Trumped my king

Don't get me wrong - I think that it is awful that people lost their lives, homes, relatives, friends, pets, livestock et al in the terrible fires of this month. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

But we are running out of water. We've had the driest start to the year since Adam was a boy. Cattle prices have tanked. And noone gives a shit - 0thers have a better claim. Instead, we get whiney articles in The Age worrying about the fact that cattle fart. Let me tell you, move over to living on mung beans and cattle farts will be the least of their worries.

I read somewhere that the smoke currently hanging around is bad for you. Well, shit - what are we meant to do? Apparently, Melbourne is really worried. Who worried when the north east had 3 months of smoke in the 06/07 fires? There were times when visibility at home was 50m or less.

And lessons learnt? None - everyone was just lucky that the north-east fires in 06/07 didn't coincide with a bad north wind. You would have seen the same death tolls then. Instead, we still build houses in forest areas. Any council with half an ounce of legal sense would not issue a building permit for anyone with forest within 2 km of their planned back door.

I've concluded that the complaints about lack of burning off are misguided. I am sure that in the pre-white (and probably pre-human) times in Australia, there were wildfires (and obviously, no "controlled burns".) However, the fires that started on february 7th were effectively lit by humans. (Electrical fault is suggest for kilmore. Firebug/thrown cigarette butt for Murrindindi. Cigarette for Bendigo.) None were from lightning strikes. Really, we're all too cheap (lack of maintenance on power lines) and stupid (cigarettes) to be allowed out on fire risk days. The fires wouldn't have started in pre-human times, and hence fuel-reduction burns are only useful to protect us from ourselves.