Note to the opposition: Tony Abbott is not to blame for the bushfires
From our UK edition
Australia One of the odd things about bushfires as we know them in Australia is the unlikely truces declared between species normally very keen to inject toxins or tear out each other’s throats. When the state of Victoria burnt and 173 people died in 2009, one young woman from the picturesque hamlet of Marysville found shelter in a large drainage pipe, where she was soon joined by a dog, a tiger snake and a wombat. The foursome endured each other’s company without protest as all but a handful of homes in a town of 400 souls was turned to ash, along with 32 of its citizens. At one point, the woman later said, she dipped her hand into a puddle of water only to find that the wombat had something similar in mind.
