Meeja WAtch
BY LLOYD GORMAN
THE VARIOUS AND UNIQUE EXPERIENCES OF IRISH PEOPLE IN PERTH CAME ACROSS QUITE A BIT IN THE IRISH MEDIA RECENTLY.
>
Waterford woman Kate Doyle, who works in Perth as a veterinary nurse, was interviewed on Morning Ireland in early February about her experience with the recent bushfires that destroyed 86 homes and damaged large swathes of area on the outskirts of the city. The Irish Sun also picked up the story. “On Monday I was driving home from work and saw a big area of smoke. I got back to the house and realised that it was really close to us,” she told the tabloid. “We just kind of kept an eye on it, we didn’t think it was anything serious at that stage, we thought it’s just a fire and it will be put out. All of a sudden it got crazy very quickly. The smoke was getting bigger and bigger. The warnings were going up on the emergency page for our area, so as you can imagine we didn’t get much sleep on Monday.” She and her husband Ian Hayes, who she came to Australia with in 2011, packed all their pets and animals into the car and drove them to safety and luckily enough the 130km long fire front stopped about 7km from their house. “Because I’m a veterinary nurse, we are volunteering to go into the bush fire zone to help with the injured wildlife and animals that have been affected,” she added. As well as the bushfire, Morning Ireland also asked her about being on the other side of the world unable to get home.
THESUN.IE/NEWS/6515323/PERTH-BUSH-FIRE-EVACUATION-IRISH-WOMAN-HORROR/?UTM_TERM=AUTOFEED&UTM_ MEDIUM=SOCIAL&UTM_SOURCE=TWITTER#ECHOBOX=1612470263
20 | THE IRISH SCENE
