No damage from the fire - we dodged one here

In Western Australia we escaped the bulk of the bushfires, the major cause was the dry conditions caused by the Indian Ocean Dipole and was more severe in Central Australia and the East Coast.

There was still bushfires in Western Australia, it is bushfire season after all and a  fact of life for many of us. The week before Easter saw some great autumn weather, 36 C on good Friday with stunning weather over the Easter break so the fire that raced through our area on the Monday/Tuesday befor Easter was a concern.

People were told to pack up and leave immediately, their lives were at risk so we followed the fire via newsfeeds, our block is long and backs out into thick scrub. Only just in 2019 we had a fence put on the back to stop motorbikes riding through our property and a gate was erected. 

We have kangeroos feeding on the grass at the back, there is possums up in the trees and bandicoots all in the area. When a fire races through, you first think of human life, then your property and then the wildlife in the area. 

While it is too early for us to survey the wildlife lost as we are still locked down, it was interesting as the bush at the back of our property was too thick to walk through, the fire took out all the scrub and left the trees. This is a usual occurrence, Australian trees seems to grow better with fire sweeping through.

The whole idea of burning off is to remove all the debris, low intensity firs lit under the right conditions remove all the fuel and damage to wildlife is minimal. We were lucky, the fire pretty much burned past our back fence and while it did burn on our property, there was minimal damage with just our wood heap burnt.