Sydney Bushfires - M6 + 6D (32mm, 11-22mm, 100-400mmL II)

D Lynch wrote:

Thank you.

Your images really struck home. Horrible fires.

A friend of mine posted me this images from her property yesterday showing starving kangaroos.  The grass is dry and they have little or no water at all.  She lives at Sofala - about 2 hours from my home in Sydney. NOT MY PICTURE - Taken by my friend.

GOVETT'S LEAP LOOKOUT - The view from my EOS M6 last weekend.

GOVETT'S LEAP LOOKOUT - Northern view from my EOS M6 last year.

GOVETT'S LEAP LOOKOUT - Source: Twitter. Same lookout a couple of days ago.
NOT MY PICTURE

GOVETT'S LEAP LOOKOUT - North-East view from my EOS M6 last year.

GOVETT'S LEAP LOOKOUT - Source: Twitter. Same lookout a couple of days ago.
NOT MY PICTURE

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The main fire has already destroyed an area SEVEN times the size of Singapore. It's one of hundreds that are covering our state. Two men died yesterday. Two volunteer firefighters died the day before when their truck rolled. One firefighter was charged with lighting 15 of these devastating fires deliberately on his own. 14 other people, many of them children between 10 and 14 years old were caught lighting the earlier fires that killed three people.  A photographer who loved out there in the mountains was burned alive and firemen found his body on a trail where he was overrun.  The size is just unfathomable to us in terms of scale. But the loss of animal life and the pain these animals are suffering in the worst drought in a generation is also hard to imagine. And today, Sydney is expecting temperatures of 48C where I am in the outer suburbs. That's almost 50C. And the winds will pick up, which has resulted in an Emergency Alert that today is now listed as "Catastrophic". A Catastrophic Warning is a new warning level we recently introduced. It means you will indeed likely die if you are on the ground and unable to flee the area. I'm sort of in a mixed mind as to whether or not to take another drive out to see what I can see and photograph. There's a dark beauty to all of this. I'd like to try to capture some of that if I can - but not if it puts me in the way of others. I'll think about it tonight. When the sun rises it should take a few hours before the heat rises alongside it. I also need to get out over the mountains to where the drought is hitting the farmers as there's some inspiring colors (or lack thereof).
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I'll have the EOS M system with me if I make it out there but any decisions I make need to me cautious right now. I'd like to drive south to visit friends before Christmas but my wife just told me that enormous fires have cut off some of the roads there.  They just introduced an $11,000 fine for people dropping cigarettes from cars as there's a total fire ban in effect.  That didn't stop a busload of Chinese tourists from smoking cigarettes as they stood in the wind in front of me last week and took photographs of the fires.  It's just insane.
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So many fires were deliberately lit this year.  More than 16 people have been arrested.

EOS M - Same location (Mount Tomah Botanical Gardens)

SAME view as above ...from this week - Fires approaching .  Source: SMH Newspaper.
NOT MY PICTURE

NEWSPAPER CLIPPING
NOT MY IMAGE

NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS
NOT MY IMAGE

SYDNEY LAST WEEK - SOURCE: LOCAL NEWSPAPER 
NOT MY IMAGE

NEWSPAPER CLIPPING
NOT MY IMAGE

The size of the nearest fires around Sydney.  Sydney City (lower right) is a MASSIVE city that extends to all the pale regions in the center (which is where I reside). That large single area that is burning (top) is over 450,000 ha in size.  Imagine the loss of animal life there.

Pulling back further, you can see all the other fires burning within a few hours drive north of Sydney - and this is just part of the central coast.
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Regards,
Marco Nero.