Hi All and thank you for your thoughts,
The update from down here is loss of life 111, in excess of 750 homes lost, 3 schools and two total communities wiped out. One community had 85 people and 75 of them perished in the fire. They are expecting the loss of life to climb to about 170. It is the worst in our history. We are used to them down here but the conditions over the last couple of weeks have been horrendous, day after day of over 105+ temperatures and then raging winds. The Country Fire Association were saying that some of the flames were up to 10m high. Even here in NSW the hot weather is unbearable, it is starting to cool a little but the humidity is still high. The crazy thing about it is in the north of the country they have been flooded in twice with the flood waters still rising due to monsoonal cyclones and rainfall.
Again, thank you so much for your thoughts, all Aussies are still coming to terms with it. There is so much anger that some of these were deliberately lit.
We see the massive snow storms and cold you are experiencing and we are thinking of you as well.
Cath
PS - I think Attie is somewhere along the mid north Queensland coast, they should be fine, the floods are up around Innisfail and Townsville which are further up.