in the glory of the air conditioning, the only thing saving your brain from boiling on this 100 degree evening. Pondering the pros and cons of ordering pizza versus taking a catnap, your laptop screen suddenly dims slightly, almost imperceptibly. Before you can investigate, the air conditioning sputters and stops and the fan slows to a halt. The power's out. Crap.

This week has been a record breaking heat wave for Melbourne and the consensus is: it sucks. Monday began with the promise of "high temperatures" later in the week, but, since I never trust weather people (especially in Melbourne -- the gods can't even predict the weather here) I paid little attention. Come Wednesday, I was crying uncle. Thursday was the spike with midday temperatures hitting over 110 F. Walking outside was like opening your oven, but without the delicious baking smells. Just the foul stench of frying concrete and communal sadness. And actually, I believe Alana put it best when she updated her Facebook status to say "Alana now knows what it feels like to be inside a hair dryer". Indeed.

I've been thinking about blogging to complain about the weather for some time, and the weather has really goaded me into it now. At a glance of statistical averages, this place appears to have similar weather to California (or at least where I've lived in CA). The winter is cold-ish, no snow, and the summer is hot-ish. No major extremes and generally similar seasonal highs and lows. Well, though the averages may appear the same, the weather that creates these averages is not. Two 50 degree days averages the same as a 100 degree day and a 0 degree day, and that's the problem we're looking at here. The winter here is cold. For the whole time. No nice respites of warmth or sun like in California; no sunny days that feel-warm-except-for-the-wind; no mercy. Cold for three straight months, night and day. Miserable.

And now we're in Summer where all rules are off. For example, the day isn't necessarily hotter than the night. We've had plenty of days so far where the morning is cool, afternoon is hot, and evening is hotter. This is clearly not allowed and I would like a call from the Ref on this one. News flash: the nights are supposed to be cool, the days warm and sunny -- those are the rules. Some deviation is fine, but flagrant disregard for the Rules of the Weather is not tolerated. And yet here I am, in my undies, sticking to my plastic chair, bowing in reverence to the A/C on a Saturday night.

As for this particular heat wave, apparently the worst in recorded history for Melbourne (they started recording in 1880) [ref], it's been quite devastating for the city. It seems that they're not equipped to handle this sort of occurrence. About a quarter of all train services have been canceled "because of train breakdowns, lines buckling in the blistering heat, or power blackouts" [ref] which basically caused chaos for commuters this week. At least 19 people, mostly elderly, have simply perished in the heat; bush fires are raging and have claimed at least 10 houses so far; and thousands of people were without power yesterday [ref]. Obviously we were amongst the thousands without power and, actually, compared to the other occurrences, I suppose that was not really that bad.

I believe this was our outage: "An explosion at an electrical substation in Melbourne’s outer suburbs cut power to half a million homes overnight while at Crown casino about 5,000 workers, gamblers and restaurant patrons were evacuated when power was lost and a back-up generator failed" [ref]. At least we weren't in the elevator when it happened. I suppose this is the chance we take in giving three million people in a 100 mile radius access to A/C anytime they want; when we all go for the ON button at the same time, things explode. Our counter to this unfortunate-ness was to immediately run crying into Marc and Alana's loving, air-conditioned arms. They were actually going to a concert that night, but they graciously came to our rescue by picking us up in Little Red and depositing us in their cool, electricity-inclined apartment. We watched movies and ordered Indian food delivery for the night to quell our sadness.

It was actually quite amusing because we ran to their house so quickly that we didn't even realize that, with Marc and Alana gone, we had no way of leaving their house as we couldn't lock the doors and actually even had to jump their front gate to get the Indian food delivery since we didn't have the key. Additionally, we had no way to get home for the night. We were duped like kids offered candy from a man in a large, window-less van. Except that our thoughtlessness led to a night in an air conditioned prison with an X-Box and unlimited movies and shows to watch. And that's how Marc and Alana saved Christmas. Or our Friday night, but that's sort of like Christmas, right? And they ended up coming home at a reasonable hour (around 11pm) to take us home. The power was back on upon arrival (excellent) and gauging from my reset alarm clock, it had turned back on approximately 10 minutes after we had left. But, I still think we made the right choice in leaving rather than potentially melting in our sauna of an apartment.

Some folks I also feel sorry for are the people competing in the Australian Open this week; I simply cannot imagine playing tennis in direct sunlight with temperatures over 110 F. It truly seems impossible. Novak Djokovic, last year's champion, opted out of the rest of the tournament because of the heat [ref]. Poor guy. Better than suffering heat stroke, I guess. A guy at work was telling us that he, his wife, and their four kids spent all night at their local mall since they don't have air conditioning at their house. And a woman at work reported almost shoulder to shoulder crowds at the beaches every night this week. I even saw a claim in one of the newspapers that some beaches were starting to lose crowds during the day because the sand was too hot to walk on and burned people's feet! And, worst of all, I was so hot that I actually willingly wore a dress to work on Friday. Clearly this has gotten out of hand.

