"Smoke gets in your eyes" - all the way from Victoria

Today, in the early afternoon, I was at Lucy's place, in East Kangaloon. Lucy noticed that it looked smokey outside. So we went outside, and sure enough, we could smell smoke.

Where was it coming from, we wondered. It was very thick to the east - further along Tourist Road. But Lucy noticed that the wind was coming from the south-west. Very odd. The sky was fairly clear in that direction, but very heavily smoked in the eastern quarter.

Shortly after this, the sky cleared, and we all relaxed.

Later in the afternoon, I heard on a weather report on the ABC local radio that a cool change which had blown in from the south-west had brought in a wall of smoke coming from the East Gippsland fires. That's pretty extraordinary. It was also odd that the smoke was so dense, given that it had travelled some 500 Kms.

Obviously a very tightly confined wind pattern had brought in the smoke, and then, as the "front" passed by us, the concentrated cloud of smoke then started to disperse. Still it gave us an anxious wait for half an hour or so.

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That's easy for us to say. It's a lot different for the people of East Gippsland. The fires, while not as large as the pre-Christmas fires, are quite nasty, and are located somewhat closer to settled areas, it seems.

Let's hope they do not lose any homes, or other property (and lives, of course).

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As a follow up to the previous two Blog Entries, about the WA storms, the Western Australian Government has declared the Esperance region a natural disaster area in the wake of last week's storm. Follow this Link to the ABC News site for more details.