Just a quick one this morning because I know that people are concerned. We had a short shower of rain on Monday afternoon and by the end of the day all three fire zones were listed as advice. We had choppers going over all day. I read that there were five of them working. Naomi and I had to go to Wynyard for doctor visits and I got my second Covid shot yesterday. The road was open and not very smoky. On the way back we saw a couple of fire vehicles at the entrance to the road that goes to Lake Llewellyn. That fire was still spreading but by afternoon they had managed to halt its eastward progress. There was another community meeting in the evening and the reports from that were that the crews were happy with the situation, they had done a lot of back burning. They said there would be no further meetings so I take that as a good sign. Telstra, our phone provider was able to send a crew up to the mobile phone tower and restore service by late afternoon. A vital service in such an isolated area as ours.

This morning skies are much clearer. The photos I have seen are markedly different from yesterdays. The choppers are back, five of them again and about half a dozen tankers and assorted other vehicles. The fire is still going of course. It’s burned over 600 hectares of National Park but no homes have been lost. I expect that due to the inaccessibility of parts of the park the fire will probably burn for a few more days at least unless we have heavy rains. We are lucky to have such good fire crews, many of them volunteers.

The sad thing is that there is going to be a lot of injured wildlife coming out of that area. There are people locally who take care of injured wildlife and I think they will have their hands full.

On a brighter note, last night Naomi and I were lucky enough to see a mother possum with her baby on her back. There is a big old gum tree in our garden which the possums like. Teddy especially is always going over there to look for them. Naomi spotted them in the tree when she went outside with the dogs last thing so she told me and I went to look too. I didn’t take the camera out but if I can figure out how to I should try and get photos of them. The baby was quite a big one. It looked so cute hanging on to mum’s back. They looked like this.