Spending a few days travelling up and down the bush fire-ravaged area of the Australian south coast of New South Wales sprinkle some money it was hard to not be freaked out by the destruction the fires have had in that part of the Australian, where I am sure it a scene that has been replicated all over Australian bushfires in the last few months.

There is kilometre after kilometre of burnt national parks, reserves, and farmland.  In some places the destruction is so bad that there is nothing left on the ground, the bushes that may have been there before the fires are completely gone and so is any ash from which they would have ultimately turned into. 

The landscape in some parts looks like the back of a balding echidna, with what were once filled with healthy trees and bush, it now looks like quills that are also so sparse that you can clearly see the landscape they once protected. 

Stopping at one place to have a look around, what struck me was the complete silence.   There were no sounds….  Like none….  No birds, no wind, no leaves, not anything… like there was nothing…  It was both surreal and relaxing at the same time.

The other thing that I took away from looking at hundreds of kilometres of burnt-out land was the incredibly high percentage of houses that survived even while everything was burnt around them.  Their fences were gone, gates were gone, trees around them were gone but the houses looked untouched.  House after house, as I drove up and down the south coast, was like this.  With everyone I saw it was hard to figure out how they were not touched, I know the RFS would have been there for some and residents were there for others but I am sure good old fashion good luck played a very valuable role for most.

Some, on the other hand, was not that lucky.