Hope these shots might be of interest. The high plume of smoke is the new Tawonga Gap fire which started near Bright yesterday (10 Dec). This shot (taken by my partner, not me, dang it!) is from our back yard in Bright, about 6km from the fire, showing the fire exploding like an atomic bomb. At the time, I was at our son's place which is to the right of the big plume, helping him out. Looking up at this massive and rapidly expanding column rising thousands of feet into the air over us was very scary!!! Luckily for us, winds drove the fire due east (northwards of his place).
The others were taken last week (5 Dec) from my front yard as smoke from the Ovens fire complex streamed over Bright. Some awesome 'pastel' colours in the first.
It's going to be a long summer...... (sorry about all our smoke!!!)
Hi Rob, thats an awesome picture, just like an atomic bomb as you say. Unfortunately it signaled some bad weather conditions. Good to see it moved away from you though.
Thanks for the comments, and the link to the Border Mail - I hadn't seen Monday's paper. The shot is spectacular, particularly with the foreground of the peaceful main street of Bright. It's almost like another country - a volcano erupting behind a village in the Phillipines, or Vesuvius behind an Italian village. Alien.
We're OK for the moment, but our good news is somebody else's bad news - unfortunately just the nature of these events on this scale. Tassie looks really bad. I used to do summer fire crew, and I think the image that will stick with me forever other than last Sunday's 'eruption' is Mt Macedon going up like a torch at night during the Ash Wednesday fires (1984?). Six or eight of us were travelling from Bright to Woodend to assist at the time, and the view was so powerful that no one could speak (too scared to speak?)...
Let's all hope for tons of rain, so life can get back to normal and the firefighters can get back to their homes (and we south-easterners can get our clear skies back).
