January 2003 Omeo Valley

North Eastern Victoria, January 2003. Half the state is alight.
The fires burnt out Omeo Valley on Australia Day. What's more Australian than that?

Devastation, no?

That isn't a sun setting behind the mountains. It's the main fire away to the north, where the arm that torched the valley above came from. It got south into Omeo too—the cricket pitch, the official safe-haven, caught alight. There were 7 different fire fronts I could see that evening, stretching along the horizon from the west to the east. Three of the four exits from the valley were blocked by fire, and the southern one, the open one, the one I had powered through that day, had only had the all clear that morning.

How's that for gravitas?