It was quite a nice trip. The zoo was quite cool but remember to BRING YOUR STUDENT CARD!! If, that is, you are indeed a student. Sonella and I didn't bring ours and so we had to pay the adult fare which is not that cheap (SIGH). The zoo was really good. I think the favorite thing I saw there was probably the pelicans. It was my first time seeing them in real life and I was absolutely shocked. They were so huge! Seriously. I didn't think, in my wildest imaginations (well.. not that I actually have had them in my mind-wanderings before.....), that they were that big. It was cool. =D We ate at the cafe there in the sanctuary. Then after that David brought us to Marysville. Marysville, one of the many places hit by the historical bush fire on the 7th of February this year. Black Saturday.
I've heard of Black Saturday before, about how the fires raged and were unstoppable, travelling at high speed, huge winds fanning the fires faster. I've heard of the destruction it caused, about how many thousands of people lost their homes, how towns were destroyed, how forests were burnt out.
But driving towards and into Marysville, only then did I fully realize the extent of destruction Black Saturday brought. The hills which were before covered with tall trees with thick foliage were now merely hills covered with tall, black trunks with comparatively little foliage. Driving on the road, all you could see were black tree trunks after black tree trunks, with strong leaves starting to grow again from the trunks. At first when I first saw all the black trees, I thought it must have been some kind of tree that I've never seen before, but I was wrong. Driving along at 80km/h, I only could imagine how fast the fire was travelling that day. Whenever we reached a clearing, I looked afar at other hills and could just see individual tree trunks standing, not a mass of green trees like before. It went on for miles and miles. So many hills, how many woods were burnt out? Those were the homes of so many animals.
When we arrived at Marysville, it was just so.. empty. Seriously. Apparently, the whole town was destroyed, there was nothing left except for a bakery. That was where we had a drink. David, who had been there before, told us of how the bakery used to be one of the many shops on that road, and now there were only two or three left. The town was in the process of rebuilding. There was a billboard just showing what land was for sale where. To think that before Black Saturday, this town was a home to about 550 people, now it was no more.
After a drink at the bakery, we drove back going through Warburton. We used a winding, small road to get there. When we started off at that winding road, it was all just the black tree trunks with little green on both sides of the road. Then we reached the part where the fire didn't reach and what a huge difference it was. For the woods in and around Marysville, it was mostly black with little green, and the floors of the woods were really empty and had lots of fallen timber amongst some green. But for the ones the fire didn't reach, it was full of greens, with so many ferns just covering the floor, it was brighter and was just so green and brown compared to what I saw before. What a huge difference.
I think the worst part that makes me so sad is that I can't think of how many thousands of people lost their homes and their loved ones. It's equal to losing their life. Their way of life, people they loved, it was all gone now. What is life without people you love?
According to ABC, the worst bush fire in the nation's history claimed 173 human lives, injured 5000 people, destroyed 2029 homes, killed countless animals and burnt through over 4555-square-kilometers of land. I'm so thankful that the fire did not strike where my sisters were. Speechless.
http://www.abc.net.au/innovation/blacksaturday/#/stories/mosaic On this webpage, you can read about the stories of people who were affected by Black Saturday. Here's something I got from the page, "We're not lucky to be alive, we're lucky to have survive. The things that made us alive were our home, our collections, our hobbies, our town, and most of all, our friends who had died."
From Wikipedia: The majority of the fires ignited and spread on a day of some of the worst bushfire-weather conditions ever recorded. Temperatures in the mid to high 40s (Celsius) and wind speeds in excess of 100 km/h, precipitated by an intense heat wave, fanned the fires over large distances and areas, creating several large firestorms and pyrocumulus clous, particularly north-east of Melbourne, where a single firestorm accounted for 120 of the 173 deaths. A cool change hit the state in the early evening, bringing with it gale-force south-westerly winds in excess of 120 kilometres per hour. This change in wind direction caused the long eastern flanks of the fires to become massive fire fronts that burned with incredible speed and ferocity towards towns that had earlier escaped the fires.
Today, NSW is dealing with bush fires as well, and I pray that it will not get any worse.
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