Smoke in the Sky

This weekend is a very sad one.

In Victoria and New South Wales, bushfires continue to claim property and lives, with 35 now confirmed dead and many more missing and assumed dead.

Bushfires are part of our national identity, and not a summer goes by where they don't cause destruction all over the country. I vividly remember a week summers and summers ago, I might have been twelve or thirteen at the time, when we were sitting outside our Sydney home, watching the sky turn sludge brown in the 40 degree heat.
By mid-afternoon the sun was almost completely blacked out by the smoke in the sky, and the light was like nothing I'd ever seen before. It was like looking at the world through red-tinted glasses, still daylight but strangely coloured.
Ash started to fall. Big white flakes all over our balcony railings, carried from the fires in the bush straight to us.
My next door neighbour kept the most beautiful roses, perfect, enormous blood red blossoms. That's the image I remember. White flakes of ash on blood red roses.

I remember exactly how I felt then, and still feel now. There's a very perverse beauty in a fire. It's an exquisitely beautiful assertion of nature's phenomenal power. It reminds us that we are mere mortals and that nature can still trump us on every account. It's hostile and violent but even in our fear and anger towards its seemingly pointless destruction we have to feel a certain reverence for it.

Even as I say that, there is still incredible sadness in our hearts today as we hear more and more reports of destruction and loss of life in Victoria and New South Wales.

Please, keep your thoughts and hearts with the 500 firefighters that have been working 16 hour shifts overnight, trying to combat the 50 or more blazes that speckle the East, as well as with those who have lost their homes and loved ones overnight.

Please, if you are in Australia (or in fact anywhere around the world) you can lend your support in the following ways:

- Donating to the Rural Fire Service (http://www.bushfire.nsw.gov.au/) or via the Victorian Fire Hotline (180 2211 180 2211)
-Sponsoring NSW Fire Brigades.
- Encouraging and supporting volunteer fire fighters and becoming a volunteer fire fighter yourself.
- Donating to State Disaster Relief in Victoria and NSW.
- Donating blood as soon as possible if you are a registered donor.
- Observing the TOTAL FIRE BAN, including not smoking or chucking your butts outside.

Volunteer fire fighters have gone out into fire zones after losing their own homes and loved ones. Would that we could all show such selflessness and bravery.

Please keep residents and fire fighters in Rural Australia in your thoughts and prayers.