It was a funny day yesterday.

It started more or less as planned.  Lindsey left for work, as planned.  I also left for work, as planned. Jim and the dogs stayed at Hill House.  The morning progressed, as planned, both at Hill House and at Summerhill.

Then news broke that the air traffic control tower at Sydney Airport had been evacuated because of smoke.  Flights in and out of the airport were suspended.  No worries, thought I.  I don't know anyone flying out of Sydney today. Austin isn't leaving until Tuesday.  Should be fixed by then.

This was all very well - but I had forgotten the people I knew who had intended to fly *in* to Sydney.  Such as Lindsey.  Amongst others.

The airport was open for flights by the time Lindsey's flight was due to leave but by then, of course, there were massive backlogs.  Her flight was delayed from 20:00 on Friday to 06:00 on Saturday.  She has, in fact, just taken off.

Meanwhile, back in Summerhill ... The TV in the waiting room was reporting a grassfire in Bunker's Hill, which is near Ballarat and just inside my summer fire watch zone of 20km.  It's beyond the Delacombe shopping centre.  Jim rang to tell me that he could see it and should he pack the car with the dogs and Run Away.  The fact that you could see it from Hill House wasn't necessarily an issue.  On a clear day you can see right across to the Grampians.  It didn't seem as though Mount Helen was in immediate danger and no warnings had been issued for us.  For that fire to get to us it would need to pass through some properly built up areas, including the fairly new Delacombe Town Centre shopping complex. He decided to remain alert but to remain where he was.

Then they reported another fire at Mount Mercer, to the south of Mount Helen, also just inside my summer fire watch zone but not posing any risk to Hill House.

Add into the mix a cold front coming in from South Australia with strong swirling winds and a bit of rain

Lots of smoke, combined with a dust storm outside Melbourne and the arrival of the winds led to lots of  interesting "cloud" formations around Melbourne, lots of polluted air, and lots of smoggy haze. The traffic was very slow moving at the Melbourne end of the freeway.  Adding to the excitement were the police officers on motor bikes who were weaving their way through the traffic.  And the fire engines, sirens on, lights flashing, who were trying to get to the fires around Ballarat.  It's lots of fun trying to get out of the way of large fire engines in more or less stationary traffic!!

It was even more fun when we got to Melton and across the freeway was strewn an extraordinary amount of rubbish.  Huge black bags of stuff. Long tubes. Plastic things.  I have no idea what had shed its load all over the freeway (and then, apparently, not stopped to try and clear up) but all the traffic slowed down to almost nothing, formed a single line and then more or less chicaned its way through the debris.

There were no further driving excitements after that. Just more swirling winds and a bit of rain. But I was glad to get back to Hill House and settle down to a quiet evening in.  No alarms, no excitements, nothing particularly interesting. Just wine, steak and roasties.

I had nearly changed my fire watch zone to the winter range of 10km earlier in the week.  I wasn't expecting there to be proper fires to worry about at the end of March.  I might leave the summer one on just for now, even though the weather has abruptly changed to winter temperatures.