Fires and Honking Things

Big Fires are burning in the state of Victoria - we have our eye on the Beechworth fire, which is now burning 15km from our house.

This wild Koala survived a fire but must have been in shock, as you don't normally walk up to a Koala and offer it a drink of water...

 Luckily the wind has been blowing from the south for the last week, so the fire isn't moving our way very fast.  Having a south wind for a whole week is unusual - it will switch back to north soon and with a north wind comes high temps, and when we see that in the forecast, we may think about evacuating.

Speaking of wildlife, the other evening I was walking on a track in the forest and heard something moving in the bush, when out out pops a deer, a very large deer.  Australian deer are big, more like the size of a north American Elk, and they are very dark brown, and this one had a large rack of horns.  He bounded across the road and up into the deeper bush.

A while later, as I was deep in thought walking through the forest in the dimming light, out of the blue an extremely loud noise startled me, badly enough that I almost made a Chockie Bickie in my pants.  Then I saw another deer running away from me...

One curious thing about the Australian deer, when they get frightened they make a very loud noise - it's an unusual noise, and it is the last sound you would expect to hear in the middle of a forest.  It's sort of a piercing honk, like the blast of an air-horn from a huge truck, but it could also be described to sound like a seal's bark, but on steroids.

The smoke and south wind have pretty much shut down flying at Mystic for now.

Hasta Pronto.