"We had a cedar house, Kinniburgh says, with decks all around, and once it got started it just exploded. It was certainly a shock. There was lots of devastation and drama. The community went through the emergency stage of just surviving, then you begin to craft out your recovery. I was involved in the Sarsfield recovery group and we thought about how we wanted to look in five years, ten years. The whole process was very positive,"
"The fires are the worst since 2019-20, that black summer of ash horizons and filthy air, when 19 million hectares of land were burned, 33 people died and 3 billion animals were impacted. Cricket, like everything, was affected. Big Bash and school matches were cancelled and a Sheffield Shield game played in heavy smoke was likened by the New South Wales spinner Steve O'Keefe to smoking 80 cigarettes."
"The idea to hold a cricket match to bring together the two fire-damaged communities came from the local fire brigade. Phil Schneider, a volunteer, salvaged some tea tree wood from a peat paddock fire that had burned for weeks and took it down to a wood turner in Lake Tyers. Together they worked on it until the Sandhill Ashes urn was born named after a hill between the two communities."
A record-breaking heatwave and intense winds have created extremely dry conditions across south-east Australia, producing hard-to-control bushfires and tinder-box landscapes. Victoria's Country Fire Authority warned the state is very, very dry and that any fire that takes hold will be challenging for communities. The blazes are the worst since the 2019-20 Black Summer, which burned 19 million hectares, killed 33 people and impacted three billion animals. Fires disrupted cricket and other events, cancelling matches and forcing games in heavy smoke. Rural communities such as Sarsfield and Clifton Creek faced devastating losses, then pursued recovery and community-led commemorations like the Sandhill Ashes.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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