Australia isn't what the world thought it was. A country that markets itself on the basis of its wide-open blue skies, azure waters and huggable wildlife is suddenly presenting a different face: tourists in holiday towns, huddled on beaches to get away from the impending fire front; cities choked by orange smoke and falling ash; kangaroos and koalas incinerated as they try to flee paddocks and woodlands.
If there was any doubt that this antipodean paradise is being lost, even the town of Eden was evacuated this week with the approach of an inferno reminiscent of the fires of hell.
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