By arosema93
In Australia, the middle of nowhere is referred to as ‘the bush’. This is regardless of whether or not there are actually any bushes there. My friends and I often enjoy going ‘bush walking’ which of course is just a long word to refer to hiking. This last weekend we went down towards the coast to a mountain range known as the Budawangs and climbed a mountain named the Castle. It is known as the Castle due to its two layers of sheer cliffs making it look like a fortress. Completing the intense climb in only 7 hours was great, but a mistake to do during the heat of the day when temperatures reached almost 90 degrees. The views from the top were outstanding, but would have been even better if it weren’t for the haze.
Its been warming up in Australia. We are now well into Spring/Summer down here and that means all the sports seasons are over because it is too hot to play, and the start of bushfire season has begun. Because the wild is known as the bush, fires are called bushfires instead of wildfires. If you say wildfires down here people just look at you like you are crazy. Anyways, the reason our view from the top wasn’t better was because of the haze that had been hanging in the air everywhere due to the bushfires. The Blue Mountains up by Sydney have been burning for weeks now nonstop and they don’t look like they plan on stopping anytime soon. Our friend who was local and guiding us on the hike insisted that the haze was from the bushfires by Sydney, but once we got near the top of the mountain we could see that was not the case. From the top we could see two bushfires burning only about 8kms to the East of us, actually not too far from where the car and road were. While our driver began to freak out at first, we eventually realized the wind was blowing the opposite direction and the fire would not spread this way. However, while driving back on the road, at one point we did come close to the fire and appeared to be driving through a cloud, only that it was smoke.
The fires are a very real danger at times in Australia and they take campfires and such very seriously. Sometimes even smokers are looked down on if they throw away their butts during fire season. In America, we have Smoky the Bear to warn us about preventing forest fires. Unfortunately, Australia doesn’t have a Koala Bear version of Smoky, but this is largely due to the fact that being careful is a more ingrained part of their upbringing. However, there have been fires, quite often actually, which were purposefully started by people for the sole intention of having some fun or whatever else they may have been thinking. Everything in Australia tends to burn once every five years or so and with that much flammable stuff around it is easy for things to get out of control. The trees here are all eucalyptus trees which secrete extremely flammable oil. A couple years back, a purposefully started fire got out of control and burned a large area of countryside, burning many homes and killing several people. Already this year, two teens have been arrested for purposefully setting bush fires.
My favourite part about the bushfires however is seeing the signs posted everywhere which advertise the current fire danger in the region each day. We have these in America too out west and I’m pretty sure they go from low to medium to high, because that makes sense. However, the scale in Australia starts at Moderate and from there goes to high, very high, severe, extreme, and then my personal favourite, catastrophic. Considering that the region we were in the day we saw two wildfires had a ranking of high, I am curious what it takes to reach levels such as extreme and catastrophic. Maybe the end of the world? Hopefully we never reach that point.
The bush fires aren’t a huge threat though. While they do burn huge areas of countryside, it is not too hard to stay away and stay safe and typically they aren’t in/near highly populated areas. They can however be damaging to the environment and a few years back did wipe out most of the koala population of New South Wales (maybe they shouldn’t be such lazy animals?).