"Is the sun going to explode?"

...a woman asked who called my work yesterday. Thankfully I didn't take her call or else I probably would have been very confused, and possibly stifling laughter.

I took it for granted that people know what the sun looks like when there's lots of bush fires about. This woman genuinely thought the sun was going to explode and felt compelled to ring her local science centre. At least she rang someone to ask and didn't pack herself up into a bomb shelter or something.

Perhaps I've just seen the sky this way more often than Melbournians? In Canberra we regularly had bush fires, some only a few streets away from home. At Potato Point (south coast NSW) it was unusual for there not to be a bush fire at Christmas time.

Even though a black and orange sky isn't new to me, it is still eerie when the whole world has an orange tinge to it. It puts me in mind of the time there was a volcano eruption years ago (in Indonesia maybe?) and the sky was almost red on the horizon because there was so much dust and ash in the air.