So mid December 2019, as one of the many Bushfires in Australia, crossed the Clyde river in Bateman's Bay and headed south, I wrote a post of FB and said to all of my friends living up around that area to pack up and be ready to get out now.
I was only sort of half serious.
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2 days later and thousands of hectares burnt, I left to go back to Melbourne from my home town of Bega, not even thinking about the fire reaching Bega, just thinking about getting back to Melbs, back to work and back to my life for xmas and New year.
2 days after that, the whole area surrounding Bega was being evacuated into Bega which was cut off in all directions and as my brother said, taking a photo of the eerie dark red day at 11am, it was like Armageddon had come.
I spent the new couple of months trying to get back up here, but the fires were still smoldering and all roads blocked off.
The small dairy farming town of 4.5k, nearly ran out of food and they ran out of fuel as so many tourists had come in to town to flee the fires too.
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It felt so surreal for me, being so close but yet so far away.
Going to work every day and seeing people wearing masks and complaining abut the smoke in the air.
They had NO idea what it was actually like, and really, neither did I, as I didn't experience it in real life, I only heard it in my brothers voice as he talked to me on the phone and noticed the hoarseness of his voice as the smoke affected his throat.
At this time, my 85yr old dad was also recovering from a bad bout of Pneumonia too, so spent months inside, not being able to go out to get the fresh air that he needed to recover.
So it felt surreal, going to work every day, worrying about my friends and family and choking up with emotion knowing just how many animals were being burned alive in the raging flames, while customers were just shopping away without a care in the world, whining about the smoke.
And even more so as the small town of Cobargo where many of my school friends grew up and still lived, burnt to the ground.
https://7news.com.au/news/bushfires/hellfire-the-battle-of-cobargo-c-677807
And then came Covid and the lockdowns. So for a year I was stuck in Melbourne, Victoria, unable to go anywhere, let alone cross the border and come back up to see my family.
That was 2020 for me.
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Now 2021 has just started, it has started out so completely polar opposite, it is almost funny.
Because of the sudden hard border closure a couple of days ago, I am now stuck in NSW WITH my family in an area that this year thankfully is not burning to the ground, but is instead being inundated by rain. Which is a great thing ofcourse!
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So here's some footage that my nephew shot (and gave me to upload here) as he drove to Bega, Far South Coast of NSW as the worst bushfires in recorded history, raged around Australian burning everything in it's path.
12 months later, Australia is inundated with rain, storms and flooding.
Footage of the bushfire courtesy of my nephew Jaxson and still photos of the bush regeneration taken by myself from inside the bus on the way up here.
If you notice on the still photos that there is green growth up the trunks of the trees, which looks great, is actually not necessarily a good thing as the leaves on those trees- most of them being a Eucalypt of some species, contain Eucalyptus oil- a highly flammable oil, so the original tree before the fire had the bulk of their leaves at the top of the tree- which is why you still see trees standing, and if we were facing the same dry conditions now as we were last year, then those trees that we see now, would burn completely as the fuel is growing up the entire trunks and not just at the tops.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51132965
So it's damn lucky that it is really wet at the moment, however what happens when we get another drought like we've had for the past few years?
▶️ 3Speak
So 12 months on and I'm living in upside down land. 🙃🙃🙃
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I wish every single one of you who ever you are, where ever you are and what ever you are doing a very safe and happy new year filled with love, peace, health, success and abundance this coming new year and every near year after that! (unless you're cruel to animals, then that's a whole other blog....)
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If you have made it this far, then you are absolute champions and I thank you so much for reading my blog tonight and I hope that you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
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❤️❤️❤️All love and support in whatever way is greatly appreciated❤️❤️❤️
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And unless otherwise stated- ALL photographs, are all my originals taken by me sometime in the past decade or so somewhere in my travels and as such, ofcourse they are subject to all international IP and copyright laws and I may have already used them for my own commercial purposes here https://www.redbubble.com/people/CHOCOLATESCORPI/shop And here https://fineartamerica.com/art/chocolatescorpi, So please ask first if you want to use any of them as we wouldn't want you getting into trouble. Thank you 😊
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