[TonyK]

I'm sure all the Aus-Pelicans appreciate your kind thoughts Matt.

Fortunately enough I'm along way from the fires and have not yet been personally affected. It is truly devastating though; whole towns (and many of the families that lived there!) have been completely wiped off the map.

It's bitterly ironic that there are also massive monsoonal floods in far north Queensland at the same time!

Dorothea Mackellar wrote a poem titled "My Country". The second verse goes like this:

"I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and terror,
The wide brown land for me."

That just about sums it up really.