Reality continues to ruin my life.

Southern brown bandicoot. Howrah bike path. December 2012.

Theme Thursday and it is bushfire season AGAIN. Every year it seems that the combination of heat, wind and a whole lot of plants that have evolved a variety of strategies to survive/ require bushfires make for a torrid time down here at the arse end of the world™.

Yes, even the plants are against us. A whole host of our native flora posses epicormic shoots or lignotubers that sprout after a fire and have developed fire-resistant or fire-triggered seeds. Thus, they don't dislike fire, they love it! Indeed, the most dominant species actively encourages fire, as eucalypts contain flammable oils in the leaves that have probably evolved as a way to eliminate competition from less fire-tolerant species.

So AGAIN we face the unenviable truth of another period of nail-biting and stressing. Here in Hobart it's been 33°C with strong winds with the forecast of 38°C tomorrow and with 45 km/h gusts spell a whole world of trouble for anyone with a patch of bush around them.

Fingers crossed that we'll escape unscathed and avoid some of the darker events of recent years...

Comments

Mrsupole said…

Yup, we know exactly what you are going through. We seem to have two seasons here in SoCal. Fire season and maybe fire season. All we can do is hope and pray as I guess all of you must do that they put any fires out as quickly as possible.

I will keep my fingers crossed that you are all kept safe during your fire season. It is not an experience anyone wants to go through again.

Have a safe and great weekend. Happy TT.

God bless.

3 January 2013 at 17:16

Roddy said…

I thought the rodent was a rat at first. It still looks like one.

3 January 2013 at 19:26

Louis la Vache said…

Kris, «Louis» thanks you, quite belatedly, for your recent visit to San Francisco Bay Daily Photo and he wishes you all the best in this New Year.

3 January 2013 at 22:29

Janice said…

I understand your concern perfectly. We're in a rainy season now, but fires are always of great concern during the summer and early fall.

4 January 2013 at 09:11

Sanjana said…

you have a beautiful blog! I love it :)

6 January 2013 at 21:58

Kris McCracken said…

Mrsupole, we've made it through at this point!

Roddy, no!

Louis, merci.

Janice, thanks.

Sanjana, my pleasure.

22 January 2013 at 10:02

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

This will hurt me...

Search This Blog