Make Haze While The Sun Shines

Smoke On The Water, Fire In Our Sky

Photograph copyright: DAVID McMAHON

I took this photograph yesterday, looking across the Yarra River to the famous Melbourne Cricket Ground. As this frame shows, there was only a single rower on the river. There was not a trace of the clear blue sky that we are so accustomed too; instead it looked as though some unseen painter had covered the entire sky with some thick, opaque coating. Today's most dramatic story of a bushfire escape was Eric and Joan Gardiner of Cowwarr, who drove their burning Holden Commodore sedan through the fires in Toongabbie, Gippsland, for more than three kilometres. They only stopped when the windscreen cracked from the heat, but they were rescued from the surrounding flames by a fire crew. ``Bloody oath, it's the only time I shook in my life,'' Mr Gardiner told The Herald Sun.