It's been a torrid five months.
On New Year's Eve the bushfire in the Wadbilliga State Forest for a week burst out and torn through Cobargo and the Brogo area killing two people and destroying hundreds of homes. For a few days it looked as if it would push all the way to the coast taking the towns of Bermagui, Moruya and Batman's Bay with it. Then the East Gippsland fires pushed north to threaten Eden and then north west to encircle us completely. Living in Bega the closest they got was 20 km but all of us knew that the fires could travel that far in a couple of hours if the wind came up.
When you saw the apocalyptic skies and people on the beaches- that was our community. When you saw the thousands of people camping in cars at the Bega Showground- that was our community. When you saw the lady with the goat in Cobargo asking the Prime Minister for help rather than a handshake- that was our community.
When you see it on TV it only lasts minute and with our short attention spans we forget but the bushfires lasted over two months and since some people are still living in tents and caravans I guess really it has lasted five months and counting. The bushfires went out, not because they were put out, but because it FINALLY rained.
Since my home didn't burn and I evacuated with the granddaughter to Canberra for 10 days at the height of the fires (as per our Leave Early Fire Plan) it feels a little self indulgent to talk about the effects of the fires on myself. But even when you think you are handling it well, two months of constant health damaging smoke, checking your Fires Near Me app multiple times a day, checking on friends in the path of the latest fire (one friend evacuated 6 times), checking the air quality app and checking the weather app frequently for wind has an effect. I noticed it when I evacuated and despite thinking I was calm had to be reminded by my daughter to put the headlights on (because of the low visibility of the smoke). I noticed it when I saw the psychological effect of living with hazardous smoke for two months and not have a space that was safe. I noticed it on the day I couldn't drive to Canberra because the wind was scaring me. I notice it now when my activist friends and I just want to hunker down and garden and hide from the constant bombardment of bad news.
Not that I have been inactive on climate change for the last five months. While evacuated in Canberra I organised a cricket match in front of Parliament House with other south coast climate refugees and I attended the Canberra Climate Action rally. I drove back up for the On The Steps rally at Parliament House. I kept doing my Climate strikes every Friday (moving them online 10 weeks ago). I ran six Climate Action for Beginners workshops until the COVID19 lockdown started. We ran a Bushfire Commemoration and kept up our Pedestrian Climate Actions until the lockdown. I continue to monitor the ABC news every day for mentions of climate change (news flash they barely mention it since the COVID19 lockdown and they weren't doing well before). I also still attend Zoom meetings with climate activists.
But I notice it with my friends on Facebook and other social media. We don't want to post more bad news so we post pictures of our gardens, cooking and sourdough efforts instead. I think the fact that I can still make time to work on climate action is a sign of my privilege. The South Coast is highly dependent on tourism as an industry. The bushfires hammered us at the worst possible time. Two thirds of the shire burnt, 450 houses were lost and three people died. Then we had the COVID19 lockdown which has destroyed our hospitality and music sectors. So a large section of our community doesn't have security of Maslow's basic needs of shelter and food. Those that do don't have psychological security because they have financial worries. People are coping with learning new habits with distance education and working from home and infection control. It is simply too hard for many people to have the brain space right now for system change.
And yet.....maybe we needed this total disruption to our lives to see how things could be different, to see how much the current system is not working and to see how we need food and energy security and less consumption. Maybe this is my privilege talking because I am not personally hurting right now.
I have been using this pandemic lockdown time to do a whole lot of projects that my climate activism busyness had been stopping me from doing. I have made a rag rug, learnt to make sourdough bread from scratch, experimented with some foraging, built my barely begun South Coast Forager website, read books, practised my drawing more regularly, distance educated my granddaughter, done a food audit, weeded, made homemade bunting, repaired my recipe book and now I am working on a patchwork quilt made from old clothes. But I am very aware that not everyone has had the luxury of being able to do this. Early on in the COVID19 lockdown I though that we could use this time for activism but now I think it is a time to build relationships and trust. Some people are only just surviving everything 2020 has thrown at them, we can't ask them to do more, but we can get to know them better.
When Wuhan locked down on 23rd January and I realised we potentially had a global pandemic on our hands I thought NOOO!!! we haven't even finished with the fires yet, we need time to heal, we need time to recover. But the climate emergency is not going to give us the luxury of time to recover between disasters. We are just going to have to learn how to keep going through the next disaster and build back our community and infrastructure as best we can so it is stronger for the next time. There is no normal to go back to there is only "Can we keep changing fast enough?"
