A fire story, to warm you all up.

Just saw the news about the homes being lost. It is a shame the rain is overpowering one area while the other is tinder dry. Much the same as here between the west coast and central plains. One burns while the other floods. Good luck to all.

bill onthehill said:

Just saw the news about the homes being lost. It is a shame the rain is overpowering one area while the other is tinder dry. Much the same as here between the west coast and central plains. One burns while the other floods. Good luck to all.

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That's just the way it is Bill, a few hours of extreme weather, either way, can cause absolute devastion.
Unfortunately, a lot of town folk move to the bush for a tree change lifestyle and they are just totally unaware of the dangers of bushfires, but the planning authorities continue to allow people to build in these areas.

from a poem by Dorothea McKellar said:

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.

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These few lines from a well known poem downunder, pretty much sum it up. The positive with the floods, is that the bulk of rain is falling in the catchment of the Murray Darling river system and hopefully might send some water down the whole system, as it is in very bad shape at the moment.

RnR.

3000 hectares at Toodyay and 11,000 at Badgie:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/31/2783262.htm?section=justin

hi I am new here, found my way here from the Redpower forms
Anyway last year I did 6 weeks on one farm in centrail Queensland driving the road trains to the crain depot, 8 johndeere headers (combines) all had a chain draging from the rear to control the static, remember geting onto one header as it was unloading into my truck at about 7.00pm it was dark and I got one big shock as I went onto the lader! could see the spark real clear! yes even with a chain draging on the the dry ground, must have come from my truck I had just driven back 35ks.
And we did have a fire that got away, one header driven by a new driver had a pully driving the straw spredder do a bearing and droped sparks that started a fire that stoped harvesting for the day and did take 6 hours to put out, think that cost about $250000 in lost wheat and time.
Hot dry days with wind in wheat, and then fire is not going to be good!


Jake.

G'day AUSSIE TD-40, welcome to the Forum.
Static electricity, for the want of a better explanation, and no one seems to have one, apart from maybe chaff igniting from around the engine, seems to be coming more of a problem with the newer machines. The straw choppers as well have started some fires, with the bigger machines, larger volumes of straw are being forced through them.

RnR.

Hope things settle down for you down under folks. I live in the midwest, Illinois, we had one of the hottest summers on record, this year. The year before we hardly had any summer warm weather. We had lots of snow in December, three days of warm reduced the white stuff this last week, so will have to wait to see what the new year brings everyone.

dirty4fun said:

Hope things settle down for you down under folks. I live in the midwest, Illinois, we had one of the hottest summers on record, this year. The year before we hardly had any summer warm weather. We had lots of snow in December, three days of warm reduced the white stuff this last week, so will have to wait to see what the new year brings everyone.

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Things sure have settled down, dirty4fun, this thread was posted through summer last year and it was one of the hottest summers on record here. We had 5 days straight over 40C in November as well as quite a few other days over 40C through the rest of the summer. This summer is shaping up to be one of the coolest summers on record, we have only had 1 day over 40C and we are into January already. We also had rain through December and there is likely to be more towards the end of January.

RnR.

G'day Guy's,
We had the first bushfire of the season here and it did get too close for comfort. I was driving home from work listening to the cricket when the message came over Sawpit Gully road was in flames. I rang home and my missus was already packed and took the family up to Morgan on the River Murray. I had to get past 2 road blocks to get home and I mentioned to a couple of CFS guys if they needed water I have a hug dam out the back of my farm which they can use. We setup the pump on the dam and I took my MF50B over and made an access road for the tankers. A call came over the radio the fire was changing and heading south and the guys face went white and said it's coming directly at us. Luckily they got it under control and my place was saved. With this being the first fire of the season one CFS guy said it was a mess with more cheifs spitting out different orders the guys didn't know which way to go. Was wasn't told in the news one unit was burnt out as when they got to the fire they found the pumps wouldn't work.

This is the third fire close to home and in every case it's been a city slicker trying to be a weekend farmer on small blocks. The pic below is a property for sale 3 doors up from my farm.



Cheers Bryan

It sounds like you had a close call, Bryan. It has been fairly quiet here for fires, a couple of small ones, but fortunately the weather has been reasonably cool and with the late rains, there is still a bit of green around. I have to say, the CFS blokes here are reasonably organised and the farmers have some pretty good fire fighting equipment as well. Fortunately we don't have the hobby farmer element, but there have been a few header fires over the last couple of years.
It looks like you might have to get the MF50B cranked up and put in some wide fire breaks.

Glad to hear everything turned out ok.

RnR.

G'day RnR,
Where abouts are ya mate, I'm up in the Adelaide Hills near Kanmantoo

Cheers Bryan

G'day Bryan, I am at Mount Rat, on the Yorke Peninsula, about 20km north of Minlaton.

RnR.

Isn't that the way it seems to happen. One part is under water and another is burning up. Glad the out come was good, way to close for comfort, I would bet.

Some spring rains will set things right, for you I hope.

Better change that to fall rains for you down under, people. Sorry about that! As they say in Texas nothing is ever as right as rain, they are dry there, also.