The Big Picture covers the Victorian bush fires. Devastating… but beautiful, too. It was #23 that shocked me, seeing rivulets of metal on the ground that had melted out of someone’s wheels. Oh, and the “graphic” one that you have to click on is of a dead horse (not especially graphic, I’d say).
And while it’s really great that this tragedy is getting international coverage and motivating people to think about what happens outside their own tiny bubble… SYDNEY IS NOT ANYWHERE NEAR MELBOURNE. I’ve had a couple people ask if we were near them. And while it’s sweet that they were concerned, there’s also an annoyance factor there. Australia is as big as the continental US. Sydney and Melbourne are 500 miles apart. That’s about as far as my hometown in Indiana is from New York City. I don’t expect people to be experts in world geography, but I thought it was fairly common knowledge that Australia is BIG.
Rachel
February 11, 2009 — 9:45 am
happens to me all the time. sigh.
Bex
February 11, 2009 — 11:22 am
Its nice that people care though. During the olympics i heard rumours that tourists would ask if it was possible to walk to Uluru from Adelaide, or like those ‘pilgrims’ last year who thought Adelaide was an outer suburb of Sydney and booked accomodation there….
Kitty
February 11, 2009 — 12:22 pm
God. Really terrifying.
Oh, and I’m glad that they hide the dead horse photo… as a horse owner who had a close brush with wildfires recently here in SoCal, cannot deal with that.
M-H
February 11, 2009 — 1:52 pm
Heh. I told a woman from Florida that asking if I was in danger would be like me asking her if she was in danger from something happening in NY.
red
February 11, 2009 — 9:13 pm
I didn’t know Peats Ridge had been moved to Victoria…
Kris they may be asking if they saw these pics because there are photos of Peats Ridge included and it mentions how it’s north of Sydney.
They are amazing pictures. So many of them send shivers up my spine.
Kris
February 12, 2009 — 6:54 am
Nah, they weren’t asking in relation to these pictures, just to the general news about the bush fires.