Australia is On Fire

Hay may be a small town on the Welsh Borders, but it's far from isolated - the people who live here have links all over the world.
I was talking to one lady who has relatives in Australia. They are safe, but they told her about what had happened to one of their neighbours in the bush fires that are still going on. He's a farmer, and he's been forced to abandon his 10,000 head of cattle to fend for themselves. The family were able to evacuate, but his farm house has burned down (fortunately he has another house the family can move into).
So that's just one small snapshot of what's happening in the bush fires, which now cover such a huge area that the plume of smoke has reached New Zealand, over 2,500 miles away.