So that's been our week; an epic battle against an unbeatable enemy. At least we're all on the same side here. That is one notion I've really enjoyed about the heat, at least on a philosophical level: everyone sympathizes with the heat. You don't get any sympathy in the winter, hardly. Everyone's cold, no one seems to care but me. But get the temperature over 100 degrees and suddenly it's the topic of every conversation, the headline on every newspaper, the bane of everyone's existence. We can, for once, all band together to battle a common foe, even though our petty insults and only mildly effective air conditioning units are surely no match. A war without guns or tanks or planes. And we're all in it, all together, with no choice in the matter. That's the Bright Side that I have found in these desperate times.

I think the worst of it is over; we can begin clean up and recovery and finding other crap to talk about. You fought a good, clean fight, Heat Wave, but you can't keep us down that easily.

Summertime In Tasmania

There is definitely something wrong here. Yes, that is a snowman, albeit a small one. And no, I'm not quite as happy as I look about it. It is the dead of summer and there is snow on the mountain tops. Down below the mountains, it's been raining off and on with highs of around 55 and lows near freezing. A flimsy fleece is the warmest clothing I brought, a "light jacket" in case of "cool summer nights". You will find Kane roaming the nearly frozen lands in shorts. At least he's upgraded the flip flops to athletic shoes and ankle socks.

The first half of this trip looked promising (weather-wise), but the latter half has turned on us, betraying us with our short sleeved shirts and swimsuits in hand. Rain and cold forced (ok, maybe coerced) us away from our intended hike around Dove Lake yesterday, and last night was completely sleepless for me since we're in a tiny, non-heated room with bunk beds (hence I don't even get Kane to keep me warm). But alas, we continue on.

I am complaining now because I am currently experiencing this blight of cold, but I'm sure it will not define our trip. We've seen some really cool stuff and have a lot to report about Ol' Tassie, which, as mentioned before, will be more thoroughly blogged upon our return. For now, I thought I'd send a Tas update and complain to the internet a bit about how freaking cold I am. It makes me feel better, ok? ;-)

Warmth

What is this? This yellow light on my face? This feeling of being happy, like I'm all tucked into bed at night? This sudden desire to take off 2 of my 3 jackets?

Spring has apparently, as they say, sprung. Thank the good lord. Yesterday and today it was warm. And not just central-coast-in-the-winter, decently-warm-in-the-middle-of-the-day-but-still-frosty-as-crap-at-night warm, but warm even at night. This is a coveted rarity in my life. We left work yesterday and it wasn't freezing. I was not unhappy waiting for the tram to come, at least not from the temperature. Today walking to the tram I actually took off my jacket and let the sun touch my arms. My arms! Out in the world! People could see them!

Same thing tonight - we went to dinner and I only wore one jacket. This is an obligatory jacket for me; normal people were in mini skirts and t-shirts. A one-jacket night is pretty much the best I ever get, and I was thankful. We even actually took a stroll down the dock at night, hand in hand. And I was not shivering. It was amazing, I wish it were always like this.

It was really probably only 70 or 75 degrees or so, but it felt heavenly. Liberating; a weight lifted. Release from months of oppression. Long awaited discharge from an undeserved prison sentence. The winter was colder than we had expected. I hope that it is over now.

And speaking of weather, shout out to my Texas family - stay safe over there, show old Ike that Texans won't take no guff...

Not Much

What have you been up to? Not much. What's new? Not a whole lot. Anything exciting happening? Nope, wouldn't say so. Sorry to disappoint, but not much is going on right now. I feel like, not only because I moved to another country but also because I choose to periodically report on our experiences and life in general via this blog, that I'm somehow obligated to have something to write about. It's just not always the case. We're boring. I do appreciate you being here just to read about our boring life though, thanks. Shout out to Sue - dad tells me you read often. Hi from Australia.

We didn't do much this last weekend, but next weekend is our belated birthday celebration, to take place at The Cumberland Villa Spa in Marysville, which appears to be about an hour or hour and a half west-ish of Melbourne: http://www.thecumberland.com.au. We got the "Romantic Spa Getaway" package including a room for Saturday night, fancy dinner, breakfast and massages. It's going to be awesome. Will report on that next weekend.

