People who have never been to Australia do not believe me when I tell them about the quality of light down here. People who have never left Australia do not believe me either.

The light here is astonishingly clear. Free of much of the pollution that fills the atmosphere of the northern hemisphere from centuries of burning coal and combustion engines and fumes. This is not to say we don't have pollution problems, but the light, the atmosphere, here has been spared to a much greater extent.

For painters and photographers, the light here can be revelatory. It unearths colours and transforms the landscape. It is clear and harsh and bright and unforgiving. My uncle, a landscape painter, paints skies so improbably blue that it looks like artistic license. It's not.

You become so used to the clarity, the amazing vividness of light, that when it changes, it can be quite a shock.

I hadn't seen light like I saw on Monday morning for almost 20 years.

I wish I hadn't seen it at all.

The light glowed like illuminated honey.

It was glorious. The air was almost pink with it. The world was washed in gold.

It was heavy with the smell of burning.

It is bushfire season.

Victoria is burning.

Twenty years ago, bushfires tore through Victoria and South Australia, killing 70 and destroying thousands of homes. The worst of it occurred, perversely enough, on Ash Wednesday.

Ash Wednesday no longer has religious significance for many people here.

Those who remember it talk of Ash Wednesday in hushed tones. Of the nightmare images in the papers and on the news. Of the hopelessness of fire fighters and the heroism of volunteers. Of the hatred of the terrible people who light these things because they are compelled to do so.

I was a little girl during Ash Wednesday. I remember standing at the end of my street at night watching the nearby mountains limned by flame. I tasted the smoke. I saw ash in thick drifts like snow on the ground the next morning.

I held my breath one afternoon as I realised the mushroom cloud of smoke I could see from the playground was behind my own house and I cried, imagining the panic of our pet dog trapped in our backyard.

I watched in mute horror as hot fierce northerly winds lifted the soil from burnt out fields and carried it over the city in black rolling clouds that seemed straight out of a Hollywood studio. I watched the winds tear the guttering off the school buildings and rattle the windows until they nearly shattered.

Pundits speak gravely of the terrible drought we are experiencing now. About how dry the land is.

About how we haven't seen conditions like this since Ash Wednesday.

Victoria is burning.