Hell

There's nothing like being responsible for the creation of a life and the thought of imminent death to clarify just what is important to you.

This week, I experienced both.

On the positive, the birth of my lovely daughter. I don't have the words at the moment to express the intricacies of what we are both going through at the moment, but they'll come.

On the negative, my home state of Victoria is currently being ravaged by the worst ever series of bush fires in modern history. The latest statistics I have seen are 131 people confirmed dead, 750 houses destroyed and 2 towns completely wiped from the map.

These figures are probably already out of date as you read this.

I mention this here because on the worst of the days, there was a report of a fire taking off not 5 minutes from where I live. It was severe enough to close down our local train line and the main highway survicing our area. I had to leave the hospital, my wife and daughter to rush home to ensure that my house was protected.

Those that have not experienced such a phenomenom may not realise that while the fires themselves are horrid, much more danger is created by high winds and the spreading of floating embers that can travel for miles and then land to start another blaze.

Thankfully, the hot wind was blowing away from our house, not towards it from the fire, and a cool change came through shortly thereafter with it a light rain that eased my concern.

This is the second time in my life that bush fire has threatened me directly. The first episode was worse: living in the mountains during what was known as 'Ash Wednesday', we could see an out of control fire approaching us from over a ridge. My father decided that we were going to leave, and leave asap. No time for packing, just get what you could into the car so that we could go.

Again, we were spared that fate by a change of wind, but the image of a fox fleeing from the direction of the fire is one I'll never forget.

At start of this post I mentioned the ability of these event to clarify what is important to you. During my first encounter with bushfire I remember grabbing my favourite Transformer toy. For the event just gone, I'd decided that if it came to it I'd take the contents of my safe, and the portable hard drive attached to my computer -as this contains all the photos I have ever taken as an adult.

My thoughts go out to everyone touched by this. Fire is an unstoppable force at the height of its power, it destroys everything, and it just does not care.