Australia is an interesting country. Australians love their country. “I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains.” Their capital, Canberra, normally has one of the best air qualities in the country; but a haze of smoke settled over the city last month. At first, they thought, that’s normal, we’ve just legalised it, it’ll go away when the novelty wears off. Only, it didn’t go away.
We started looking for the source of all the smoke.
Things started to come together:
I guess you can take the sky from them.
Then they figured it out:
Of course, Australia’s always had an interesting relationship with fire:
Then the fires started to die down. Things looked calm. They actually had water falling from the sky! Apparently that’s a thing now.
Then they had frozen waters.
Some people have been describing the last month as a song of ice and fire.
… which I think is by Pat Benatar.
So much has changed, it’s been hard to keep up.
Nowadays, people in Australia just walk down the street in masks every day.
There’s been a run on P-2 masks, and nobody could find them in Australia for a while. November 2019, most Australians didn’t even know what a P-2 mask was.
They’ve all been glued to the Fires Near Me webpage.
The weather reports have gotten weird:
Bookshops have had to rethink their stocking policies:
Even Financial Advisors have had to change their focus:
Just when things looked like they were calming down… how shall I put this?
They’ve seen fire and we’ve seen rain. They’ve seen sunny days they thought would never end.
But then, the fires flared up again. Then they got new fires; including in Canberra’s industrial suburb of Beard. They’re calling it the Beard Fire.
–#–
All kidding aside, our thoughts and prayers go out to those who have lost property; and the 32 (at this writing) who have lost their lives. The estimated one billion wild animals that have died.
An especial tribute to the firefighters working tirelessly and in great danger to themselves to help in this time of disaster; and to Captain Ian McBeth, First Officer Paul Hudson and Flight Engineer Rick DeMorgan, Jr; the three American men who went to Australia to fight a fire that was never their problem in the first place, and who will never go home.
–#–
Bibliography:
Just go to the Canberra subreddit. They deal with things with humour and aplomb in Australia. Which is actually kind of gross if you know what plombs are.
https://www.reddit.com/r/canberra/comments/eranww/canberra_two_weeks_apart/
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-20/hail-storm-in-canberra-damages-cars-smashes-windows/11882472
https://www.reddit.com/r/canberra/comments/esqet7/our_hailstorm_made_it_into_rwtf/
https://www.reddit.com/r/canberra/comments/esq9eb/canberra_this_week/
https://www.reddit.com/r/canberra/comments/eorqv7/fries_near_me/
https://www.reddit.com/r/canberra/comments/erbzvy/too_real/
I thought of this one by myself, but somebody else posted it first, so I’m still giving them credit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/canberra/comments/esptgt/beard_fire_act/
Pretty sure that should be plains, not planes, but you got the rest right cobber.
Happy Whateverdaythatjustwas Day to you.
Gah! I hate making mistakes like that.
Thanks, and I’ve fixed it.
… and thanks for the best wishes. It’s a day off, so always good. 🙂
You can’t beat the spirit of Oz!
Still, that’s a ton to endure. Wake up world; we’re killing the planet and it may not be after your lifetime!
😀 Somebody on the Canberra subreddit paraphrased Dune with:
“God created Australia to test the faithful.”