Bushfire closing in

[king casey]

Whoa!! Scary indeed. Hope you managed to dodge this one.

Hang the guitars...I'd a left the lot...
Can always live the obsession all over again

cheers, Mark.

[Brendan]

Good to hear all's well Waz - hope it stays that way.

[VoxMechanica]

Well done Waz! The missus did the sensible thing and got out while the going was good and grabbed the irreplaceable stuff. Leaving too late and not being able to get away is NOT the sensible thing. Tapping on the window of an abandoned car after a fire has gone through to see what may, or may not, be in there is not for the faint hearted!

[wazkelly]

Hi Guys, thanks for all your concerns.

Had to go to work today but looking across in daylight at that spot where the fire was in the photo and you could barely see any trace of damage, it went through so quick.

Quite unexpected as we live in the north eastern most part of the estate and at the time our patch went up the main fire front was about 4 - 6 km's away to the south west, presumably caused from embers carried with the strong breeze.

Whilst packing the car I was thinking about poor Gavin Turner and what he has been through which caused me to prioritise which axes were to be left behind. For the record they were a Yamaha Pacifica, Epiphone Slash AFD Les Paul, Artist P Bass Fretless conversion, and the Non PBG Flame Top Tele as I could only pick one Tele and the obvious choice was Swampy as that finish took forever and not sure I could replicate another one.

In the end none were sacrificed but at times like that you only have moments to grab what you can and get out quick.

Reflecting on things today has reminded me of the need to prepare an evacuation kit filled with more important things such as documents that cannot be replaced or hard to replace like passports and other forms of ID. Time to take photos of everything as receipts would have gone up in smoke and with that goes your proof of purchase, value and ownership of all valuable items. Good clear photos or digital copies of photos backed up onto a portable external hard drive is now on the to do list amongst other things.

Best of all, no loss of property to anyone from this fire but unfortunately 3 houses were lost in another fire up at Noosa some 55km north of here. And yes, it is still officially winter here but the upside is that it is the wake up call we all needed to do more controlled burning to be better prepared for a long hot summer where the fire risk increases.

[dave.king1]

Reflecting on things today has reminded me of the need to prepare an evacuation kit filled with more important things such as documents that cannot be replaced or hard to replace like passports and other forms of ID.

I'm hearing you on this Waz, we live on the high side of the valley backing onto the bush in a western red cedar house and we've had no back burning on our side of the valley since we moved in back in 1990.

It is tinder dry here and we are about to head off to Europe for 5 weeks so the important stuff will be farmed out to friends and family who aren't in as vulnerable position as us.

Race car goes to the MILs place and guitars to the daughters along with our pics, all of our music is now on hard drives in three widely separated locations across Sydney.

The best plan is to have a plan and hope it's never needed.

[wazkelly]

Smart moves DK.

When do you head off? 5 weeks should be loads of fun.

[dave.king1]

Smart moves DK.

When do you head off? 5 weeks should be loads of fun.

30th Waz, London - Bruges - Lakes Districk & Cornwall - Greek Islands - Venice - Cote d'azur - river cruise to Paris - Sydney.

When we get to London we are staying on Russell Square which is only a short stagger from Denmark St, no guitars stray or otherwise are permitted to follow me home but I'm sure I can find something acceptable

[Simon Barden]

Sounds like a fun trip. Dave. You're going to some really nice places. Russell Square is only about 400m away from where my office is/was, so we could have met up if I was still working. A shame. Denmark Street is OK, but I never found it particularly nice to shop there. OK if you knew what you wanted, but too cramped and busy for relaxed browsing. Vintage and Rare guitars was the best shop by far, and also fairly relaxed inside, but that shut several years ago and moved down to Bath.

Just remember that the shops can arrange to courier items back for you, so no-one need suspect you've bought anything and upset the holiday atmosphere. I once did this with an amp when I was away on holiday in Norfolk, and got them to delay sending it until I was home again.

[Zandit75]

Damn, good to hear everything is ok Waz. Nature sure knows how play with us!

[dave.king1]

Just remember that the shops can arrange to courier items back for you, so no-one need suspect you've bought anything and upset the holiday atmosphere.

It's not the holiday atmosphere simply a management decree that I don't need another guitar and in reality that is probably pretty close to the mark.

The only ones I would like are all unobtanium class Fenders with a minimum spend of around A$9K and up to over $20K, apart from a Custom Shop Tuff Dog that I'm doing the tribute for anyway all the rest are things I shouldn't have let go in my youth.

If I can get a set of the correct Pearliod Klusons for a reasonably price I'll be happy but the world won't end if I can't because I have found them online.

As for getting things home that is the least of my worries, my son in law is a director of an import / export company who just brought some Subaru formula 1 engines and associated spares in from Europe for one of my mates. (Tony is now trying to buy one of the cars)