Those of you who come here just for the quilting may be bored with fire photos, but this is my diary, and this is what's happening.  Quilting posts will resume later today :)

Yesterday we visited the patchwork shop in Jamestown, hunting for suitable backings for customer quilts.  On the way home we took the backroads to the hills on the east of Laura and Stone Hut, to see what the fire was doing.  We stayed off the main highway, left that for essential traffic, and parked many miles away to take some photos.

We couldn't see any details, just the smoke and the beginnings of the flames appearing over the crest of the low hills next to the highway.  It was horrible, moving so quickly, and the winds and high temps were just making everything worse.  We went on our way feeling horribly sad over the fate of so much bushland, and native animals, and property; this is an area we have loved since we were children.  All of the trees we saw yesterday are gone now, destroyed by this fire that just won't stop.

***I should edit this, as I'm being tooo pessimistic.   The Australian bush is adapted to survive bushfires, some species need the smoke and ash bed to germinate their seeds, and some of these trees may recover if the fire moves through quickly enough and leaves anything standing.  We won't know for a while just how much total damage there is.  But it's still horrible to see this habitat in flames, and the wildlife is not coping.  And the trees in Wirrabera are introduced species; they won't survive at all.  *****


When I got home I looked at the pictures I'd taken with the zoom at the maximum, and saw details we hadn't even guessed at.  I sharpened the edges up a bit, so the details are more obvious.
(it's worth clicking on the photos to see them full size; bit blurry, but they give an idea of the scale and ferocity of this thing.)

 This is the original photo.

 The flare of flame on the left hand hill.
The hill to the right;

 just above and to the right of the single tree in the paddock you can see a line of firetrucks, waiting for the flames to emerge from the trees.  By 3pm there were 300 CFS units and 130 farm fire trucks battling this, trying to keep it away from the historic village of Stone Hut.  They succeeded, but the fire changed direction and is now threatening Wirrabera.  So much destruction is heart-breaking.

 I almost resent the fact that it's beautiful as well....