Today I happened to be near a VicRoads office - DMV equivalent - so I made an appointment to get my Victoria driver's license. We've put it off forever partially because we were too lazy to find out info about it and partially because we were too lazy to go to a VicRoads office to make an appointment. Plus, I guess we really haven't needed licenses up to this point. Anyway, supposedly it's a simple procedure whereby I prove that I am in fact myself and then pay them money to let me drive in their country. Hopefully it goes that smoothly. I was hoping that the DMV here would be an improvement on the DMVs from home, but alas, the insanity that is the department of motor vehicles is ubiquitous. The only difference is that the clerks spoke English as a first language which both surprised and amazed me. In California (at least in the Bay Area) English as a second language is a requirement and, actually, may be the only requirement to be a DMV employee. Although being impossible to understand, very slow, and extremely crotchety doesn't hurt either. We'll see how it goes getting the actual license - my appointment isn't until August 21.

All else is well in Australia - the days are getting longer now THANK GOODNESS. I'm pretty sick of the dark and even more tired of the cold. If you haven't heard it straight from me yet, the winter here is pretty much the same as the winter in California (where we're from at least). Generally cloudy and crappy with random sunny days interspersed. Colder temperatures in the day (40s-60s sometimes maybe venturing up to 70s) and freaking freezing at night (30s-50s). And windy. I dislike the wind the most. Needless to say I'm freezing often. But it will pass and it could be worse. NO NEED to brag about the excellent California (or insert other location here) weather right now. I prefer sympathy, understanding, or cash, thank you very much.

The Wind

It's windy today. You think, so what, it's just wind. But this is actually wind enough to blog about, in my opinion at least. It has nothing to do with me being bored as well...nothing at all.

We left our window open last night in hopes of somewhat avoiding the funk with which a night of two sleeping humans seems to fill a room (or apartment). As a result, we awoke at something-early-am to the sound of our blinds being relentlessly whipped by the early gusts. "What is that," asked Kane. "It's the blinds, we left the window open," I respond. We can typically sleep through anything, but it really sounded like someone had broken into our home and was spastically frolicking in a mountain of Hot Wheels toy cars on our living room floor.

We went for our morning jog and were met with a mean head wind on the way back - so rude. We saw plastic bags flying 50 feet in the air around us (and yes, it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. American Beauty, anybody?) I thought it would die down, but it's been pounding on our building all day. We first noticed the extremity of the situation just before our jog; I re-opened the sliding glass door to air out the place while we were out and my ears popped just as the door cracked open. Then, as I went to exit the apartment, I was almost unable to open our front door due to the ridiculous pressure coming in through the window, holding the door shut.

Throughout the day, it has sounded like a veritable hurricane is passing through our apartment (this is with the windows shut). I swear, it's worse in here than it is even outside. I'm not sure if it's because of our A/C being connected by a fan to the outside, or if our balcony draws some sort of magnificent wind eddie, or if our building is just the most non-aerodynamic structure in the world, but it's freaking loud in here.

So, the wind has been blowing on and on all day long, but it's really the booms and the creaks that are the scariest. We're on the 14th floor, so I'm not sure how much sound, and wind for that matter, gets exaggerated at this height, but every once in a while there are huge booms that come from inside the building somewhere. Sometimes the sound is smaller and appears to come from the ducts in the walls/ceiling of our apartment. In these cases it sounds like there is a kid with a Nerf baseball bat trying to get out of an aluminum box in our ceiling. It's not scary just more strange, especially when you add that picture to it.

Then there are the big booms that must come from somewhere else in the building like the elevator shafts or giant ducts in the hallway or something. These sound like the kid in the aluminum box has been dropped 7 stories onto an immense aluminum bass drum. Then there are the cracking noises which sometimes sound like the expanding or contracting of glass or steel mullions and sometimes sound like the concrete slab of our floor yielding to the storm and dropping us, along with our building, neatly into the harbor.

I swear, I must watch too many movies, but with every *pannng* or *bwooonk* of the building I get some sort of Die Hard-Matrix-Indiana Jones scene playing out in my head. It typically involves the dramatic structural failure and collapse of our building (spalling concrete crumbling, yielding steel creaking, sparks, steam, flickering lights: the works) and subsequent, improbable yet completely possible, valiant action-hero escape of Kane and I to safety. In these daydreams I always remember to grab my laptop, just as Will Smith grabs the cat at the last second as the house is demoed in I Robot. Memories are precious, people.

So that has been our day. Oohing and aahing (and flinching) at the sounds of our building screaming in the wind. We look outside to see that the city is covered with what looks like smog, but since it has only showed up today, we assume it's the dirt and crap that has been kicked up by this gnarly wind. Since it's Melbourne, I anticipate completely different weather conditions tomorrow, whatever they may be, and I look forward to them.

