Australians like to think they know the land they live on. The country's founding myths are built upon stories of creeks and billabongs and deserts. "I love a sunburnt country" go the lines of a beloved verse by poet Dorothea Mackellar, "A land of sweeping plains/ Of ragged mountain ranges/ Of droughts and flooding rains."
But what happens when beauty turns to terror? Australia found out last weekend when wildfires swept through the southeastern state of Victoria. Fires are a regular and natural occurrence in the Australian bush, but nobody was ready for the conflagration that exploded through...
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