On New Year's Eve the bushfire in the Wadbilliga State Forest for a week burst out and torn through Cobargo and the Brogo area killing two people and destroying hundreds of homes. For a few days it looked as if it would push all the way to the coast taking the towns of Bermagui, Moruya and Batman's Bay with it. Then the East Gippsland fires pushed north to threaten Eden and then north west to encircle us completely. Living in Bega the closest they got was 20 km but all of us knew that the fires could travel that far in a couple of hours if the wind came up.
When you saw the apocalyptic skies and people on the beaches- that was our community. When you saw the thousands of people camping in cars at the Bega Showground- that was our community. When you saw the lady with the goat in Cobargo asking the Prime Minister for help rather than a handshake- that was our community.
When you see it on TV it only lasts minute and with our short attention spans we forget but the bushfires lasted over two months and since some people are still living in tents and caravans I guess really it has lasted five months and counting. The bushfires went out, not because they were put out, but because it FINALLY rained.
Since my home didn't burn and I evacuated with the granddaughter to Canberra for 10 days at the height of the fires (as per our Leave Early Fire Plan) it feels a little self indulgent to talk about the effects of the fires on myself. But even when you think you are handling it well, two months of constant health damaging smoke, checking your Fires Near Me app multiple times a day, checking on friends in the path of the latest fire (one friend evacuated 6 times), checking the air quality app and checking the weather app frequently for wind has an effect. I noticed it when I evacuated and despite thinking I was calm had to be reminded by my daughter to put the headlights on (because of the low visibility of the smoke). I noticed it when I saw the psychological effect of living with hazardous smoke for two months and not have a space that was safe. I noticed it on the day I couldn't drive to Canberra because the wind was scaring me. I notice it now when my activist friends and I just want to hunker down and garden and hide from the constant bombardment of bad news.
Not that I have been inactive on climate change for the last five months. While evacuated in Canberra I organised a cricket match in front of Parliament House with other south coast climate refugees and I attended the Canberra Climate Action rally. I drove back up for the On The Steps rally at Parliament House. I kept doing my Climate strikes every Friday (moving them online 10 weeks ago). I ran six Climate Action for Beginners workshops until the COVID19 lockdown started. We ran a Bushfire Commemoration and kept up our Pedestrian Climate Actions until the lockdown. I continue to monitor the ABC news every day for mentions of climate change (news flash they barely mention it since the COVID19 lockdown and they weren't doing well before). I also still attend Zoom meetings with climate activists.
But I notice it with my friends on Facebook and other social media. We don't want to post more bad news so we post pictures of our gardens, cooking and sourdough efforts instead. I think the fact that I can still make time to work on climate action is a sign of my privilege. The South Coast is highly dependent on tourism as an industry. The bushfires hammered us at the worst possible time. Two thirds of the shire burnt, 450 houses were lost and three people died. Then we had the COVID19 lockdown which has destroyed our hospitality and music sectors. So a large section of our community doesn't have security of Maslow's basic needs of shelter and food. Those that do don't have psychological security because they have financial worries. People are coping with learning new habits with distance education and working from home and infection control. It is simply too hard for many people to have the brain space right now for system change.
And yet.....maybe we needed this total disruption to our lives to see how things could be different, to see how much the current system is not working and to see how we need food and energy security and less consumption. Maybe this is my privilege talking because I am not personally hurting right now.
I have been using this pandemic lockdown time to do a whole lot of projects that my climate activism busyness had been stopping me from doing. I have made a rag rug, learnt to make sourdough bread from scratch, experimented with some foraging, built my barely begun South Coast Forager website, read books, practised my drawing more regularly, distance educated my granddaughter, done a food audit, weeded, made homemade bunting, repaired my recipe book and now I am working on a patchwork quilt made from old clothes. But I am very aware that not everyone has had the luxury of being able to do this. Early on in the COVID19 lockdown I though that we could use this time for activism but now I think it is a time to build relationships and trust. Some people are only just surviving everything 2020 has thrown at them, we can't ask them to do more, but we can get to know them better.
When Wuhan locked down on 23rd January and I realised we potentially had a global pandemic on our hands I thought NOOO!!! we haven't even finished with the fires yet, we need time to heal, we need time to recover. But the climate emergency is not going to give us the luxury of time to recover between disasters. We are just going to have to learn how to keep going through the next disaster and build back our community and infrastructure as best we can so it is stronger for the next time. There is no normal to go back to there is only "Can we keep changing fast enough?"
Yes Viv it hasn't been acknowledged that the bushfires were barely out when Covid 19 struck. I feel so sad for all the people who have been homeless after the fires and have difficulty staying home in a tent or caravan. I wondered if the fighting over toilet paper was perhaps a PTSD reaction. Thanks for your foraging tips and recipes and ideas for lowering our carbon footprint. We really need a government that steps up to the challenge or Australia may not be liveable in the near future.
ReplyDelete