The Nuytsia flowering that early is pretty scary, since they often do it ahead of danger (as in ‘set seed before the tree dies’).
And I spoke too soon about the fires here - while Liz and I were doing the market this morning two fires started close enough to cause a lot of smoke in town, one just north of Mount Pleasant which was not very bad, but the one at Tungkillo, the next small town just east of here about 8k/5 miles away was very nasty. The fire brigade has just listed it as being ‘controlled’, which means it is no longer just burning as total wildfire, but it has taken above four hours to get there with 23 fire engines and six firefighting planes dumping water on it. Worrying. This is going to be a bad summer.