"Jen" > wrote in message
...
>
> "Andy" <q> wrote in message ...
>> Jen said...
>>
>>> Have you all heard about the fires here in Australia? I'm 2 hours, by
>>> car away from them. There is smoke everywhere, I can taste it. I used
>>> to live in one of the places they say it might hit tomorrow, glad I
>>> don't live there now. It may get a bit closer to us tomorrow, but
>>> hopefully not close enough. My poor 11 year old daughter was so
>>> nervous, she seems to have settled now. The dog's been under our feet a
>>> lot, but the cats don't seem to be bothered.
>>>
>>>
>>> Jen
>>
>>
>> Jen,
>>
>> Geez... the satellite picture says it all. Oz is on fire again!
>>
>> Have you gathered up enough supplies in the car in case you have to
>> leave?
>>
>> I remember Oz burning a few years ago and being worried about the
>> birds!?!
>>
>> Take care of each other,
>
>
> Thanks. We should be fine at the moment. But if it gets close, we'll get
> the cats, the dog, the budgie, and the goldfish, and whatever else fits in
> the car, and stay at my mum's, right near the coast. My husband would
> probably come back and do what he can to help. The thing with Australian
> bush is that it seems so used to it that many trees can't reproduce until
> their seeds are affected by great heat, or burnt! I'm sure the birds can
> fly to better places, but I feel for the wildlife that get trapped between
> fires.
>
>
> Jen
>

You know what...Jen..This lot of bush fires remind me so much of the well
known Australian Poem , written by Dorothy Mackellar , who as a young girl
migrated to Australia from England as a child...

How true could her poem be about the Droughts and Fire Floods and Famine (to
the Animals)...

'My Country'....

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins;
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies -
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.


I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror-
This wide brown land for me.


The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.


Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart around us
We watch the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.


Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze


An opal hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land-
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.


Bigbazza..(Barry)..Oz