Bushfires

This photo was taken on "Black Saturday" Feb 7th 2009.

It was taken from a large shopping centre rooftop carpark in Doncaster in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne.

You are looking towrds Kinglake, which is approxiamatley 40kms from where the photo was taken. The firefront was about 45kms wide at this point.



Today is the 26th of Feb 2009 and this fire is still burning. It has spread north now and is threatening the area around Lake Eildon.

This is where our family goes for holidays. Tim's parent have property up there and we store our ski boat, jet ski's and fishing boat in a shed up next to the lake.

From today all access to Eildon will be closed, as the conditions tomorrow will be terrible. Hot strong winds and temps of 38 - 40c expected.

There are still 6 major fires still burning, with the firefront on this fire now more than 100kms wide.

There are 5500 firefighters trying to work towards getting these fires under control.

These firefighters ar exhausted after working long shifts for days on end.

Heaven only knows when this will end.



God bless the CFA and everyone else helping them fight these fires.



Jo, Miss Ellie and Baz

Sending our love to Bogart

What a sad time Bogie and his mama Lulu are having.
We are sending every single bit of our magical AIREZEN to Klaus - Bogie's daddy.

We are hoping and praying for a miricle right along with Bogie and his mama.

May modern medicine, Bogie's kisses and Lulu's love help Klaus get through this illness.

Although we live on the the other side of the world, they are our friends, and we share their pain.

We are keeping a vigil, and waiting for something good to happen.

Sending lots of love and all our healing AIREZEN..............watch out its comin'.......

Miss Ellie and The Bazzynator

State of Emergency

Hi everyone, it's Jo here and sorry to Ellie and Bazzy baby, but I am hijacking your blog.

As most of you know we here in Victoria are currently experiencing the worst bushfires in Australia's histroy at the moment.

The heatwave of last week, where we had days and days of temps over 45c and the continuing drought have both contributed to the whole state of Victoria being so dry that it was inevitable that we were in for a bad bushfire season this summer.

February is the worst time for us, as the heat of summer is at it's hottest, and we have already had 2 months of summer sun, just enough to dry everything out even more.

The tragedy is not over, the fires are still raging and although we have had a cool change in the weather this week, the forecast is for it to get hot again by Friday and once again to have winds blowing from the north - this means hot desert winds.

The areas hit the worst are just out of Melbourne in the surrounding hills of the Yarra Valley and at the end of the Dandenong Ranges flowing into Gippsland.

These are beautiful bush areas that in parts have quite a lot of small towns, so there are a lot of people living amongst the bush.
And of course these areas are home to many many native animals.

The concern is that the fires of the Kinglake/Healesville area will join up with the fires of the Gippsland area - this would be terrible.
The fires are both already huge and burning out of control. There is no way of putting them out, just trying to put in firebreaks to control where they head.

We have more than 3000 volunteer firefighters in there, we have also had teams of firefighters come in from New Zealand, Tasmania, Canberra and South Australia to help. The army are also now helping out and doing what ever needs to be done to save the towns under the most threat.

It has been declared a National Disaster, and it is not over yet.

Please say a prayer for the families of the 173 confirmed dead, the 1000 that have already lost their homes and for the poor people doing everything they can to save lives and homes at threat.

There have been amazing stories of survival - including my husband Tim's cousin, who with her husband and daughter hid in a steel shed on their 10 acre property in Kinglake and huddled under wet blankets while the fire raged straight through their property destroying everything except the shed. We thank god they survived. They have said it happened so fast there was no time to get out.

We are safe and have not been in any threat of danger.
I am hoping & praying that the friends I have in high risk areas will remain safe.

As I said the fires are still a high danger to a lot of towns, the weather conditions are not going to help.

Please pray for those at risk. It is truly horrendous.

Anyone wanting to help can donate to the Red Cross - they have set up a Bushfire Appeal.

Sorry to hijack the Dales blog - they said it would be ok, but just this once :)

Jo

we're back in action

Hi ya everyone, we're back....mum was a bit slack about letting us blog, but we are back in action now!
We had a really nice Christmas, I got a nice yellow duck with a squeaker in it (thanks G&B) and Ellie got a big pink octopus, but of course I stole it off her and she let me have it!


Ellie doesn't really play with toys much anymore, she spends alot of time just lazing about.
Every now and then she gives me a good game of bitey face and she will play shake 'n kill with a toy, but mostly I steal them all off her, so she doesn't bother.
Mum says I am a bully and that I should share - uh-uh, I don't think so mum.


Our mum got all adeventurous too and baked us some speacial doggy biscuits.She got a doggy cookbook for Christmas more than 2 years ago and has never ever used it - well she finally dragged it out and gave us a treat. Now our mum doesn't really like cooking all that much, so it was really nice of her to bake jsut for US!
Daddy says here is the evidence that mum does indeed know where the kitchen is in our house.

Ellie had a nice munch on hers, while I wolfed mine down real quick and went inside looking for more.

They were herb and garlic flavoured low fat dog biscuits, because mum has put me on a diet - geeeeeez, that is so not fair, mum knows I just LOVE food.

We had a big fright on New Years Eve with the kids from next door letting off fireworks right outside our house. Mum was over at the neighbours place but she came home to check on us and we were both very very scared. So she went and spoke to the people next door and they stopped all the awful noises.

Too late, we were already terrified, so mum stayed home with us and tried to keep us both calm.

