The Headin’ South for a Cure crew provide Adrian Adams with some welcome relief after they arrived in Wodonga yesterday after completing their marathon stage from Wagga. Picture: MATTHEW SMITHWICK
YOU might want to spare a thought for a group of Tasmanian fire- fighters today as the Border swelters through another 39-degree extreme fire-danger day.
Not the ones still battling fires, but the ones cycling from Wodonga to Euroa as part of a Brisbane-Hobart marathon.
The timing of the group’s cancer fund-raiser has proved inconvenient coming as it does with their state enduring its worst fires in decades.
Yet the firies are on holidays, making it unlikely they’d have been at work even if they were back home.
They’ve also been battling their own hot, tough conditions ever since day two when the mercury hit 49 degrees in Queensland.
Adrian Adams, who is based in Launceston, said the group wasn’t too happy about today’s weather forecast, either.
“A big thing on the road is all the radiant heat from the road,” he said. “I guess 39 turns into 45 pretty quick.”
Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Scott Williams said heat aside, a thundery shower and lightning — a big bushfire starter — was possible this morning before the heat set in in earnest.
Today is a total fire ban on both sides of the border.
The Rural Fire Service’s Inspector Marg Wehner, said while the danger wouldn’t be as bad as it was on Tuesday, today’s conditions would be extreme with winds of up 60km/h west of Howlong.
Her message is consistent — “just be careful, Don’t do anything to create a spark because almost any spark will create a fire,” she said.
The cycling firies say they have a powerful motivator as they set out today in heat and possible lightning and thunder — the struggle of friends and family who are faced with cancer.
Donations to their charity, the Australian Cancer Research Foundation, can be made at any Bendigo Bank.
