Australia is known, especially to those that live there, as a land of extremes.

Australia is a beautiful country in ways that are very different to kinder climates. This harshness, this ruggedness, this unforgiving landscape is a part of me, and in turn, merely existing within it as a visual artist has influenced my style and the very way I see the world around me. Many of my images, like my This Parched Land series and drought images, attempt to visually portray this.

Last Friday I went to Yarra Glen with =Sadandal and her wonderful daughters, *CircuitDruid and *ragnarok-leaves-none. We had a great day out photographing on the Yarra River and at Yering Station Winery. This is the image I took at Yering Station, from the walkway between the Visitors' Centre and the Administration Building:

[link]

and this one of the stop sign at the start of the drive way into the Winery:

[link]

The very next day, Saturday 7th February, 2009 temperatures soared over 46C (115F), and bushfires fanned by 100kmh (60mph) swept through. All those paddocks and hills in my images were ashes only 24 hours. One person in Yarra Glen died in the blaze. As of tonight over 130 were killed in fires that ravaged over 330 000 hectares (815 000 acres) of the state. Over 750 homes are destroyed. Entire towns and villages have been wiped off the map - places I know well, like Kinglake.

Some of you may have seen these images in my gallery, taken last August:

[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]

The property belongs to long time Living Historians. We went up there on a workshop day to work on a re-enactment Viking Village. It's all gone. The beautiful, sustainable-living house, the shed, the horses, the cows, the wildlife are all charred beyond recognition. Thankfully the owners, Wayne and Christine, got out all right, unlike 30 or more people from the town who perished in the flames.

My family were farmers. We know drought. We know adversity brought on by a climate no-one can truly predict, and that no-one can control. No amount of preparedness can protect against radiant heat that melts steel sheds and cars before the flames get there, or that makes houses literally explode before they burn to the ground. Melbourne has had less than 1 millimetre of rain (1/25th") since Christmas. There have been 5 days of over 42C heat. We've been in drought for a decade. The water storage for nearly 4 million people is 30% full. It's a harsh enough land without natural disasters, or, as likely the case, man-made disasters if, as is suspected, many of the fires were lit by arsonists.

In all of this, one tiny thing made me angry. I read, alongside the countless articles covering the disaster, an article about an ice floe on the Great Lakes in the USA killing one person and trapping 134. We report that in Australia, even though our disaster is on a vastly greater scale, and yet American friends saw nothing of our disaster on their screens, in their papers, on their radios. All around the world disasters happen. Unless they are glamorous, or have some Hollywood starlet bint pose in their designer gowns amongst the devastation we hear nothing of them. The ecological ruin brought on by the selfish, consumerist societies blunders towards us like an unaware behemoth, but we cannot "afford" to spend money to fix our home planet.

I'm a creative because I need to communicate. In the coming days and weeks I hope to document some of the devastation in the wake of these fires. Maybe it will strike a chord with some, hopefully the young, because our elders have dined on the flesh of prosperity, and left us the bones of consequence to gnaw on. Maybe it is that I am guilty of massive hubris even thinking that my images may make any sort of difference. I'm not rich. I'm not famous. I would like to make a difference, and this may be my best chance to honor those who lost family, friends, livelihoods and all they have, and those who stoically attempted to fight the inferno, to save just one home, or a whole town.