Travel: January 2020 Archives

New South Wales Rural Fire Service: Fires Near Me

This is an interactive map showing the extent of the burned area and the status of fires in New South Wales and neighboring parts of Victoria and Queensland. Here is the fire map for Victoria, the road closure map for Victoria, and the road closure map for NSW. There are a few contained bushfires and grass fires in Queensland at the moment.

I'm sad to see roads I drove and towns I visited under threat. Three years ago, in October 2016 during the Australian spring, I took a four-day drive that included the beautiful Australian Alps and Murray River Valley. The town of Corryong, Victoria, home to a museum about the times depicted in the poem "The Man from Snowy River," is surrounded by burned areas, and roads out of town are closed to traffic. Kosciuszko National Park in New South Wales, home to the highest peak on the continent, has been evacuated and the Alpine Way scenic highway is closed through the entire park, from Bullocks Flat to the Murray River on the border with Victoria. The Falls Creek ski resort is under mandatory evacuation. Residents of Bright, a pretty resort town in the foothills of the mountains, are being advised to leave.