Yarra Valley Christmas

We were holidaying for three weeks in the beautiful Yarra Valley over Christmas 2019, it’s a place we regularly visit but this time we were on high alert. Constantly checking our Victoria Emergency Application. We had an evacuation plan if the fires got within 100km.  Although they didn’t, friends  were not so lucky!

As our friend sat in our camp chair the anxiety in his quavering voice told us of his girlfriend who had lost her home. She had been stranded on the beach waiting to be rescued and then taken to a friends house where she would stay. Her house was ruined. This big burly Aussie that for so long to us was always smiling was reduced to tears. The fires affected every Victorian in some way or another and we all knew someone who had been displaced because of them.

Extravagant Excess

One day the heat was over 45 degrees celsius and so we took shelter in a nearby hotel the glass of the beautiful restaurant over looking the Yarra hills. Suddenly the glass shook with a blast of hot wind and the electricity cut out. The whole room looked at each other but knew we had nothing to complain about.

It seemed strange that only a few months later the fires were gone and we were all in lockdown, the complete opposite of the fleeing from fire that we had seen at the beginning of the year.  The country towns that had been abandoned were now seeing house prices rise as the densely populated city is the place to run from. Remote working is now a new norm and hopefully having a positive impact on the small towns of Victoria and NSW that the fires affected.

The fires will no doubt come again next year but lets hope they are not as bad as 2019 and that people can return to some normality. As for covid well that cycle seems to also be around for longer than anticipated. Will 2020 be our first covid Christmas?