Office of Steam Forum for Model & Toy Steam Gas & Hot Air Engines

G’day all,

Sorry all, its been a shit show here. The NBN (our internet (regardless of ISP) went down and all mobile phones for most of yesterday (We have hardly any copper land lines any more working in our area, all voip and mobile) I don’t know if that was very good idea from the govt after being totally in the dark and not knowing what was going on, it was frightening being in the dark. We didn’t have even a transistor radio or any radio that we could use, that’s now rectified. Power was also lost. They had crews out pretty fast to repair power lines, and the NBN and mobile phones are back up working off a massive generator that they trucked in.

The smoke was choking thick this morning, thankfully lightened with onshore ocean breezes a bit now. We still have fires (we are right on the coast) to our south, west and north burning out of control. We have been blessed that we haven’t had the Westerly winds that took the fire to all the villages south of us and only stopped when it hit the ocean. Just got to keep hoping the winds are good to us.
So many people we know have lost so much now, lost their homes and everything they own. The helos and planes are still working to our south west around 5klms away and to our north about 2klms away. They also have a lot of huge bulldozers trying to cut firebreaks as quickly as possible with the better conditions today before the weather deteriorates again to hot and stronger winds at the end of the week and weekend.
The highway was closed for hours yesterday, but thankfully hasn’t been today. The RFS are saying that it will be likely shut again towards the end of the week when conditions deteriorate again.

The damage wrought has been on an unimaginable scale, its burnt from Bateman's Bay in the South to Nowra in the North and is just getting bigger and wider every day.. I can't even let myself think of what the wildlife catastrophe has been, let alone the loss of some peoples lives. It's Christmas Eve here, but hardly feels like it. Just in my state of New South Wales the news said this morning that nearly 1000 homes have been lost the RFS said an additional 2,048 outbuildings and 68 facilities were levelled by the blazes.

Really appreciate the kind thoughts all. I still am hopeful that we will get out of this with our home intact.
We have our survival plan if worse comes to worse, so our personal safety should be assured.

Just the fires around us have burnt out around 800,000 acres.

[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

Just to show the impact on the whole coast of New South Wales, here are the four (4) megafires that are burning out of control.

We are the one at the bottom of the image. As I said earlier the damage and ongoing destruction has been on an unimaginable scale and nothing will put these out until we have drought breaking rain that's not forecast till the end of January or sometime in February.

[ Guests cannot view attachments ]


Thanks all, so appreciate the concern shown by all my friends. And again, I really think that we have everything prepared to save our home and also be safe. Sorry for waffling on, I hope all the above makes some sort of sense.

To all, Jenny and I hope you have a wonderful Christmas with your families. Our two sons and their families will be here all day tomorrow and we are so looking forward to Christmas. This disaster has made for a very cohesive community spirit as what does happen often in emergencies.

Kindest thoughts to you all and thanks one and all for being great mate!