Behind this pall of smoke is a vibrant, contemporary city spreading out beyond the huge stadium of the Melbourne Cricket Ground. (photo sent to the Age by Christopher Graf).

Bloody hell, the joint’s on fire.

I think the Californians understand, and people in the south of France. We stand in the path of a particular meteorological phenomenon which funnels wind and cloud across the south-east of Australia, to lash tinder-dry land and forest with lightning strikes.

It has been going on for century upon century, and allowed the fire-resistant eucalypts to spread across mountains that sustained temperate rain forest and the slow growing native pines and beeches.

Photo: Angela Wylie, from The Age.

The trouble is, we live in this landscape.

Now Melbourne – ultra-sophisticated, urban, discursive, computerised, air-conditioned, internationalised – carries an elemental haze of smoke. I walk the dog on beaches that smell of hydrogen sulphide and ash. My partner Susie reaches fretfully for her athsma inhaler.

The Country Fire Authority tells us the high country to the north-east is ablaze and could burn for months. They are defending property and people, abandoning the choppy, inaccessible landscape beyond. The helicopters have more important business, including Elvis, the orange tanker chopper we have taken to our hearts.

The Age is telling us a cool change is coming, but this has been the hottest Melbourne day in December for 53 years, and the heat will return. We’ve still got three months of this.

Here is The Age:

“THIS is a bushfire unlike any other.

Fuelled by the big dry and capable of burning with equal ferocity night and day, its potential for devastation is enormous.

Large bushfires normally slow down as air cools and surface moisture increases overnight, but this fire is different.

The Country Fire Authority’s deputy chief officer, Graham Fountain, said: “Generally we get a lull that gives us time to consolidate, but that is not happening with this fire.

“Because of the dryness of fuel and dry air masses, we are experiencing increased fire activity and behaviour in the night.

“The air mass is dry, the fuel is dry, the soil has no moisture in it. It gives us a fire that is erratic.”

Night firefighting is also extremely dangerous, with poor visibility on unfamiliar bush tracks, falling trees. “You don’t know where its coming from.”

Mr Fountain said that even if the fires were contained, it would take months to put them out fully.

“These fires will require patrolling for the remainder of the season because the only thing that’s going to extinguish these totally is a damn good downpour of rain, and that’s not forecast and not likely,” he said.”

This is what Victoria looked like from space, two days ago:

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 10th, 2006 at 11:27 pm and is filed under Austrapolitics, domestic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.