Raining

It's raining. The weather is surprisingly like California - not predictable at all. Seasons? Bah, why listen to seasons. Supposedly the weather here is known for constantly changing. No two days are the same practically. They do seem to have an affinity for bowling here, perhaps we'll bowl. A good indoor sport. Plus, something I can beat Kane at (thank you Holiday Bowl).

The first time we went to Holiday Bowl together (Kane and I), we bowled a few games. I beat him the first, then the second and then he said, "we're not leaving until I beat you". after the fourth of fifth game, he gave up and agreed I was better at bowling than he was. Which is funny because I'm not actually very good at all, I usually get around 110 or so. But Kane happens to be worse. I think it's the only thing that I'm better at than he is, so you don't have to feel sorry for him or anything.

Ok, we're going to mope around in the rain today. Sitting in our apartment watching Heroes Season 1 (excellent, by the way). Our laptops come Monday, so, should be able to steal some library internet next week and blog a little more. Until then, have a good weekend.

Hottest New Year Ever

Happy New Year everyone, we beat you here, haha! Kane and I spent most of New Year's Eve day in our apartment trying to avoid the ridiculous heat. I think it was a record high for that day. It was about 107 in the day and our apartment wasn't much cooler. It's a dry heat (to answer your question dad) but it's still too hot to handle, even for me. Our apartment was an oven; the stagnant heat was choking. We watched movies, ate food, and tried to nap, sweating through everything. I know I hate to be cold, but being really hot is perhaps equally as awful. It seems the only way I can relieve either is to shower and that is only temporary relief.

Anyway, we stayed in until about 10:30pm when we ventured to the CBD to see the fireworks. The trains were all free which was nice, and the ride there wasn't even too packed. We had hoped that the heat would subside with the sun out of sight, but alas, no relief. It was easily over 90 up until we came home, maybe even up around 100. Not much of a breeze either. Enough complaining - the fireworks were nice and were different from the ones in the USA. At home, I recall a large fireworks display that is high in the air and everyone crowds around for miles to see. Here, they did probably half a dozen shows (or maybe more) all along the river, spaced maybe half mile apart each. Each show was smaller, closer to the ground, but anywhere you stood you could see shows all around you. The larger high rise buildings had fireworks on their roofs. It was quite a sight. I counted about 8 displays that could be seen from where we were standing. Also, personal fireworks are illegal and virtually do not exist in the hands of evil teen agers (or boys of all ages), so there were no unwelcome explosions on the street or near our house. Except for the ridiculous crowds, it was rather enjoyable. So, happy new year everyone, I hope you had a good time wherever you were.

On a less exciting note, I had an encounter with a bug last night that I found notable. We have been very fortunate so far, having seen so few bugs in this supposedly insect-ridden country. I think it's probably because we have been in the inner city most of the time. Our first night in Sydney at our friends' house a roach decided to make it up the drain pipe into the kitchen to announce his presence to me. I, of course, was the one who saw him and, after I freaked out, he was extinguished by a room mate. Last night after dinner we were sitting on the floor with our backs against the couch. I felt something on my shoulder and brushed at it. As I brushed I felt something. I looked back at the couch to see if it was a broken strand of couch dangling behind me, but there was nothing. In my constant paranoia, I stood up to relocate to the couch just in case there was a bug and I had knocked it to the floor near me. I laid on the couch with my back on a large pillow and immediately saw a giant beetle or roach-type bug beside my left arm. I freaked out, jumped up, and tried to release words that would signal Kane to get the bug. Eventually enough words came out in such a manner as to alert him to my anguish and he retrieved a jar and took the bug outside. I was not happy about it.

I don't know why I'm scared of big bugs, but I am. I guess most people are, but I certainly wish I could talk my brain into reason. It doesn't work; I am perpetually terrified and paranoid about the possible presence of an insect fumbling into my life, and more precisely, onto or near my person. I suppose I should view last night as a milestone - see, a bug actually touched me for a prolonged period of time and I'm fine! But I don't, I'm just more scared. On the brighter side, I doubt any large bugs can make it as far as the 14th floor, so, come Friday, perhaps we will hopefully be above this problem, literally.

Rain in Melbourne

We arrived in Melbourne today by plane. It's raining like the dickens, which wasn't nice for our half mile or so walk from the train station to our stupid motel. We met the people whose house we're renting for the next 2 weeks - they're nice and so is their place. We move in tomorrow.

Internet is expensive here, so won't be on quite as much. Laptops are in the works, so hopefully we'll be happily settled with a laptop each in a few weeks (ahem, Thom). Just wanted to check in and let everyone know our progress.

Pics to come of the Sydney opera house, it was pretty cool.