In the news

This. Seriously. They don't need tourists right now.

We had a little smoke blowing over Adelaide metro from Kangaroo Island fires today, but I couldn't smell it. 54 mins of this decade left. Normally I'd watch the fireworks on TV but the footage of the fires in NSW and VIC is so harrowing I am not in the mood for any celebrations.

Have you considered changing your holiday plans? Half the region seems to have been asked to evacuate.

@edmundro come and visit Adelaide instead. Short flight from Melbourne.

Was just trying to get my head around the scale of the fires so far this season. Apparently three million hectares have burned, which is exactly three times the size of Wales.

Edit, just saw another source saying 5MHa

If my gastric flu addled brain isn't mistaken, that's like everything in England south of Birmingham being burned.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/datablog/ng-interactive/2019/dec/07/how-big-are-the-fires-burning-on-the-east-coast-of-australia-interactive-map

https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1211912739242811392

UPDATE #2! The police officer who lied about employees at a McDonald's
writing the words "F---ing Pig" on his coffee cup has resigned.

And as some of those areas haven't seen rain for up to four years, there is no reason to think they will see much rain after this event either.
So we're looking at a few million HA more of desert developing in the next decade. Areas that will no longer be able to capture any CO2.

There's a Brexit joke in there somewhere, except it's not funny

Extraordinary story and a sentence you will read only once in your life
escape masterminded by his wife, Carole, with the assistance of a Gregorian music band and a team of ex-special forces officers.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/dec/31/carlos-ghosn-escaped-japan-hiding-in-a-musical-instrument-case

Well, there is the Indian Ocean Dipole thing at play as well. Hopefully that won't last forever and we'll see rain next winter. Some australian vegetation reacts weirdly well to fire and bounces back within a few years. Not sure this will be the case in this event though, with the extraordinary heat the fires generated their own weather systems etc, also any old growth is lost mostly.

My mate's grandma is on the beach at Batemans Bay, it's all fucking crazy... We've been OK just north of Brisbane, we had a lot of haze and smoke a few weeks back but things have settled down since then...

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/118545776/massive-currents-of-smoke-from-australian-fires-reach-new-zealand

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/01/world/europe/pope-francis-slap-video.html

This is just wierd/cool/odd

Headless torso found in cave identified as murderer who escaped jail in 1916

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/01/headless-torso-found-cave-identified-murderer-escaped-jail-1916

@edmundro hey, I hope you're safe. Did you stay out of the area? Just saw they issued a tourist leave order in place.

@pascalo we’re here in Paynesville, Gippsland and the advice round here is ‘enjoy yourself but be ready to go’. Was a little smokey first thing this morning but by all accounts the wind is in the opposite direction and our Airbnb hosts and all the locals we’ve been chatting with are pretty upbeat and have got their contingency plans in place. I just booked in for a little tattoo tomorrow, the artist is a volunteer fire fighter and has his ute prepped with pump and water tank ready to go outside the studio.

Our next stop is Canberra to see friends, obviously we won’t be driving up the coast now but back to Melbs then up. Our suitcases have remained packed and ready to go at all times and we’re keeping our passports on us. Not much else we can really do tbh. Everything accom/travel-wise is paid up and we can’t really afford to make drastic changes to our plans but yes at the end of the day we’re not fools and we’re not gonna do anything silly.
Saw a bunch of blokes in their hopped-up utes coming out of the bush yesterday covered in ash and crap. Is fire-chasing a thing? Like storm-chasers in the u.s?

There are groups of unofficial firefighters but there's no guarantee the people you saw are them I guess

These looked more like the standard redneck utes towing 4x4 caravans and trailers full of dirt bikes etc, looked like they’d been out for fun not fighting fires. We saw that convoy on New Year’s Day so presume a lot of blokes spent nye getting pissed up out in the bush but given the direction they were coming from they were def coming away from an area of gippsland that had been hit badly.

Urghs. Canberra is choking smoke right now. I'd avoid that no matter how much is paid already.

I've found myself on holiday in a bush fire crisis before. Firemen died not far from us. Would not consider being close to that situation under any circumstances again. Was horrific.

I know Canberra is fucked, we’re in contact with our mates there. We’re only there for 2nights before going to Wollongong with her which by all accounts is fine. Might see if we can extend our Airbnb there so they can just come directly to there and we don’t have to go to Canberra. We’re staying with them there so at least we don’t have any accom booked, we do need to drop off our hire car there tho.

I know linking to Twitter is lazy but this was interesting.

"Road deaths in Oslo (pop. 673.000) in 2019:

Pedestrians: 0
Cyclists: 0
Children: 0"

https://twitter.com/andershartmann/status/1212465415743512576

There was one traffic death however.
An employee with the Russian Embassy died when he smashed.... when his car crashed into a fence near the embassy.
In Soviet Russia car crashes you