Friday 18th

Starting from last night after dinner I drove debs car back to the carpark to collect my car and drive home as apparently the roads back to ours were reopened. This turned out to be a lie. Sat in a que of traffic deb rang us and told us that it was 6km long. She said to follow her, we left my car at bargo train station and took her car to save wasting my petrol sitting in traffic. This was a good idea as we sat on a closed highway for a good hour. Eventually a lane was opened and we took the first slip road off. We wound our way back to our village passing villages with houses that had been missed. In a lot of cases by the width of the road! We got home and it was untouched. Both of us ventured out down the road to get some photos which will be up here soon. We got back home and went to bed. Laura was nervous about sleeping and I was a little but I knew that we would be alerted should anything occur locally to us. 

This morning we woke up to the smell that we left last night of burning wood. The sun was up and it should have been a lovely day but the smoke in the sky darkened the land. Everything was a brown colour. It was like wearing sunglasses on a foggy morning. It was very surreal. I took the Clio to get my car as Ian is in Brisbane. Laura drove back following me in the Clio stopping every now and again to take a photo. We even saw 'Elvis' which is the water bombing  helicopter refuelling at our local cricket pitch! They are obviously ok for water as our pool hasn't been drained... Yet. However if they need the water they are free to take it whenever they like! There is just under a quarter of a million litres and they will empty the pool in one hit! 

We got back safe and took the dog back inside as we didn't leave her in the house alone just incase. We had lunch and did a few odd jobs around the house and went upstairs so Laura could watch her program. We both fell asleep and just before her program started I ran out of bed as I had a very strong smell of smoke. Looking up the garden to the bush (the garden backs onto national park bush) it had disappeared in a cloud of smoke. I looked next door and saw them all putting things in the car. I called to Laura and said it was time to go. Within a minute all our valuables were in the car running. I noticed the smoke thinning a bit and asked next door what was going on. As a sheer coincidence they were leaving for the weekend. They said they were just back burning in the bush. Basically they were doing controlled burns and putting it out so when the fire reached us it would have nothing to burn. This explained the thick smoke drifting through the garden. We gave it another couple of mins and the smoke cleared. So we unpacked and relaxed again! A little later Deborah came home and we left for dinner. We went for a drive about to see what the fire situation was. Very locally to us all seemed good but the end of our road had flared up again and jumped the railway lines. It had been contained and was smouldering. We left it to its own devices and had ourselves a lovely Italian!

Driving home we saw that on the horizon it was still very orange but not nearly as much as last night. Back home and everything seems ok just the smell of burning which we are becoming rather used to...

We are still safe and the fires have moved away from us now. The wind is still heading away from us which is good. The weekend is going to be hot which won't help the fire teams but we shall see...