I hear what you are saying Noel and I agree the Red Cross is always there at disasters. And there is always appeals to raise money for victims of these disasters, @10 cents in the dollar is not a bad income to run an organisation when a lot of the staff in the field are volunteers. There are other big organisations that should be audited as well.
Not saying that they don't do a good job but in regards to a lot of the work being done by volunteers (good on them), to me it is harder to justify 10 cents in the dollar! Still a quiet day here and hopefully will stay that way, however, there is some storm activity coming our way! cheers Team Bender Is moving up to Defcon 2 level!
The fire near Moruya has flared yet again. Just went to the garden to get some tomatoes and it's literally raining burnt leaves and ash. No red embers seen thank goodness. The air is almost still at ground level here but there must be a big jet stream up high, judging by the massive expanse of smoke. Leaves can be seen coming down from great heights. They're travelling about 16km to reach here so it's really burning. Starting to wonder if we'll ever get away from these 'B' fires.
I hope things stay quiet for you Jim and you get no call outs. When you think of it we would be st#ffed with out our volunteers. You hear quite a bit about the CFA, RFS, QRFS SES Vic, NSW and QLD, there would be hundreds maybe thousands of volunteer groups through out Australia that never get a mention, they just get out there and do what has to be done.
Genius camper, must be his first camping trip no experience playing whith fire as I did when I was a kid and know how dangerous petrol is. Bugger having a fire in 42c although Jeff would probably be standing near it warming his hands. Bring it to the publics attention should stop a lot of the incorrect use of fire relief donations they know they are being watched and there should be a record of all transactions where funds are going. Any theifs , embezzellers and tools giving money to there mates who don't need it should be put to work repairing fire damaged propertys etc.
Jeff; I missed it but Boss tells me the homestead 'Gudgenby', named after the river of that name on the back road from Canberra to Adaminaby was torched yesterday. Are you familiar with that one? Noel
Some mates used to fish the gudgenby and catch trout and seen the ocaisional big trout it runs beside bobeyan road which is the quick way to the snowy for me. I seen a news release that the homestead had been saved about a day ago , the fire must have got out of control after that and claimed it.
Don't quote me on that information Blair. I only know what Boss told me. Unfortunately, she's right more often than not, usually at my expense. Noel Not half henpecked
I can't recall it Noel, but it was well over 50 years ago that I worked in that area. Now that you mention the Gudgenby River, the Orroral River feeds into it and then the Gudgenby join the 'Bidgee near Tharwa. The bloke I worked for back in the sixties, Gordon Gregory, still has a station just outside Tharwa named 'Freshford'. Jeff
You drive beside the Gudgenby on the back road (Tharwa) for a while, which we used to use at times. It's only 62km from Canberra to Adaminaby that way but the road is poorly maintained. It's 170 via Cooma. I stopped using it after holing a fuel tank and doing two tyres. The tyres were both on the same trip so had to leave the vehicle there. Eventually got a lift back to Queanbeyan, replaced one tyre and got a staff member to drive me back to refit the wheel. Took over half a day to get home in total. Never stopped to fish it. Noel
Yesterday was a quiet day in the end. A severe storm went through and caused a lot of damage but fortunately there was rain with it and that would have quelled some fires caused by lightning. But...there were a lot of lightning strikes (they show up on a tracking program) through nearby hills in hard to access places. They will likely cause us some grief in the next week. One seems to have flared up already. cheers Jim
We came out of yesterday as expected. No problems in town. The latest report tells us DOZENS of homes lost in the Bega Valley The valley is among our most lush dairy land and it's burning. It ain't getting better on the south coast
Not related to maggie thatcher by any chance kev? that's just south of Jindabyne haven't been there but would be good country, lots of freecamping areas up the snowy.
