The Australian city of Melbourne was blanketed by thick smoke today from a wildfire on an island 190 miles away.
Firefighters battled throughout the day to contain 15,000 acres of burning scrub on King Island in the Bass Strait which separates the southern state of Tasmania from the Australian mainland.
The fire was in a nature reserve and posed no threat to local residents, the Tasmanian Fire Service said.
But many animals, including wallabies and possums, perished in the blaze.
Tasmania Fire Service incident controller Mr Steve Luttrell said the fire had generated massive amounts of smoke as it burned through thick stands of trees before drifting north to Melbourne.
The government's environment watchdog, the Environment Protection Agency, said air quality in Melbourne - a city of 3.4 million people - was the worst it had been in almost 20 years.
AP