No wonder the Australian bush fires can be so intense.

This is from Neville Shute's "The Far Country":


"I remember the fire here in 1939," said Dorman. "A bit too close to home it was, for my liking."

"My word," the ranger said thoughtfully. "A fair cow, that one. Just after I joined the Forest Service, that one was. The house was on the other side of the river then; we rebuilt it after on this side, because the land was flatter, 'n better for the paddock." He turned to Fisher. "Days 'n days of hot sun, 'n not a breath of wind down in the valley here. It got so that you couldn't hardly breathe for the scent from the gum leaves; it made your eyes smart, sort of distilling out in the hot sun, 'n no wind to carry it away. And then one morning I was out in the paddock lighting my pipe although I didn't really want it for the way the air made you choke, and when I lit the match the flame burned blue. There wasn't any yellow in the flame, just kind of blue, out in the open air, dead still, in the middle of the paddock."

...


"Too right. Well, I got back on to the ridge in Jock McDougall's pasture with my horses and the gun, and there I stayed a while. I wasn't going to stay down in the valley, but I'd a right to stay as near I could to where I ought to be. So I stayed there on the ridge for a while. And about three in the afternoon, that fire on Buller, she began to jump. She come down this valley in leaps about two mile each time. She'd be blazing way off up the valley, 'n then there'd be a sort of flash and you'd see everything alight and burning two miles closer on. Then she'd rest a while, and then she'd leap on another mile or two mile down the valley. In a sort of flash."

Alec Fisher said in wonder, "The whole air was exploding?"

"That's right," the ranger said. "The whole air was exploding. That's how the old house come to be burned down. After that we built this one, next year."

Carl Zlinter said, "Let me understand. It was hot, so hot that the sun evaporate the eucalyptus oil out of the trees, and that explodes?"

"That's right," said Jack Dorman. "I've heard of that happening over in East Gippsland, by Buchan in the Cave Country."

"But that is terrifying!"

"Too right," said the ranger. "It terrified me."