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To the fire fighters!

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constable

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Just like to say thanks to the firefighters out there risking their lives for the communities in east gippsland. We were brought up in Boisdale and later my mum used to live in Coongulla and Briagolong , which are all currently under threat. Fortunately she moved to Maffra after dad passed on. But my thoughts go out to all those people and properties at risk in the surrounding areas . Anyway hope everyone can get thru this trying time especially since everyones suffering with the drought.
 
Indeed!

Let's not forget they are mostly volunteers in these areas as well.

*Real* heroes.
 
constable and wayne - story from 2004... A friend of ours out at Glenorie (near Dural, NW suburbs of Sydney) ... Phil Coperberg asked people to stay as long as they could to defend their homes - they stayed - in the end they left in the NIC of time - 4 of them in 4 vehicles - flames all round them!!. They were almost lost to us. - and more importantly to each other for that matter!! But they saved their house.

They had tenants in a "granny flat" across the gully ( 10 acres btw, albeit dry old scrub country and pretty useless) - anyway, those tenants had scarpered long before the fire. As had the neighbour, a wealthy solicitor, who incidentally had a horse which he abandoned to it's fate. !

Fire burnt down their granny flat - the tenants received NSW Govt bonus of $10K or $11K or whatever.

Next door solicitor also got his $10K etc.

They got nothing.
Furthermore it was left to our friends to organise a vet to come round as soon as poss after the fire to put the poor horse out of it's charred misery

Ahh don't you love the way Governments can't seem to give credit where it is due.
 
Sorry to hear about your freind 2020, the government sure works in mysterious way sometimes . I hate to say it but NSW is right behind Vic in terms of fire risk this season.
As far as we are concerned I just hope bracks and the local goverment can come up with something better in the way of relief this time around coz these communities have been hit with a double whammy and a really hurting.
 
constable said:
Sorry to hear about your friend 2020,
Click to expand...
no probs m8,
I should have also mentioned that my friends have the moral toughness , and fortitude, and just general kind heartedness, - despite a million "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" to make up us (our family that is) and many more slack suburbanites as well Good luck to your mum - and to all of you in Vic and Tas. I posted a poem on the poetry thread in the same vein #269 - hopeless poetry - but sincere at least adios amigos

and resilience, and virtue, and country-folk-doggedness, and ... ahh it goes on for hours lol

PS is that your cat in the avatar ?
 

Let's give credit when credit is due, this for the fire fighters and for you 2020, thank you for a beautiful poem yet again. I almost felt those flames from my office, well done heaven’s choir amazing stuff!!!

One for the animals and the brave dudes fighting the Vic fires.

THE RED AND THE BLACK OF IT
Koalas chewing tips of gums, swing heads to face the threat of fire, !
the booming of the angry drums, that turn a brave man to a liar, !
“Be still my soul, Godzilla comes! I wonder should I climb on higher ?
I wonder with this death that numbs, will I make handsome funeral pyre ?”
and in the end like blackened crumbs, a martyred bear, all black and dire.
and wedged there between boughs and bums, small arms still flailing at the fire,
I wonder did he feel the pain, as hair was burnt and flames got nigher?
a grizzley sight, his blackened thumbs ,- and yet I hear some heaven’s choir.


The stallion neighs - "there's fire" he blurts, try left! try right! my mares and kin,
they pace the clearing, fits and spurts, then charge off west with deadly din.
He breathes some flame, his nostril hurts, he charges back to south agin
His leg is singed, and tail and gerts, all ears tight back and quivered chin.
Now through the bush, a RED ALERT! , a HUNDRED horses race the wind, !!...
..
a meagre dozen now unhurt, and of the rest not one had sinned,
now kindly bullets so inert, their final act that can’t rescind,
now ash to ash and horse to dirt , their shoes recycled, shownails binned.


This flower was red, that flower was blue, dictated by their DNA,
but that was 'fore the fire went through , before the world went black and grey.
before that hellfire fashioned flue , that sucked all coloured life away,
before the smoke and cruel hue , that firemen fight for pittance pay…
They fight for spring and life anew, and light dawn wing of better day
Our compliments of season due, may Lords of courage light your way,
We think you're "dinky-dai true blue" - and this small gesture here we say...
You volunteer your life. For you?, we volunteer last night's meat tray.

Good luck fellas.

PS is that you flying that thing 2020?
 
thanks ng I heard some lady say the same thing tonight on the news - "the fire has come and gone - and there is nothing left of nature"...

Not sure I agree about the protected forests being somehow partly to blame. "Bludy Greenies - they're to blame etc etc" - I mean, there wont be any koalas to kill if we dont have a few forests imho. And obviously there should be fire trails
 

2020

why fight nature, I say let's keep the forests and let nature/fires burn them if it chooses, it's almost god's/natures will, some sort of a renewal of life, you can blame the greenies if you want, i think they'll be happy to take full responsibility for the forests and the fire. fire trails are essential in my opinion. they keep the forests alive on a regular basis.
 

It's funny just got off the phone to my mum and she was saying the same thing about cattlemen in the high country. The greenies have wanted them out for years but at the end of the day they reduce scrub, keep the tracks open and really have a negligible impact compared to a bushfire, which will always be a part of a forests life.
 
A huge thank you not only to the firefighters but also to everyone else involved.

Council workers etc do cop a bit of flak for various reasons but certainly in Tas they're doing their best to keep the water flowing etc which is absolutely critical to the firefighters. Likewise the efforts of powerline workers (no power = no water pumping into the main town supply) and others.

But there is something that every single one of us living in SE Australia needs to understand. Right now it is at least as bad, if not worse, as the conditions before the disastrous fires in Victoria in 1983 or the fires that destroyed large parts of Hobart in 1967.

It is only December and already we have serious fires burning homes to the ground on the East Coast of Tas and also in Victoria. There is undeniably a very real possibility that these small towns being burnt now won't be the last. Indeed we could even see larger towns in all states, the suburbs of Hobart and outer parts of the major cities burnt if we aren't lucky in the coming months.

I seriously hope it rains this Christmas and I doubt that anyone would really mind if it poured all day and did the same again on New Year's Eve. Not the best timing maybe, but we need the rain more than anything right now.

I hope not, but I fear these fires are just the beginning.
 

Thanks for starting this thread, Constable. I've been thinking about all the people at risk, properties lost, animals killed and the courage and resilience of the firefighters, and wanted to express my sympathy. Didn't because all I could come up with were the usual cliches. I have the greatest of admiration for the stoicism of Australians.

Julia
 
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