A Force of Nature

By mid morning on jan. 11, eyre Peninsula farmer Leith Holman was getting ready for a rest. After racing back from a beach fishing trip the previous afternoon when he saw smoke on the horizon, Holman had spent much of the night helping other volunteer firefighters and neighbors save two farms from a bushfire that had finally seemed under control. "They were about to crack a beer," says Holman's wife Claire. "They thought we were safe." But then the wind changed - and with it the fortunes of the rural communities and farms of the lower peninsula, a sheep and grain...

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