November 8. Day 312. Sun goes down on another week

Perhaps it was a reflection on my state of mind, but for a while this afternoon the sky looked like approaching Armageddon. Hours of marking will do that to a person's head. Bushfires in the region will do that to the sky.
It was all quite dramatic. The news that Bribie Island is again on fire, reminds me of a former life and another dramatic time.
The huge area of bush on the Island means that it is no stranger to bushfires. Five years of being the only reporter on the Island means that I'm no stranger to covering those fires.
It is quite a responsibility in these times of crisis to provide the vital information link between the emergency services and a anxious public (there was no such thing as Twitter in the old days). But you have to keep it in perspective. Perhaps that's what my straight-talking chief-of-staff was trying to remind me when he was shouting down the phone: "We don't want any f***ing heroes." As an asthmatic and a wimp, there's little chance of that. And for the record, if Armageddon really had been approaching this afternoon I would probably taken a photo and then gone and hidden in my room. We don't need another hero.