If  you want to get away from suburbia and enjoy our lovely countryside, you could head up towards Kallista and visit the many gardens and grounds there.  One of them, Grant’s Picnic Ground, has a large variety of birds that happily visit with the visitors in return for food.  There is a cafe there, walking tracks and lots of photo opportunities for those who are keen photographers.

Below are just a small selection of photos I took when we recently visited the picnic grounds on Mother’s Day. There were a lot of people there and it was a beautiful day to make a visit.

If you live outside of Australia I bet you still know about the bushfire challenges the state of Victoria has been having.  Today they were forecasting really strong winds and there was a high bushfire alert for the whole state – that ends at midnight tonight.

So far, the firemen have kept things under control as they’ve worked hard during the past week backburning and setting up other strategies to protect towns around our state.  But today everyone was on tenterhooks waiting to see what might occur.

The cool change is just sweeping through the state now, it hasn’t quite hit where I am in the south east but we know it’s on its way and ahead of it is rain – wonderful sweet-smelling rain. I hadn’t realised how much I missed that smell!  It’s not heavy but hopefully it will keep up regularly, even if it’s soft rain. They’re forecasting showers for the next week – nothing heavy unfortunately but it might finally help get the fires put out which have been going for weeks now.

The latest fire has hit quite close to home for us.  Graham and I were only at Birdsland Reserve in Belgrave on 14th February and you can see some of my photos at my photoblog.  Today there is a fire tearing its way through the park and heading towards houses that we had only been looking at a month or two prior.

The fire started at the edge of one road (Nixon Road) and then headed north as it was fanned by the strong winds and heat of the day.  It also has burnt some of Lysterfield Park – the very place my husband and his mate ride every weekend and where I was taking photos just yesterday.  The fire is further up the hill from where we were.

I can’t understand this.  There was no thunder and lightening and unless there were problems with a powerline there, that pretty much leaves it to two possible things:

1.  Someone threw a cigarette butt out of their car window – something I’ve seen happen so many times in the past, or

2.  Someone deliberately lit the fire.

Either way it was a deliberate act and I can’t help feeling that the person in number 1 above is just as liable for the damage and terror as the person in number 2 above.  And the person in number 1 could have driven on their way merrily totally oblivious to what they have done.

I don’t like the fact that smokers litter places anywhere – you just have to walk around cities and suburbs and see cigarette butts where smokers congregate. There aren’t always ashtrays or sandboxes available and it seems to me that many just seem oblivious to their actions. But to throw a live butt out of a car window as they drive along is totally irresponsible and I expect they’ll be eligible for a jail sentence if ever anyone was seen to do that immediately before a fire was started.

Tonight the wind is blowing strongly and I remember back to the year we first shifted to Melbourne.  It seemed to rain all year long in 1992 and we wondered what on earth we had done, shifting to such a wet city!  How I wish it were like that again, this drought has gone on for far too long and our beautiful state is really suffering.