becoming a little monotonous

On Friday afternoon I very unfortunately succumbed to the children's tummy bug (or there really WAS something in the water) and had a delightful night feeling quite under the weather (you don't need the full details, trust me!). We did have plans for cattle work on Saturday but as The Husband left early that morning, he decided that I probably could be excused. (very generous of him, wasn't it!)

For the first time in literally years, I put myself back to bed (on top of the covers, even if still in my jarmies I can't do UNDER the covers during the day!) with the air conditioner roaring, and tried to recover. Kids did their chores and quite happily fed themselves and occupied themselves happily inside in the cool as well.

Around midday a phone call notified us of a fire within our rural fire brigade region (thankfully nowhere near us) and I dragged my butt off the bed to make some calls to get troops on the way. Temperature wise it could not have been a worse a day to fight fires, I believe it was well into the mid 40's on Saturday. I fielded calls on and off all afternoon, helping with communications (the fire being only 20kms from here).  After dark Trevor rang to see if I could bring him some food, so (feeling a lot better by this stage of the day, lolling about in the cool being quite restorative!) we quickly made up a loaf of bread into sandwiches, found some cold drinks, fruit and snacks and headed off. Handed it over to Husband and his crew merry men, chatted with a few others that we found along the way (the front being along the highway, most fortuitous for us, no bush bashing through strange paddocks in the middle of a back burn for us, thank goodness!)

Of course, camera was taken along too.

  There were several crews on hand that worked all night and into the wee hours to bring the multi fronted blaze under control. The smallest property affected lost probably 90% of their grass, as well as livestock, some found dead, some having to be put down and many cows bagged up (ie udders full of milk, meaning the calves have been separated from them or died). It was such a hot day that the fire just raced through the tinder dry grass and trees.

We went for a drive the next day:

The sad thing? This fire came from the highway, not from a lightening strike. Some inconsiderate person had thrown out a cigarette butt - or even worse, lit it deliberately.

Pray for rain.

And probably my sanity too ;-)