Locked up...locked out, and bush fires!

Soooooo upsetting seeing our house all closed up and no-one there to talk to her, yet very happy at the same time. Yes I know, I said talk to her, I often go in to see how she's coming along and often commenting on how beautiful she looks...don't you?

 I'm rolling around with laughter on the floor right now... can you see me? And you thought I was serious lol.

It's coming together nicely and I'm soooooooo impressed by it all. We have had the best supervisor you could ask for. Thank you so much Brian for everything you have done to get our build to this stage.

Now that was this morning....when we went back this afternoon to have our concreter re-measure for all the concreting we want done after handover, the picture below shows how ferocious the fires were getting.

I've never seen the sky not only change so quick, but so eery at the same time. I had been working at home and listening to the weather report that was being announced just before I picked up the kids from school and it wasn't until I got outside and looked at the sky. The fires had been at Springwood and Winmalee all day and have now gotten out of control. OMG it was like I was in the eye of a storm or something. On my way to school, the sky went from a greenish colour to almost black. Now I'm talking a matter of seconds from the time I drove out of the driveway and down the street and up to the school. I started to panic and hoped it wasn't going to come too close.

We had to meet our concreter at 4.30pm and when we got there I noticed our front door was now on....lock up. After spending about half an hour with him, my eyes started to water, I started to cough and wanted to get back into the car. It had been blowing a gail and I thought I was hiding enough so it wouldn't play up with my sinus's but I guess it still got me. After we finished with Mitchell our concreter from Ducky's Concreting Pitt Town (plug), I was amazed at how quick the sky had changed. The smoke was now, not only surrounding us, but looking quite brutal  in the direction of home. All I wanted to do was get back and stay indoors.

Our house that we are currently renting is only a 3 minute drive from the new house, the following pictures tell the story of how fast the smoke was approaching.

this is what it looked like before I got into the car. I'm facing the direction of our rental which is in the direction of Springwood. Our new house is on the right just out of the picture but 3 blocks away from the one above. It was hard to know which direction the smoke was coming from as the winds were so strong. Were they coming from Springwood, or perhaps they were coming from Winmalee which is to the right of me 

this was on our way home. I got Geoff to stop so I could take a photo of how it was clearing (to the right) and surrounding us above our heads

I'm now standing in our backyard, yeah I know I said I wanted to stay indoors but I couldn't smell any smoke it was weird. By this time the wind had died down anyway and who could resist taking a snapshot of this

Looks like I'm looking at the eye of a storm, see the small circle just on the left of the shot?

I thought it was bad enough looking ahead of me, but this is directly above me now, it looks as though I could reach up and touch it. I haven't even zoomed in...yikes. And still there is no smell of smoke, it was bizarre!

Now this freaked me out, it's about half an hour after we got home and it looks as though the fire is right behind the smoke. It's actually the sun!

After the kids yelling at me to come out the front, this is what I was faced with. It's now been 35 mins from the first photo and already you can see how much it went from just a little bit of a yellow cloud to now a full on blackish purple stormy looking sky and it's in the direction of the new house. Looking down on the ground, we had black ash all over our driveway and on the lawn...I won't tell you what our car looked like!

Is that scary or what? This shot was taken no more than 3 mins from the one above. Now all I want to do is go back to the house and make sure it's ok

This is the golf course that's half way to the new house. I'm looking in the direction of Winmalee now which is NW

Whilst I was taking photos, Jordan said I think there's a fire down there. Pointing to a small smoke stack just to the left of the pic and in between the 2 trees to the left (if you magnify the picture you can see it).

here it is after zooming in 200mm. Could it have been an ember that came from the fire at Winmalee?

After checking that the house was ok and it was...phew, we drove a little further to the other part of the estate 'Bona Vista & Riverside'

This is where the 1/2 acre lots are in Vermont

See this picture? Go back to where I said that perhaps an ember started a small fire. Now look at the road...does that tell you what happened?

The stupid idiot was doing burnouts on the back road of the turf farms just down from the estate.

What a loser! I couldn't believe what we were witnessing, as if the poor bloody firemen had nothing better to do than to put this D'head's car out. I hope they put him on the front line of the bush fires and see how he copes with what they have to do. My heart goes out to all the people who have lost everything and hope all those poor firemen fighting the blaze get some relief soon. Look at the sky now  it's clearing in the Springwood direction

this is looking back through to Vermont 10 mins later, it's now clearing on the horizon but the smoke is coming from the Winmalee direction

Comments:

R. Roberts - Great photos Michelle. Its very eerie isn't it! And what an idiot to be doing burnouts near the bush when there are fires about. I don't understand how stupid people can be sometimes. 

Me - I know...I hope he now realises what a tosser he was and what he could've potentially caused