My first introduction to star grass happened at 'Westfield" 23 years ago.  I was going out with Andrew and was visiting him and his family for the weekend.  Andrew's Mum was collecting a crisp, fairy floss type of seed head from out of the garden.  They are the seed head of a type of grass commonly known as star grass because the seed heads look a bit like a star.  In a good season like this one the seed heads are abundant and when they are ripe they are blown from the parent plant and scatter with the winds.

The star grass blows everywhere and can often be seen 20 to 30 meters in the air spiralling with the whirly winds.  My mother - in - law was collecting them from inside the garden fence and crunching them into tight balls and then she would make a bon fire with them.  They are so light that I was surprised at the fierceness of the fire, the flames were instantaneous and burned very quickly.  It was all over in a few seconds, but it was evidence of how bush fires could spread so quickly in a good season.

Andrew went to fight a bush fire on his brothers property last week.  It was started by a lightening strike.  I could see the smoke billowing on my drive home from town.  It took about a dozen vehicles with about 20 neighbours, until 11pm that night to put the fire out.  The fire burnt about 1500 acres mostly on Andrew's brothers' place, a small corner of "Silverwood" also burnt but luckily some storm rain fell on "Silverwood" that afternoon so it was too wet to continue burning.

I do love the effect that the star grass creates when it builds up on the fence posts as seen in these 2 photographs.