But probably will, unfortunately.

We had our first serious bushfire of the season last Friday. It was burning up on top of the escarpment. At about 130 ha in size, while it was still out of control it cut the Princes Highway and threatened the motorway. When I was coming home on the train I could see helicopters heading out to the ocean to fill buckets of water to dump on the fire.

Later in the evening the authorities decided to bring in the bigger guns. It is questionable whether the fire was large enough to warrant it in itself but it provided an excellent training opportunity if nothing else. After dinner I was called out to cries of a low-flying aircraft overhead in our backyard. When I came out I notice that it was a DC 10 which has long since ceased to be a passenger plane in this part of the world, though it is still occasionally used for cargo. A little further digging found that it was in fact a firefighting aircraft that had been leased from an American operator by the New South Wales Rural Fire Service over the summer period. By the time I had recharged my camera battery the DC 10 had flown home. However it has a smaller sibling; a Lockheed C130 Hercules which is also been leased to deal with the summer fires. In the rapidly dying light, I did manage to get this one shot of it.

I'm hoping that I won't need to see it again over the summer, but the forecast is for a long, hot summer which will probably see a number of fires so I fear that hope will not be fulfilled. It's good to have the Hercules and DC 10 around, I'd just be happier if they were sitting on the tarmac twiddling their metaphorical thumbs because they had nothing to do.