From Melbourne
18.2.83
Dear Alan,
I don’t
forget anyone living in Victoria will forget what has happened in the last two
weeks. Poor Bob Hawke! He has just taken over from Hayden and is all set to
beat Fraser in elections next month. He still could. He gave his policy speech
on Wednesday this week and at the same time fires were burning all over South
Australia & Victoria. Politics has been pushed off the front pages and from
most of the papers. You might remember people talking about Black Friday in
1937 when about 70 people were burnt well it looks as if this is worse. I think
I mentioned before how dry everything was well on Wednesday 9th Feb
we were out in the playground of the kindergarten when we saw huge black clouds
coming over everyone thought it was smoke. We quickly came inside the
kindergarten and closed the doors. Some children cried and it became so black
we couldn’t see & had to turn on the lights. The street lights went on. It was
about 2.30. In about 15 mins it has passed over & we could see. A lot of people
thought it was the end of the world. When we could see again @ saw al the dust
we knew we had been through a dust storm. I have never been in anything like it
all my life. Lois said she was in a few last year.
Everybody
knew the state was dry but I don’t think anyone could has seen what happened
this week. We are going to send a paper so you will know a little about what
happened. Whole towns were wiped out. Nobody knows yet how many people have
died.
We had
a coincidence happen to us. We turned on the TV news early on Wednesday night
and the reporter was talking to a very distraught lady. When we had another
look we realised it was Aggie the Yugoslav lady who lives in the brick house
just around the corner from our place at East Trentham. She was telling the
reporter how the fire had just gone past her. Just at that moment the phone
rang and it was Aggie (we had given her our phone number before) telling us our
place was alright. The house at the end of the road next to the poultry farm
was burnt. The fire rushed into the forest before night across the forest and
burnt all of Macedon except for 4 homes and some of Bullingarook and Mt
Macedon. That was only a small fire
compared with what happened in other places. The temperature was over 40 and
the winds were the strongest we could have. The firefighters had no hope of
putting any fires out all they could do was get people out of their homes
quickly. There might be a little in your paper about it if there is could you
tell us how they write it up. I don’t know whether they have bush fires in
South Africa
Love
mum.
No comments:
Post a Comment