Past week

This week was a pretty good week, not quite as busy for us as the past couple but we were still on the go pretty much all week. Katy worked 3 out of the 5 days this week and I had 2 clinics. Katy was at Kilsyth primary, the same school that she has been at for most of her teaching days and at another called Bimbadeen for Friday. She said that Bimbadeen is a pretty nice school and some of the other teachers that work there are the girls that were on her team when she played Thursday night before starting with the women's SEABL team.
For me, for one day of clinics we went up to the where the bushfires were and did some clinics up there. In between driving from one place to another we took the road where many cars and people were not able to get past. What happened that made it so bad is: there is a place called Kinglake up in the hills/mountains and the only way out of it is a road that travels along the mountain. There is no road that goes straight down and away from the mountain/hill. Since the fire was very large and came over the top of the mountain/hill very quickly and spanned a large distance the people driving on this windy road basically had no chance. They would have been able to see the fire coming but there would have been nothing really they could do. If they would have hopped out of their cars and tried to run they wouldn't have made it with how fast the fire was going, and the fact that the hill is quite steep and is quite large would not have helped either.
There were still burned out cars by the side of the road and many homes where all that was left standing was a chimney. It was pretty incredible to see.
I do have to say though that even though trees got burned and all the vegetation on the ground looks to be gone, things are starting to grow again. Against the backdrop of a charred black tree it was great to the almost neon green looking buds and shoots coming out of the Eucalyptus trees. We were told that even though the outside of the tree gets burned it doesn't kill the tree (at least most of the time) and within not too long all the trees should have buds on them and start the process of regrowing.
This week brought another session of lawn bowls. We went again with the teachers Katy taught with last year and our roommate Quincy came with as well. This time we didn't stay as long, only 1.5 hours or so, but we still had a good time. Again they put on their sausage sizzle, where sausages wrapped in bread were only $1 and they had, it looked, quite a few groups there again.

I'm not sure how it is back home right now, but this past week gas got down to the lowest level I have seen it both years since we have been here. Gas prices here are a big cycle. Tuesday night/Wednesday morning gas prices are the cheapest they will be all week, then come Wednesday afternoon they jump up quite a bit and fluctuate around until the following Tuesday night/Wednesday morning when they are back down. This week gas got down to $1.01 a litre. (3.78 liters per gallon) Even though gas would still be $3.80 or so a gallon it is much better than the $1.72 a liter it got up to last year. Just to give you an example of how the price fluctuates. Tuesday night/Wednesday morning when it was cheap it was $1.01 Wednesday night it was up to $1.20 something (something in the $1.20's). $1.20 is $4.54 a gallon. Could imagine gas prices going up $.80 in one day?