Today the fire arrived in our village. Fortunately for me it was just to the north of us with a strong westerly, that turned southwesterly. This blew the blaze away from our house.

Tragically, it appears that 3 houses were lost today in that blaze. Two fire fighters were badly burnt and had to be airlifted to hospital for emergency care.

We have been well prepared for this day for the past couple of weeks. The last thing that we waited to do was to wrap the house in al-foil. Just the wooden weatherboard front room, as it is most vulnerable.

‘Elvis’ the large orange water bombing helicopter that we share with Canada was here and flew over to check us out, just as the fire truck came to tell us to evacuate. I told tham that I was staying to fight. but Janine wisely decided to leave for safety.

The fire really blew up into a massive plume just after that. It was a bit scary I must admit. but I have 4 different fighting high pressure pumps set up with sprinklers on all the roofs and northern walls on all the sheds and the house. I gave them a run to test them out again, but turned them off to save water, as there was no ember attack, because the wind was blowing it all past us and away.

So now the fire front is to the West, North and East of us. Tomorrows wind is forecast to come from the North East. That is going to be bad for us. The next two days will be make or break for us. It will all depend on the strength of the wind and the temperature. I expect that it will be at its worst from mid day onwards for the following 4 hours.

If it looks to be catastrophic, I’ll start all the pumps and just leave.