At 2pm on Saturday, the thermometer outside my home nestled in the forested mountains overlooking Melbourne registered 115 degrees (46.4 C). Winds whipped the window awnings causing them to snap and pop like sails on a yacht at high seas. Smoke from nearby fires choked the valley and obscured the afternoon sun but provided no respite from the intensity of its heat. Our Mountain home with its flat tin roof proved to be more oven than hospice. We all gathered semi-naked around the single air conditioner for comfort.

We watched as Elvis, the giant Erickson S-64 Air-Crane Helitanker traverse across our windows, back and forth, carrying water to nearby bush fires. And we listened with trepidation for the local volunteer fire station’s alarm to sound and we waited for winds to change, to bring back the familiar cool mountain breeze.

Luckily for us and our neighbours, the fires did not reach our valley. But more than1000 other families were not so lucky. They have lost their homes and some, more than 136 at this stage, lost their lives.

The fires still burn and no doubt more will experience loss and grief. Our hearts go out to those who have lost and suffered.

A while back, I decided to take a photo every day for 14 days from my balcony. The photos were taken looking east with the top of an old tree in the foreground and the top of a mountain ridge in the background. I arranged the shot so that the tree was the main subject matter and the ridge disappeared behind foliage.

I took these picts over the 14 days. All of them were taken in the morning. Red Dawn was one of these 14 day images that I liked and edited it further to produce a separate image. I compiled the days together into a composite. I have a hankering to re-do this project. I’m not too thrilled with the result and would welcome any suggestion you may have to better display the 14 days.

cheers

In celebration of the 25 May 2008 Phoenix Mars Lander’s touchdown on the Little Red Planet, I decided to republish some of my earlier Mars related edutoons.

From Wikipedia:

Phoenix is a robotic spacecraft on a space exploration mission on Mars under the Mars Scout Program. The scientists conducting the mission will use instruments aboard the Phoenix lander to search for environments suitable for microbial life on Mars, and to research the history of water there. The multi-agency program is headed by the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, under the direction of NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The program is a partnership of universities in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, the Philippines, Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom, NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, the Finnish Meteorological Institute, Lockheed Martin Space Systems, and other aerospace companies.[1]

Phoenix is the sixth successful landing on Mars, out of twelve total international attempts (the sixth successful landing of seven American attempts). It is the third successful static lander and the first since Viking 2, and as of 2008 the most recent spacecraft to land successfully on Mars. It is also the first successful landing on a polar region of Mars.

My house is on the side of a Mountain adjacent to Sherbrook Forest. The forest is dominated by giant mountain ash trees kin to the red woods of Northern California. There trees are breath taking in their own right however, during the fall and winter they retain their leaves thus leaving only the calender and the temperature to herald the change of seasons.

Since the house is on the mountain side the main part of my home is on the second floor. Just outside the kitchen window you can see the top of a lonely maple tree in the backyard. The maple is out of place amongst the ash, eucalypts, acacia and wattle. However, this little maple screams at the top of it’s little tree lungs that autumn has arrived. I love the stark color contrasts of the maple in it’s full length red attire and the lush eucalypt carpet of the valley.

That brings me to this misty raining Saturday morning, camera in my hand …