ARMIDALE, Australia -- A few days before Christmas, Kay Murray was sound asleep at her farmhouse about 100 km south of the Australian capital, Canberra, when the doorbell rang. It was 3 a.m.
Nestled between native forests and several larger pastoral properties, Murray's self-sufficient homestead is at the end of a long driveway, obscured from the main road. The day before had been, in her words, "one of the craziest days I can remember," as she and her husband battled to stave off a series of bushfires raging in the hills surrounding their 200 hectare cattle farm.
