Different worlds

Early doors, before sunrise, the weather was grim (it got worse later) with rain (the type that really wants to be hail) in horizontal slabs and a razor sharp wind that fought to gain entry to any opening in waterproofs. As yours truly fought valiantly against the elements on a muddy circuit of the Bonsai Mountain with an assortment of Berners from the Dirty Dozen (some of which would really have preferred to have stayed next to the rayburn rather than dual with the small gods of weather) I could not help but compare where I was and doing with our friends down under, Kathy and Simon, who were, as I was, battling with the consequences of weather. save theirs is a very different battle to mine and one which is literally one of life and death.
Kathy used to run a blog, its linked in the margin, and they live in a parallel universe in the outback. The blog is not so regular due to Kathy deciding to study to be a V E T. She is also a firefighter, as is husband Simon who is also an IT whizz and once saved this TFTR blog from disappearing and created the top banner. Nice people. So spare a thought as they are locked into a fight to save all they own from a bush fire that has been creeping up on their ranch the last 48 hours and last contact we had they had lost the majority of their land to fire and were trying to save their last paddock with their animals. Neighbours have lost homes, no human deaths but plenty of property, wildlife and stock. An aircraft seems to have saved them last night but the hot wind, the extra dry weather, the relentless sunshine (all very different to Wales) is not helping.
So as I trudged through the deluge this morning I was at least thankful that the weather problems we have are small potatoes in comparison to our friends down under.
Good luck you two.