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Brisbane, November 2019: smoke haze from bushfires blankets the Brisbane River, seen from the Walter Taylor Bridge.

World

In Pictures: The Summer the Smoke Came to Town

Australia's Black Summer reached far beyond the fire lines. Four frames of cities living for weeks under a brown sky.

1 min read

The bushfires of 2019 and 2020 burned across New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland for months. Even where no flames came near, the smoke did: Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane spent weeks under some of the worst air in the world.

Games went on, trams kept running and people wore masks long before most of the world had heard of them.

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