The World Reacts

The devastation continues as firefighters attempt to contain blazes in regional country Victoria

This weekend saw the worst bushfires that Victoria had ever seen. 173 people are dead at the time of reading, and the death toll is expected to rise in the next few days or so.

Pictures are littered across the local dailies and indeed, around the world, which show immense devastation - rows upon rows of trees charred to embers, cars burnt down to their white corpses, family members and loved ones lost, businesses and homes ravaged to the ground. Many people died fighting to defend their homes.

What is staggering is that some of these fires were deliberately lit. This is pure evil, and there's no other way to describe it. One struggles to fathom the minds of these arsonists, these mass murderers as Kevin Rudd so aptly described them, and I pray that they will be brought to justice swiftly.

Temperatures of 45 degrees and strong winds are but symptoms, too, of a world that is lashing out against the abuse it has had to suffer all these years in the hands of man claiming progress. While we burn in hellfire, elsewhere around the world floodwaters have begun to immerse certain parts of the world.

These next few days will be remembered in the hearts and minds of all Victorians, grieving a national tragedy of so many lives lost; both to senseless acts of malice, and to the unbridled rage of Mother Nature scorned.

Our thoughts and prayers remain with all those who have lost lives, loved ones and whose stories will never be the same again.