A Bit of Excitement

Well, just after I completed my post this morning I received a phone call from a mate up the road.

Pete: "What's with the big fire?"

Me: "What fire?"

Pete: "Look out your window."

Me: "Which window? I'm in the office and I don't see anything."

Pete: "Look out the back."

Well, it was a grass fire next door, but just over the rise, so I could only see the smoke. Not good, and Mick off at work too!

Pete got out his old fire tanker, which hadn't been used for a couple of years and headed down. The fire brigade were already on the way.

What had happened, was that next door's teenage son had been mowing some long grass in their paddock with the ride-on mower and grass got caught underneath and caught alight. It got into another neighbour's paddock and got away with a bit of a breeze behind it. He was quite upset about it, but it was such an easy thing to happen, and it could have been any of us.

Fortunately, the weather is fairly cool and the ground fairly moist and the wind was blowing the fire away from the closest houses (we are all on blocks 30-40 acres in area).

The neighbours whose paddock was burnt are currently overseas, so they will come home to a bit of a surprise.

I felt really useless, as Mick is the practical one in the family. Normally during the summer we would have a water tank in a trailer with the pump attached (for pumping water for our garden), but not at the moment. I don't even have a towbar on the new car yet, so couldn't even bring it up if it had been set up at home.

We were very lucky that there was no property damage except for a couple of fence posts and the fire brigade arrived promptly.

It was a bit of a wake up call for us all though, as it was not something we would have expected at this time of year on a day like today.