A hot weekend

We have had another hot week of blue skies and had also been forecast intense heat in Sydney over the weekend, to match the levels in Melbourne, but although it was hot the coastal breeze didn't make it too oppressive, although temperatures were over 40 degrees further inland. We had agreed to play with a new tennis group on Saturday afternoon and weren't greatly looking forward to it in the heat, but in the event the heat wasn't too bad and the strong breeze was more of a problem, but the tennis standard was good.

We then had some friends around for a meal on Saturday night and had a late night so Sunday was a quiet day of leisure and we headed down to Castle Rock beach in the afternoon with Laura, Rebecca and a friend, to try some snorkelling. The small beach was packed and the water was full of moored pleasure boats all enjoying the Sunday afternoon heat, so although the sea was welcoming, the snorkelling was a non-event.

On Sunday evening we heard the first news about the bad bushfires around Melbourne which had caused a large amount of devastation and a high number of fatalities. This was unusual as although bushfires are a common occurrence this time of year, they don't tend to be at this scale. It sounds as though they were more extreme than usual on Saturday in particular, probably as a result of the long heatwave the south has been experiencing (in contrast to heavy rain and flooding in Queensland) and the high winds. The worst thing is that some were believed to have been started deliberately.