Attached is a letter distributed around Victoria. Written by the owner of a saw mill; it's fair to assume he might have an idea about what he says. It's a good read. Noel True words Note: This guy does not deny Climate Change, just that the bushfires were not a DIRECT result. He didn’t add that successive governments have failed the people on hazard reduction in the forest. He says it all! Never in my lifetime have I ever seen a bushfire become so political, with so much interference from city based experts! Australia is known for its bushfires, cyclones, droughts and flooding rains so what has changed this time? I believe we now have a new breed of people in this country that NEED TO BLAME somebody for every natural event that occurs and they have infiltrated our communities with their ideology! The majority in this country are the “Quiet Australians” who have seen it all happen before and know we will see it all happen again. Our voice wasn’t being heard! We knew that the fuel load was too high, we knew that policy had changed allowing fuel reduction burns and we knew that protesting by minority groups was influencing decision making! Just back on June 20, 2019 I raised these issues in a Regional Forests Agreement meeting in Corryong with representatives from DELWP, Federal, State and local governments regarding the fuel load in National Parks, the blackberries and noxious weeds in State forests and Parks, the lack of maintenance of fire tracks, the lack of water storages in these areas and outlined that we had a ticking time bomb right under our noses! Climate Change didn’t light the fires in NSW and Victoria, lightning and arsonists did!! The fuel load was there and it was tinder dry from the drought. But now the SWAMP is rising and along with social media and mainstream media they are driving a tsunami of hate, of blame, of rebellion like we’ve never seen before! Everything that goes wrong has to be someone else’s fault!! They CRY Climate Change but then board an aeroplane to go overseas! The scientists are some of the worst hypocrites in this area! Fly to this climate conference and then to the next! Children are being indoctrinated in schools before they can even read and write, about politics, climate change, gender equality, sex and religion at such a young age and well before they can make their own judgments on any of these matters. This indoctrination then spreads like a virus and infects those who we thought were immune, until it becomes a plague of rebellion and uprising against those who are the quiet Australians. I might be old fashioned, but the Australia I knew as a kid was far better! We didn’t care where the power came from, as long as the toaster or the lights worked! We didn’t care if it was a drought as we knew every day was one closer to it raining! I battled the 1st of February 1969 bushfires in 45c heat as a 15 year old, I bent all the linkage arms on the tractor ploughing fire breaks, experienced the extreme heat of the fire, the lack of oxygen in my lungs, being too scared to sleep inside the house at 2am! I saw the devastating loss of property, and the burying of dead stock. We didn’t have P2 masks or were told every 5 minutes of the what the air quality was!! We wet a handkerchief and put it across our nose and mouth and tied a knot in the back and got on with it!! Then the chaos came again a few weeks later when torrential rains came and caused massive erosion and polluted our water, and 3 months later on the 5th of May we had cows dying of bloat as the grass was so prolific! THIS WILL ALL HAPPEN AGAIN!! This is the country we live in and know as Australia, NO politician can change it, NO Climate Change policy will either! Humans caused this atrocity by their ignorance of nature and the history we have on record that could be used to prevent this occurring this bad ever again! Sorry about the rant but I’m not happy with the world right now! Graeme
I agree 100% whith Graeme , those self appointed experts need to pull their heads in, they are probably earning a lot of money out of it as well and will keep pushing the rubbish along.
I disagree with some that he says because he is not using logic in his argument. 'Climate Change didn’t light the fires in NSW and Victoria, lightning and arsonists did!! The fuel load was there and it was tinder dry from the drought.' This crap about arsonists being responsible for a lot of the fires came from the Murdoch media, picked up by quite a few Coalition politicians (Dutton stated yesterday that more than 200 arsonists have been charged, but the police know nothing about it) and like the fires, it spread. The Police and the RFS in NSW have both been on record stating that the majority of fires have started by lightning strikes and some accidently, but what would they know compared to the Murdoch press? Does he not believe that climate change has had a huge bearing on the drought conditions during recent times and if climate doesn't create droughts, then what does? 'They CRY Climate Change but then board an aeroplane to go overseas! The scientists are some of the worst hypocrites in this area! Fly to this climate conference and then to the next!' How else would he expect them to get to where the conferences take place? 'Children are being indoctrinated in schools before they can even read and write, about politics, climate change, gender equality, sex and religion at such a young age and well before they can make their own judgments on any of these matters.' Why shouldn't they be taught these things and he is well behind the times if he believes children of the modern era cannot read or write before attending school. The world has changed and the children of today are one hell of a lot smarter and better educated than they were in the Australia that he knew as a kid. Don't underestimate their intelligence by thinking they are incapable of making their own judgements. Previous generations were not faced with the uncertainties facing the children of today and the more educated they are at an early age to tackle what is becoming a very hostile world, the better they will cope. Graeme finishes off by stating: 'I’m not happy with the world right now!' Guess what mate, neither are the kids who stand to inherit the mess they are being left and I bet they will end up a lot unhappier than you are. In the absence of positive action to drastically reduce emissions contributing to the climate crisis, what we are experiencing now is not the new normal as stated by some commentators, it is just the start of ever worsening conditions. How do I know this? Because 99% of the planet's leading climate scientists say so. Should I believe them or should I believe the Murdoch press and a sawmill owner? That's my take on it. Jeff
