Day 4-Alexandra patrol & hot spot check

I made a point of grabbing an extra blanket, just in case the airconditioner was on and I got cold. I didn't need it in the end but it did get cool during the night.
Up at 06:15. Showered and got ready for the day. Breakfast and on the trucks by 07:30. This time I drove into the main street for coffees and dropped off most of the crew while MJ and myself went and got fuel for the truck, then came back, picked up the crew in the main street and assembled at Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning depot by 08:20 for the 08:30 briefing and tasking. After yesterday's work on the chainsaw, it needed cleaning and sharpening, so Kevin and I started that before the briefing, and finished afterwards.
We were tasked with Rivers 30 to patrol an area along the southern end of the Longwood fires and an area where they spotted over into adjoining grassland and hills.
It was a very hilly run and a little hairy in places. I took the truck through some patches where there was a good side slope; there were times when I was concerned the truck would tip, but it didn't. We also went way off road and ended up on a farm track on top of a narrow ridge. We got a good distance along the ridge, then the track became blocked by a tree which would take too long to clear, even with chainsaw. I had to reverse all the way back along the ridge to get out. It was a real challenge with very little room to move and nowhere to turn around for a good couple of hundred meters.
As we had gone as far as we could with our patrol area and had checked out all our allocated hotspots, we were tasked to respond to a hotspot picked up by thermal imaging on a nearby property. The farmer had no idea what we were referring to, but it turns out there was an area on his property that had burnt but was not mapped so we checked it out. It was a nice little patch where the river elbowed in a little valley. We didn't end up finding any problems, so we headed out, encountering Molonglo Command on our way back. We were released for a lunch break and after lunch checked out the other end of the sector we were patroling earlier in the day. A locked and impassible gate and very steep terrain later, and we were heading back out to the main road, having encountered no issues.
There was really not much happening in our sector and we decided to head back to our camp where we started to clean the truck; it was covered in a thick layer of dust inside and out.
As we headed back there was word on the Vic. channels that 2 storm cells were developing in the region and we could hear a lot of thunder in the area. No sooner had we cleaned the truck, the first storm rolled in and it poured.
We were instructed to go back to the area we were patroling earlier in the day as the rain hadn't reached there, but the second cell was bringing a lot of dry lightning with it.
We parked at a suitable location where we could watch the storm roll in and could easily take off if required then decided to head up and do another run along the fire Edge that we visited this morning. We were working our way along grader lines, which can become very boggy when wet and, sure enough, just as we arrived at the edge the rain started and with it came a fairly heavy downpour of hail. We headed back out where we could take shelter from the hail, and when it cleared headed back to the main highway.
Inevitably, with the storm came lightning strikes and, more inevitable, one of the lightning strikes sparked a grass fire half an hour before we were due to knock off for the day. We raced for the fire and assisted with mop up as it was small enough that by the time we got there the farmers had managed to control it with thir ATVs.
We made it back in time for dinner and had a debriefing on the whole campaign after dinner. A group of the members headed down to the pub and purchased some beers to have back at the camp, but I chose not to participate. I had gotten word that a very high Coronal Mass Ejection event would be causing some very visible and strong Aurora activity, due from about 21:15 onwards. Les, MJ, Kevin and myself headed down to the oval where it was dark and we could sit on top of Gungahlin 10 to see if we could see anything of the Aurora Australis... and we did!
There wasn't a lot to see with the unaided eye just some obvious spears of monochromatic light shooting up from the Southern Horizon. I did however manage to get some photos on my phone and it was then you could really make out the colours. It was incredible to finally get to see it for myself!
We stayed out until about 23:30, when we decided to turn in for the night. It was going to be another early start, and a long drive home.Read more