Into the Wild

People who've never been to Australia tell me that they think of it as a wild continent. Besides seeing the iconic Opera House and Bondi Beach, they've heard that you can stumble into kangaroos walking through residential neighbourhoods, step on one of the world's 5 deadliest snakes or come across the same number of poisonous spiders who call this country their home. Killer sharks can show up in inner city Perth or South Australian beaches they've read too and literally bite off bits or scare to death humans who as ardent swimmers and surfers, undeterred continue to go back into the sea because they see themselves as creatures of the ocean too even if lower on the food chain. Crocodiles that otherwise appear motionless, move out of muddy swamps with lightning speed, snap their jaws and lock onto the legs of campers on the banks and drag them into rivers in the Northern Territory never to be seen again.

I'm amazed at people's impressions of Australia because it's all true and despite all this, they want to travel out here and pay good money to risk their life while also of course being rewarded by an extraordinary landscape, wilderness, oceans and the Great Barrier Reef.

Others extremes that happen in Australia with alarming regularity are floods, droughts and bushfires.

I landed this week in Sydney during a heatwave and the mercury edging 40C. Stepping out of the terminal the air reminded me of desert winds. On the drive down to Canberra, we passed thousands of hectares of land: farms, orchards, wineries and Lake George. Everything looked dried to a crisp like a tinder box ready to go up in flames.

As we approached Canberra I discovered that a fire was in fact raging and had already burned through 2,500 hectares of land.

The Rural Fire Service issued an emergency warning to the residents of Boro, Tarago and Mount Fairy to be prepared in case they had to evacuate their homes because of the blaze which has its own name - the Currandooley fire.