Its a well worn path:  clear combustible material from well around your house, clean out gutters, have a contingency plan in place (water supply and delivery mechanism OR escape plan) and hope like hell you do not live in a fire corridor which negligent authorities and/or environmentalists have not back-burnt for decades.

People in the cities ignore.

Our little house has had a couple of close calls.

We were fairly exposed at one time but it is all built up around us now. We had the firies dowsing the place as a fire burnt out the scrub across the road back aways.

Still have the roof sprinklers installed, turn them on occassionally to cool the house down on a hot day.

Pretty safe now as there is a lot of McMansions betwixt us and the bush.

SD

Well guys I am on the coast here (60 mins. from the Melb. CBD) and my front lawn/driveway/nature strip etc. is crispy and discoloured now - and - it's only mid-October!  Have never known it to be like this in all the years I have lived here?

People are "saying" it's going to be really bad heat/fire wise this summer!  Hope they are wrong?  :-(

It is getting very dry here and I am using several impulse sprinklers to try and keep a little bit of greenery for the fauna.

I live close to bushland but here in the hot summer we get our wet season so the fire danger is not as great as in the southern states.

Unfortunately our bushland is still full of debris from the April gale winds which felled and uprooted lot of trees and bushes to the ground, so comes summer there will be a lot of undergrowth to burn.