The fires and the loss of life and property that they have caused are neither pointless nor mundane. This tragedy is just unthinkable.
May all those you love be safe. Let us hear from you!
I had a lovely time when I visited Bendigo and Melbourne, and came back with an abiding love of Oz and her people. The stories we hear are truly horrifying. I hope you are getting all the help you need, and that all your loved ones are safe and accounted for. Is there a web site where international donations may be made?
Standing with you in spirit.
The Red Cross are charity you should use if you were thinking about donating. Last I heard total donations were +$50m, but who knows how much money will be needed in the long run. A lot more than that, I’m thinking. 
Aussie doper here.
Things I have achieved today:
Bought a bunch of lovely new underwear in larger sizes, collected blankets pillows linen, ransacked my closet and found three sets of clothes suitable for folk to wear to funerals, decided to part with my biggest teddy bear, filled a bag with tinned/shelf stable food, found a spare mobile charger (most folks who have their mobiles lost their chargers with everything else) and collected all my nices unopened smelly toiletries. The whole lot amongst a shed load of other local donations went on a truck to the fire victims this arvo.
I live 45k from the Victorian border and we have been getting the smoke since Sunday It is a constant reminder of what is happening not so far away. At least today I feel like I have done something
Sydney here - so we’re all ok. It’s just a national tragedy so very sad. I have family in Gippsland, but not in the affected areas.
We’re getting rain throughout New Zealand, with more expected to come. I’ll use the power of my mind to try and shunt the weather westward. Also, I’ve donated $30 to the Red Cross.
Southern Californian here. I know we get lots of attention, sympathy and support when the fires come our way. Just sending a little back your way. Stay safe. Stay well. Stay in touch. 
What is truly bizarre about this is that while the bushfires in the south are rightly getting enormous attention and sympathy, great swathes of the northern part of the country are under flood. About 60% of Queensland (Queensland is huge) is flood affected. There has been much less loss of life from the floods, and so this is not some misplaced plea for an extra dose of sympathy, just an observation that we live in strange times.
It certainly makes living in New South Wales very surreal.
Floods to the north of me,
Fires to the south,
Here I am
Stuck in the middle with you
And Brisbane has just been hot and boring. But I go to Perth on Saturday.
If you wish to give to the Australian Red Cross, they take online donations here. There is a selection on the donation page where you can direct your contribution to the Victorian Bushfire Appeal. For those with little to give, they take donations as small as $5, and every little bit helps. This page explains their plans for using the donated funds. The web page says they’re having some reponse time problems on occasion, but it worked just fine for me.
The nearest bushfire this season (deliberately lit, too) made it about eight km from my house.
Of course, I live in the centre of Sydney, so it wasn’t exactly as though we were in danger. Now that I think about it, this is probably the closest a bushfire could possibly come to my house.
My employer’s doing a Red Cross donation-matching thing. According to the intranet, the pool will be a bit over $40,000 once they match out.
Although it is extreme weather, it is not really that bizarre. The south of Australia tends to be hot and dry in summer and the north of Australia is normally hot and wet, so it should be no surprise that while SA and Vic are having a heat wave, Queensland would be feeling the brunt of the wet season.
I’m sitting at Melbourne airport at the moment waiting to fly to Broome, and it’s quite smokey, more than it has been for the last four days I’ve been here (in Melbourne that is, not the airport.) Nothing on the news about it so hopefully it’s just a localised controlled fire.
Keeping in mind that summer bushfires are the norm (it’s the loss of life that’s unusual in this case), one of my favourite parts of Summer is the smell of the eucalypt smoke for three days or so as it drifts into Sydney from the fires in the Blue Mountains or Ku-Ring-Gai or Royal National Parks.
It was the Victorian fires that made me realise I’d missed it this year - when the fires were in Lane Cove park the wind was blowing in the wrong direction. It’s one of those weird things. Sure it means death and destruction, but the smoke’s still the smell that somehow lets me know I’m home.