colin_bramso's VirtualTourist Home Page
| Page Views: 10,230 | Welcome to Australia & Dubai by colin_bramso - last update: Jul 3, 2009  |
WE'RE IN THE UK UNTIL JULY 19 | Geina & I a few minutes from our Aussie home |
We're now living in Dubai but we kept our home in Australia - so we're sort-of from both places. On the VT Forums we're asked questions about living & working in Dubai so often that I've put a section on my Dubai page with answers to Living in Dubai FAQ There is also some general information if you scroll down this page. I'm originally from England, Geina from Singapore, we met in Dubai, where we'd both gone to work, & we were married in England. We lived in Dubai for seven years, moved to Singapore for a year, then on to Australia in 1985, living in Sydney most of the time. I'm now Australian. In '97 we moved to Terrigal, a small town on the New South Wales Central Coast. Then in October '05 we decided to move back to Dubai for a while, and that's where we are now. We kept the house in Terrigal though - it's too beautiful to sell, as you'll see from this album.
Terrigal is about an hour north of Sydney, a beautiful area of golden beaches, lagoons, lakes, small towns & villages and typical Aussie countryside. From our balcony we see the whales migrating past each year, going north in June and back south in September. There's much more about Terrigal on my Travel Pages.
In Dubai we live in one of the new developments, Dubai Marina. I've built an album on our Dubai home. I've also put a Travelogue called "You absolutely must see..." on a 'must-do' tour in Dubai, which you can reach here
and there's plenty about Dubai on my Travel Pages.
On my pages I try to avoid putting what you can find in tourist guides, they do it better than I ever could. I try to give a feeling for the places we've been, try to give some idea of the atmosphere. I find that approach is useful when I'm researching other members' pages for places to visit and I hope you'll find my pages useful for the same reason.
I only use photos I have taken (with a few exceptions and I have credited those).
Aussie bushfires.
Bushfires are something that travellers to Australia during our summer fire season need to be aware of, particularly if they are driving from town to town, camping or bushwalking. They happen in all the southern parts of the continent.
The worst ever fires were in February 2009 in Victoria with terrible loss of life.
Confirmed deaths are 173 with several hundred people injured. Entire towns were destroyed, a million acres burnt, two thousand homes destroyed and incalculable deaths of animals.
I've put a little more about these Black Saturday fires below.
The 2002/3 fire season was also very bad. On Jan 18 a catastrophic firestorm hit the federal capital, Canberra. Four people dead, over 300 injured, over 530 houses and a lot of infrastructure was destroyed, plus thousands of animals - farm animals, pets, wildlife. In the south of NSW and across the border in Victoria there were also vast fires threatening resorts in the mountains, where whole towns were evacuated. Fires stretched two thousand kilometres from Queensland down to Tasmania.
The previous year disastrous bushfires raged for more than three weeks over Christmas and New Year (2001/2) all around Sydney and even into the suburbs. There were 170 homes totally destroyed, over 1.5 million acres burnt out, over 20,000 people on the front line fighting the fires, thousand evacuated from their homes. For three weeks we were at the mercy of the weather, but thanks to the incredible bravery of the firefighters - the vast majority are volunteers - damage was kept unbelievably low. One of the areas threatened was Wollongong and I've put the story there. |
| Marysville destroyed. From ABC TV |
|  | BUSHFIRE DANGER The reason I put information about the danger of bushfires on this page is highlighted by the February 7, 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, Australia's worst ever. One hundred and seventy three people died in the fires, entire towns were destroyed, over two thousand homes in total, hundreds of people were badly injured and many more buildings damaged. Over one million acres were burnt and the death toll amongst animals, domesticated and wild, will never be known but must run into the hundreds of thousands.
Even for Aussies experienced in bushfire dangers they can be, and sadly all too often are, fatal. For people from countries that don't have fires like ours and are not aware of the incredible size and ferocity of the fires, awareness may help to avert tragedy.
The ferocity of these fires was unprecedented with temperatures in the high forties celcius and winds of over 100kph. The fire and other emergency services were simply overwhelmed by the scale and ferocity of the fires. Firefronts were several kilometres long with flames higher than the trees, and there were many separate fires.
People did in their homes and in the open or in their cars as they tried to flee the flames. The fires moved so quickly that they even overtook kangaroos fleeing from them.
The following week The Australian newspaper ran a special edition called 'Hell and All it's Fury' which you can find here.
If you're driving in Australia during the fire season, keep yourself informed about the situation, obey all the instructions of the fire and police forces and do not take any chances. |
| | Back in Dubai. Dubai recently changed the law and now allows foreigners to buy property, so we decided to buy an apartment and come back to live here to be able to watch the incredible development that's taking place.
Hundreds of billions of US$ are pouring in and the development is mind-boggling, both in sheer size & scale and in creativity in the projects and in the individual architectural designs. Whole new cities are rising from the desert. Huge man-made waterways and massive off-shore islands are being created to make beachfront properties possible.
All of this is happening simultaneously and at great speed. Towers rise at a floor a week, huge new road systems are being built, a Metro train system will open on 9/9/09. It really is mind-boggling to watch it happening. |
| Dubai dwarfed by the new developments. |
| | Vast projects. The scale of the projects is mind-boggling and they're all being built at the same time. Literally hundreds of skyscrapers are being built. The economic crisis has naturally hit Dubai the same as the rest of the world, projects have been put on hold and some cancelled - but there are still US$500 billion of projects going ahead as planned.
This artists impression, drawn on a satellite photo of Dubai, shows the new developments; they're many times larger than the present city of Dubai, which I've outlined in white.
The offshore man-made islands are massive projects. Dubai Waterfront, which includes Palm Jebel Ali, for example will be large enough for a population of one million. Palm Jumeirah is near completion with thousands of people already living on it. There's also The World, 330 man-made islands in the shape of an atlas of the world. The islands are for sale for people to build whatever they like on them, subject to planning permission of course. |
 colin_bramso's Albums | | | |
|
 Comments for colin_bramso | | | | |
pakistanibrain Thu Apr 23, 2009 11:48 UTC
I don't log into VT that often anymore. So here's a belated "Happy Birthday". | weebsdavid Fri Apr 10, 2009 13:22 UTC
Happy birthday and all the best From David of Sarawak | Geoff_Wright Thu Apr 9, 2009 17:11 UTC
Hi Colin, Sorry I'm a little late but Happy Birthday for today! Hope all's well with you over there in the sunshine. Cool, windy and wet here as normal for the start of Easter, haha. Regards. Geoff | a2lopes Thu Apr 9, 2009 08:36 UTC
Happy birthday Colin and many happy returns of the day. Greetings from Lisbon which is waiting for your visit next May for the Euromeeting. It will be fun with vteers from all over. |
|
|
email me
add as friend
