Out The Back of Kinglake West Hall…Six Months After Black Saturday

Download now or watch on posterous KinglakeWestHall.mov (6317 KB) The Hall at Kinglake West is very intact, with no sign of damage from February’s fires, sitting only a hundred metres or so from the local CFA. However, if you go out the back and look over to the left side, the trees tell an important [...]

Just Near The Kinglake Diner

The Diner itself and the shop next to it are intact, but these trees show how close things were during the February bushfires. Sent from my iPhone

Kinglake West Six Months After Black Saturday

Sent from my iPhone

Returning to Kinglake

My start in social media began with relaying/retweeting important information on the #bushfires and #vicfires hashtags over on Twitter and I’ve already made visits to two of the affected areas from February’s Victorian bushfires…Flowerdale and Kinglake. Tomorrow, Sunday July 12, I’ll be out at Kinglake West assisting with a community event, so I’ll be seeing [...]

Marysville A Few Months Later…

I’ve just come away from watching tonight’s ABC Four Corners program about Marysville. It was a sharp reminder that, while some of us got through February with families intact and friends safe, those in the towns worst affected weren’t quite so fortunate. For Marysville’s CFA captain, Glen Fiske, there was the double blow of watching [...]

iPhone Tweeting…

On February 7, my first real understanding of the bushfires that day came not from the internet on my home computer, but through a Twitter client on my iPhone.  That initial app actually was handy, but was eventually joined by a few more that added more functionality to the mix.  And while most of my [...]

One Last Reflection, Then Forward…

This past week saw a huge change in the bushfire situation, but not before a little moment of truth on Tuesday.  With fire weather warnings and predictions, plus the new factor of a police-initiated SMS alert the previous day, even most of the volunteers on the Twitter #bushfires hashtag were nervous. Monday night had passed [...]

The Road To Flowerdale…

The little country town of Flowerdale has held the attention of Victorians since just after Black Saturday.  North of Kinglake and Kinglake West, it had to survive the first week after the fires with no support, no CFA units, after that whole region was declared a crime scene.  To save the remaining houses, the locals [...]

Time For Relaxing…

“From a Twitter volunteer’s point-of-view, keeping a clear eye on the CFA web pages and feeds showed the firefighters were doing a fantastic job”

TwitterTrolls…

I was so looking forward to scaling back, now that we’re closer to seeing the bushfires totally under control. Less need to help out on Twitter hashtags #bushfires and #vicfires relaying assistive information, like @cfa_updates’ advisories and incidents reports tweets. Most of the regular volunteers on the hashtag stopped last week. Some were still trying [...]