The Blue Mountains on fire 2019

In October last year my partner and I moved out of our home on the South Coast, sold most of everything we owned and moved into out 4wd.
We both began studying at Uni full-time last year and both studying online too, because of that neither of us had a work commitment anywhere so we decided that we would have a go at living nomadically whilst we studied and have been house sitting and crashing friends and families houses ever since.

So why is this relevant you ask? Well our first house sit was on a farm up in Coffs Harbour on the NSW north coast and it was there that we had our first taste of the 2019/2020 fire season. Fires has already been burning for about a week or 2 inland from Coffs Harbour and we heard many stories from locals of people loosing their properties. The other thing was that a large chunk of the time in Coffs we were shrouded in smoke and I remember being out in the surf and actually having a hard time breathing because of it!

The two photos shown in this post were taken about 6 or 7 weeks after then, when we arrived back in the Blue Mountains for a stay with my partners parents. By this time the fires had erupted up and down the east coast of NSW and were now threatening the Blue Mountains home to many of my friends and family.

When I took these photos it seemed almost imminent that the fires would impact but it ended up being a slow agonizing wait as they would make big moves and then go dormant again for days on end and be close to containment only to have another spell of hot windy days that would stoke them back to life.

Fortunately most of my friends and families homes were safe but some of my friends had to defend their homes, literally spending days keeping the area around their homes wet (in drought I might add, with dams already frightening low) waiting for the fire to come, with one fighting of fires that encircled their home for days, another having the full force of the fire front come straight through their property with 30m tall flames, destroying everything but their home thankfully because they were able to prepare and another loosing their families farm entirely.

I was contacted just before Xmas by my partners parents when the fires first threatened Blackheath, there were reports it would impact Blackheath that night and they were in Melbourne and deeply worried about their home and their precious belongings. I drove up from where I was staying on Sydney's northern beaches just before dark, I had spoken to friends who all sounded quite concerned and many had already left... This got me worried, thinking "am I going to get to Blackheath and be met by a firestorm", as i drove I catastrophized what I was heading into, expecting to see an orange glow in the sky as I headed up the mountains, I saw lots of cars loaded with belongings heading off the mountain and quiet a few fire trucks too, as I approached Katoomba the smoke began to get thicker, slowly getting thicker and thicker as I headed toward Blackheath.
I reached Blackheath, shrouded in smoke and eerily still, I got to the centre of town and still no sign of fire or any action whatsoever. I turned off to their place and headed inside to check what was happening. Looking at the Fires Near Me app I found that the fire had been downgraded and was no longer at emergency warning. Bit of an anti-climax but it was a relief, I spoke to my partners parents who had decided to drive back from Melbourne to be at home. I stayed the next day but the forecasts winds didn't come to fruition and their place was safe. And thanks to the local knowledge and hard work of the RFS very little damage occurred in Blackheath. And hazard reduction work in the following days essentially stopped the fire from spreading into the rest of the Blue Mountains community.

The following weeks were devastating for the South Coast of NSW, with some horrifying reports coming in of whole communities being forced to go and wait on beaches and in lakes as the fires swept through. Entire towns were destroyed and lives and homes lost. My deepest condolences go out to all those effected.
The fires continued to burn in the Southern part of the state with some still burning now.
We headed up to a friends place in Mt Wilson in the Blue Mountains for New Years eve and the photo above and below is from that time. Driving through this devastation was actually really confronting, seeing the scale of the fires in this area plus knowing that this was but a tiny fraction of the devastation Australia had seen this fire season was overwhelming. Thinking about all the animals that lost their lives, last estimate I heard was over half a billion in NSW alone, the people homes and lives lost and that in some way our excess as a species and the lack of leadership by those who we allow to be in power is in part or entirely to blame for this is heartbreaking.

Fortunately a few weeks ago we had a massive rain event which caused flooding and enough destruction of it's own across pretty much the whole of the east coast of Australia, this extinguished many of the fires and helped fill dams and relieve parts of Australia from the terrible drought conditions of late.
The photo above is of Bridal Veil Falls in Blackheath where you can see in the foreground and in large parts of the Valley where the fire had been through only now looking wet and green and with the falls in flood.
We need to take action on Climate Change, we need to adjust the way we live our lives to better protect the planet on which we live. Choose green alternatives, choose to think and live sustainably and last of all we need to vote with our hearts and minds and ignore the vile propaganda of the corporate owned and run media.