How do we sleep while our beds are burning?

The title of this post comes from the song Beds are Burning by the Australian band Midnight Oil.

Which rings true as the bush fires get bigger - the visibility in the Wandiligong valley is about a half a mile - the smoke is so thick you can barely see the sun, it's almost dark outside - weird. The locals say the fires and smoke will be around for weeks, possibly even a month or more.

The last big bush fires were in 2003, and it took 5 weeks until the fires backed off and the smoked cleared. The CFA says that by next week the fires could reach almost a million and a half acres. Time to bail! The plan now is to go to Canungra (near Brisbane) which has a active pilot community and they have no fires.

Yesterday evening I was outside and burnt eucalyptus leaves were raining out of the sky for a couple hours, some were green but had been heat seared and smelled of smoke. The picture to the right is of 3 of the leaves that fell from the sky.

These leaves had to travel quite a distance to get here, about 15 miles. Tonight the forecast calls for "raining leaves" but this time the news warns they could be flaming leaves...

I am hoping to get to Canungra by the end of the weekend.

Stay Tuned!