A Pregnant Pause

9 months in...

Nice to have developed some familiarity with this city and its inhabitants. Pork sausage dealer has been located! Now know where to go for brekky on a Sunday morning... egg and bacon butty served with a bloody mary at the end of the street. I would consider this decadent if they had heard of HP sauce.

Not much evidence of the 'global financial crisis' in our neighbourhood. Streets are quiet by day, chock-a-block at rush hour. A nearby wreck of a corner shop (derelict) is about to be auctioned for over $600,000, even though it sits on a tiny plot, with zero garden, no parking, and needs to be demolished. And it is 3 yards from a busy roundabout. Would fetch around half of that in a comparable suburb of Manchester at the moment.

A bit strange to arive home and find that the interior of the house is 49 degrees. This was the urban reality on Black Saturday, when horriffic bush fires claimed the lives of hundreds of people in rural Victoria. We made for the safety of a distant shopping mall to sit out the worst of the heat. So did many others. And like many other malls the aircon had died. Long queues for icy slush. The outdoors was literally like being in front of a massive hairdryer on full heat. Difficult to imagine how harsh conditions had been for those in the areas affected by the fires.

Once the aftermath (and the removal of the remains of those who had perished) had passed, radio DJs were promoting the idea that businesses in the affected areas were suffering due to lack of customers (tourists). When a friend from Manchester arrived on a holiday, we decided to visit one such area and spend a bit of cash in a shop or pub. Neither of us hold some morbid fascination or 'rubberneck' trait, but both were interested in landscapes and the processes of nature. Once we hit the affected areas we very quickly understood what had occurred. All thoughts of being a useful tourist evaporated. We were not for stopping, and felt guilty for taking a trip into the scene of such loss. We were only clipping the edge of the affected areas, but reports suggest that an area the size of Wales went up in smoke. Hell on earth.

Emotions aside, there must be some questions about the suitability of such heavily wooded areas for development. An 'expert' speaking on the Aus equivalent of BBC radio yesterday said that such fires can cross a 5 kilometer fire break of cleared forest. Another interesting claim is that indigenous peoples regularly torched areas of land in order to maintain the environment. Apparently many species in these areas rely on fire to regenerate. Given the Aussie resilience to negative events, humanity might be one such species. The outpouring of aid from the population was staggering. Hundreds of millions of dollars and rising. To see a bunch of recent migrants respond collectively to this disaster made me realise that there is something positive in this place that may be absent in more 'developed' countries.

Given the scale and repetition over time of such events I was a bit surprised to find that in VIC there are no standards for the construction of fire shelters. Build one if you like, but no-one will officially advise on how to do it. While personal freedom is great, it does not preclude the ability to choose between an official solution or your own or none at all.

I might phone the radio people and raise the issue.

Beyond the fires, the team here is enjoying life in Melb, and soon our numbers will grow by 50% with the arrival of our new nappy requirer. Exciting times!