As you can see from the table below, Karen was right and following the rules of the temperature guage on the Springwood Weather site we couldn't go over 40C and we didn't - by much.
Still, that was hot enough. We weathered the heat by judicious use of our air-conditioning. Thank goodness we weren't still at Macquarie Road, it used to get very warm in that house and a long run of weather like this would have been really uncomfortable. I felt sorry for the new owners as I drove past on Sunday.
Robbie had a cricket game on Saturday. Luckily it was at Blackheath which is higher up the mountains and therefore a bit cooler. Ian took Jamie and Ishbel up with him to the outdoor pool up there so they splashed about keeping cool. (I was at the hairdressers - for hours!)
On Sunday morning I got up early and went off to RFS training. I got grunts of No when I asked the boys if they were coming. The turn out yesterday was HUGE. That and the heat meant we stayed inside the shed, divided into 3 more manageable groups and did training that way.
One of the topics was vehicle familiarisation. We went walkies round the truck and the Personnel Carrier, pointing out potential hazards, etc. We have a new PC, a Landrover Defender. I got to have a little drive of it. We haven't been too impressed with it really. It's carrying capacity is rubbish - our taller members can't sit upright in the back seats, some of our more curvaceous members have trouble finding space anywhere and with a full crew of 7 there is nowhere to stow bags and equipment except on the roof. We barely have room for the First Aid kit and the fire blankets for use in an over-run. Driving it was odd too - the hand brake is in a whacky spot and the indicators and wiper sticks are all back to front - I managed to remember they were the opposite way round while I was driving the PC then promptly put my windscreen wipers on in our car instead of the indicator! Visibility out the back was rubbish - even without a crew on board.
As a Total Fire Ban had been declared again both days of the weekend crews were sought to sit on stand-by. But we couldn't volunteer. We had tickets to see the Top Gear Live show at the Acer Arena at Homebush. It was a lot of fun, the kids loved it. They had some of the stuff from the TV shows - we voted for cars on the Cool Wall by holding up green or red cards and using the same cards to indicate Left and Right, did a lap of the circuit used on the show by celebrities. There was an Australia v England car soccer match - Australia won 5-4!
Karen and Dan went to Top Gear the evening before. We were supposed to babysit Xavier but Rana is over from the US so she did it instead. Ishbel was a bit put out and said, "Well, we get first dibs next time!"
We've woken up this morning to much cooler temperatures - hence the cardi - but the sad news that over 100 lives have been lost in the Victorian fires (see ABC News pages). Yesterday morning 20+ lives had been lost but the news reports were saying 40+ could be expected. When the alarm went off at 6am the news report said some 90 people had been killed. Not half an hour later 108 were being declared dead. This is the most people killed in bushfires ever. We still haven't heard anything about teams being sent down to help from the Blue Mountains but I have said I am available.
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