Broome, Western Oz: The sky is on fire

I guess I shouldn’t wax poetic about the sunsets on Cable Beach without actually showing one.

As they say, this is an actual unretouched photo. No color levels have been pumped up. No Photoshop has been used. This is just the kind of color you get with your average, ordinary Broome sunset. Night after night after night.

Last time we were in Broome, back in 2019, it was the outback that was on fire.

Here’s a photo we took on Cable Beach in 2019. The local community was so nonchalant about the fires that the camel caravan didn’t even alter its nightly schedule as a bush fire raged just beyond the berm.

You may well remember that the whole damn country was on fire and everyone around the world was contributing money to firefighting and recovery charities. Hundreds, maybe thousands of bush fires did horrible damage, killing hundreds of Aussies and millions of animals wild and domestic.

This year it’s been the opposite problem — torrential rains all across eastern Australia. So much rain that flood waters are causing terrible damage across huge swaths of the country.

And if nature works here anything like it does in California, the torrential rains will lead to more lush growth in the bush, which will then lead to more fires when the heat of summer finally arrives.

It’s a never ending cycle. Kind of like the sunsets in Broome, but not nearly as pretty.