It's summer here now and it is starting to get really hot. Mum has given us both hairecuts recently, so that we can cope better with the heat. Poor old miss Ellie struggles with the really hot days now.

Mum has been leaving us inside with the air con on whilst she goes off to the office all day.

Better go, I think she's coming and I am not supposed to be in the study on my own (I still chew things)

See ya ...............Bazzy

Baz's Big Adventure to the Blue Mountains

Hey everyone, we're back and we had a blast visiting the Leura Dales!

Mum took lots of photos, so here is the pictorial story of

'Bazzy's BIG Adventure!'



We started off nice and early for a bit of a drive.....984kms from our house to Broomelea in Leura.
Geez that sounds like a lot of kms, so here I am asking daddy if he is sure he knows the way.

We roared down the highway in mum's Subaru turbo.........through the wonderful Australian bush.

There were some big yellow signs saying look out for Koala's but I looked and looked and never saw any!


We had to stop quite a few times, it was my first ever roadtrip so mum wasn't sure how long I could go without peeing. We stopped at a town called Gundagai (pronounced Gun-da-guy).

It has a very famous statue of a dog sitting on a tuckerbox (what they used before they had fridges). We stopped to have a look at it too.

Here's a nice photo mum and Ellie.

Ellie hurt her back leggie in Gundagai while she was jumping over a big log. So she was a bit limpy on our holiday, but she is ok now.

Then finally after 11 hours and 30 minutes we saw the big sign that says Welcome to Leura! .........................Yay!

.................................We're in Leura!

Here are mum and I at the Leura Dales place, outside the old Coach House that has been converted into a guest cottage. It's very pretty. We all got to sleep in there. I even slept on the big bed with the pinkies...ssshhhh don't tell Denise!

Look at me prancing around the huge gardens. The Leura dales and I got along famously (after a little getting to know you sniff and a couple of growls, but nothing serious)
Bryan was playing with us out in the garden. We all had a great time playing chasey round and round the garden.
Old Miss Ellie was checking out the big garden too. She didn't play chasey, and of course she has met all the Leura dales before, so they were ok with her from the start - no one growled at old Miss Ellie.

Look at Noah and I playing hidey in the garden bed. Noah dug out the biggest hole to lie in....geez if I had dug a hole like that at home mum would have said BAD BAZZY!

And this is what Noah looked like after all his digging.....geez Noah did you use your nose as a shovel??? Look at all that mud!

All the pinkies laughed at him.

Look who we got to meet...Colin Harries.

He came over for a visit with his mum, and we all played chasey - except Colin is way too fast for us!

The next morning we all went to a big lake in Wentworth Falls. Here I am looking like a pretty boy. Mum calls me her handsome boy.

We all went for a big walkies around the lake together - here I am with my sissy Ellie. Notice I am in front ha ha.

Those crazy Leura dales all went into the water. I watched them very closely and then decided hmmm maybe I can get my feet wet too, so I gave it a go. I splashed around and walked funny and daddy laughed at me.

And then I saw them....ducks.

Lots of them.

Ducks, on the water, but just out of my reach.

Too bad I was on my flexi lead, otherwise I reckon I could have got that ducky!

We walked around the lake some more and then the Leura dales all went in the water again.

So daddy coaxed me in too. He even got in with me.

I decided I liked it - I was closer to those ducks, and daddy took the lead off me, so I was FREE!

Look at me mum - I had to turn around and check that mum was watching me- see I am in the water with the Leura Dales!

I went out deeper and deeper until suddenly I couldn't reach the bottom with my paws - so I madly started paddling.

And Bazzy learnt to swim. Woooo hoooo.

Mum was SO excited. She was saying "go Bazzy go!" "Good boy Bazzy".

Wooo hooo Bazzy was having a great time!

Then we went back to the Leura Dales place and had a rest in the back garden after another big play session of chasey.

Denise came out with some treats and said "what do good dales get?" So of course I joined in too.

I always know to sit for treats. Leura Dales know this too.

It was a big 2 days of running and playing and by the second night I was conked out on the couch with my daddy. Gee I was a tired boy!

Then before we knew it we were back in the car for the long drive home.

The magic Tom Tom said we were halfway home, but still 489kms to go........sigh

So I did what any smart Dale would do and slept almost the whole way home. Mum had to wake me up each time we stopped.

Eventually we saw it.....the big "Welcome to Melbourne" sign.

Y'know it really should say 'Welcome BACK to Melbourne' ha ha.

It meant we were almost home......just another 1 1/2 hours to go.

Just when we had had enough of the car and I was starting to whine (well it was a LONG trip) there was the sign we had all been waiting for....the turn off for home.

Yay, yippee, we're home. Look at me so eager to get out of the car and check out my back garden.

It was a wonderful adventure, my first ever holiday with the pinkies and Ellie.

We drove almost 2000kms and I was a good boy the whole time (just ask mum- she said I was on my BEST behaviour wooo hoooo)

I can't wait till our next road trip.

Love ya all - Bazzy xxx

Our holiday roadtrip

Wooo hooo......only one more sleep to go until our big adventure holiday roadtrip to Leura.

We can't wait.

Bazzy and Miss Ellie

Bazzy and the Tube

Mum got this fantastic tube thingy in the mail this week. It had a lovely drawing inside from Linda at Planet Airedale. She had drawn a big montage of lots of the Airedale members. Harley and Ellie are in it.

Mum is going to get it framed and hang it on the wall.

Best of all though, I managed to steal the empty post tube and ran off to have a good chew on it.

Watch me in action!

Bazzy