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The Worst Day

The local papers cracked open the hyperbole last week, giving last Saturday the advance billing of “the worst day in Victoria’s history”. We’d had five consecutive 40+ degree days the week before last, and now the sun was back for revenge, for one day only.

In the event, it proved to be something of an understatement: the mercury topped out at a record 46.4 degrees in Melbourne on Saturday afternoon, half of the state ended the day engulfed in bushfires (some of which are apparently still burning, days later), whole towns were destroyed, and upwards of a hundred and eighty people are dead.

Here in Melbourne we’re both very close and yet very far away: life here continues largely unaffected, albeit with ever grimmer news being reported as each day passes…

I was going to attempt an amusing blog about our Saturday afternoon in the heat (it was Ange’s birthday, and we went “barefoot bowling” in North Fitzroy) but anything I could tell you about just how unpleasantly hot it was outside in the middle of the afternoon seems a bit irrelevant (we survived about half an hour before retreating to the air con…)

We might have been sweating in the heat, but at least we had a home to go back to at the end of the day.

And relatives who were still alive.

Links:
Australian Red Cross Appeal
UK Red Cross Appeal