Entry 2 - Wednesday 9th February 1983

I had come to Victoria to write an article about the dust cloud that surrounded Melbourne, 9^th February. It was an incredibly windy day in Melbourne when suddenly a large cloud of dust swept across the city. Everyone was in hysterics as the cloud was so thick and huge, it had actually blocked out the sun. When looked into later that day, it was discovered that strong winds had lifted up 200,000 tons of dry soil from the ground and pushed across South Australia. The dust combined with smoke from burning fires reduced visibility, which gave the fire-fighters little warning of approaching fires.