Conflagration

S-L-O-W, slow, slow, slow turning of the pedals on Nicholson Street in particular this afternoon coming out for lunch. At the top of Leeds lifting sand and gravel from the desert garden along the rail-line. It would be disastrous in the bushland up in the north. There had been some modelling on ABC yesterday for the expected winds in South Australia where more fires had sprung up. Coming through Seddon Bab had been recalled as ever, this time on the subject of wind, - the wild gusts suddenly out of nowhere like someone had let it out of a bag. (Up in the Montenegrin high country it had been a Homeric life, with language accommodating.) Palms and gums bending, plastic bags like our own birds of augury carried on high full sail. A bearded ped. who had emerged from between the cars attempting to cross Nicholson had swung to an unexpected halt at the galant on his white Mojo, nose down and bum up edging along like some kind of strange insect. How the firies were coping lord only knew. In parts of NSW there was no water available for dousing. Only today the restrictions had come into force for car washing and garden watering in Sydney, where catchments stood under 60%. The toughest restrictions in ten years reported. The recently elected conservative federal government the while was looking the other way, seeking to smooth the environmental processes for major projects. The DPM had been caught the other day on radio talking about the multi-billion dollar coal industry and the government’s responsible oversight. In the accompanying photograph and tone of voice the man was not so many degrees removed from the commander in chief in the great northern republic. In the green urban centre here the fires were as distant and remote as the war zones of Afghanistan and Syria; it was exceedingly difficult to get any kind of adequate impression. At the supermarket on Paisley homeward bound a mother had called her young boy back from indoors in order to point out for him the chocolate-orange tinted clouds blown in. There. See that. That’s from those fires, she informed the little champ, who may have had questions from the evening news.