As we approach the end of summer and look forward to some cooler days ahead the drama of the season is still hitting hard.
Floods have devastated cities and towns in Queensland for the third time in a couple of months and the water has cost several lives.
Lives have also been lost in the many bushfires further south in Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania and New South Wales.
In Tasmania an entire community was wiped out on the peninsula north-east of Hobart.
Here some 111 homes were completely destroyed with 300 or so more badly damaged.
The worst hit areas were from Forcett to Dunalley and there was a large number of stock losses.
Many properties were not insured.
It happens every year that fires cause enormous damage to the countryside but recently they are impacting on towns and cities before they can be brought under control.
The Canberra bushfire of 2003 was horrendous and my memory of it will never fade.
It started as lightning strikes and smoke could be seen for days in the distance out in the Brindabella and Namadgi National Parks to the south-west.
There was no threat to the city from all the government reports.
But on January 8th something changed.
It was the wind which was suddenly gusting up to some 80 kph from the west and the fire took off.
Watching it from my kitchen window the outcome became very clear when after a hour or so of watching the phone calls started.
First my sister from Bateman's Bay asked if we were near the fires as they were getting the smoke there some 3 hours driving time away.
Then my brother from Sydney was hearing reports on the radio and television and my other sister and brother-in-law were on the phone.
Finally at around 3pm my daughter rang to tell me they were evacuating their home two suburbs away and that it would be wise for me to do the same.
By that time the light was fading.
Half an hour later the radio stopped and the sky outside was like that of midnight except there was a weird glow about it.
Then there were explosions as gas bottles burst around me.
By now the hose was pouring water down the gutters and spraying the roof as fast as my body would allow.
There were like rain drops falling over me as the work went on.
The next day welts appeared as those 'rain drops' turned into blisters.
They were, in fact, the result of ember burns.
The power stayed off for the rest of the day and until midday on Sunday.
The power sub-station on the mountain had been destroyed.
Gas supplies had not been turned off and the result was that meters with plastic connections dissolved and sent fire balls into the roofs of houses.
The reports were horrendous.
Four people died and over 400 homes were destroyed.
Suburb after suburb had casualties and animals had stood no chance.
A house burned to the ground in my street just a few doors away.
All of Mt.
Taylor behind me had been burned and houses on both sides of it were also lost.
There is nothing to compare to the feeling one has of immobility when disaster is about to strike.
In the dark it was hopeless trying to think of evacuation and what to save and what not to take with me, aside from my animals.
Then there were the blocked streets around the suburbs where police erected barricades to stop cars travelling into the burning areas.
The worst thing about bush-fires is realising that many of them are deliberately lit by crazed people possessed of a willingness to watch flames burn or through some careless act, such as tossing a lit cigarette butt out of a car window.
The recent Black Saturday fires of Victoria, from last year, is under focus in Victoria where a court case is underway to sue the electricity company who failed to properly maintain their facility.
A power line failure caused sparks and a fire resulted that devastated several villages and towns, killed almost 200 people, and changed the lives of many communities.