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While I was at a beach house in Byron Bay for New Year’s Eve, my family were trapped in Narooma, surrounded by thousands of evacuees grappling with the possibility that they just lost everything.
We’d gone to Narooma for a family holiday, the same place my parents have visited for more than 30 years. It’s a beach town. The house we stayed in was maybe a five minute walk to the water. Fire doesn’t belong anywhere near there.
I was due to fly out to Byron on Monday morning, but the smoke made it impossible for the plane to land. We ended up having to go to an airport two hours away to take off.
Tracey and her family ran for their lives from the NSW bushfires. Post continues below.
The next morning, my family woke up to black skies. There was no power. Mum said she tried to read a book, but found it was too dark at midday to make out the words.
My brothers were meant to go to a music festival, but were turned back half an hour into their trip because all the roads were closed.
They all watched burning leaves land in the backyard and thousands of cars congest the town. People were fleeing to the beach or the golf course, leaving homes they didn’t know were even in danger 24 hours ago.
The feeling I had, of looking at a beautiful beach with a champagne glass in my hand, while knowing my family had no food or hot water or electricity, was I think indicative of how all Australians felt on New Year’s Eve. Like it couldn’t be hedonistic or silly or carefree because our family – whether literally or metaphorically – were surrounded by fires that had proved they were going to do whatever they wanted to.
To be clear, my family were on a holiday so were not at risk of losing their home, like so many thousands were. But they saw and tasted and smelled what so many Aussies have over the last three months. And there’s no other word for it but Apocalyptic.
I think on New Year’s Eve, the ‘safe’ Australians felt like they were in two places at once. At a party or watching fireworks (which I don’t begrudge them – what else are we meant to do?) while also on a firefront, alongside terrified firefighters and civilians.
The only person who seemed completely blind to the latter was Scott Morrison who announced in his New Year address that “there’s no better place to raise kids” than Australia. I wonder if the little boy pictured on a boat in the middle of a lake, the air a hellish red, desperately steering his family to safety, would agree with that? It feels tone deaf to sing the praises of Australia at the precise moment military air and sea assets are being deployed to assist with thousands of stranded evacuees.
Morrison continued by saying, “We have faced these disasters before and we have prevailed, we have overcome,” but that’s not true. We’ve never faced anything like this before, and who, exactly, does he see as prevailing? At least 19 people have died. Thousands have lost their homes.
I keep thinking about what happens when you treat the human body badly. You pillage it of all it’s resources and you don’t let it rest or recover. You put toxic things into it. You take your health for granted while you ignore the warning signs that it’s suffering. Why would we think the world more broadly would be any different? That it won’t one day start to falter, just like a body that’s been abused for 50 years?
I know that Morrison can’t put the fires out and there’s only so much he can do at this point. But last time I spoke to Clare on New Year’s Eve, before service was cut, which was at about 6pm, she said, “I don’t think people understand how bad this is… it feels like we’re in a war.”
If this were a nuclear explosion or an attack by a foreign enemy, Morrison would surely be full of fighting words. There’d be more resources and money and strategies and meetings and urgency.
When we voted in a government with no policies whatsoever on climate change, we voted in a government who were destined to ignore natural disasters.
I wonder if this week that finally hit home.
Featured image: Instagram @jessiestephens90 and @clare.stephenss.
Top Comments
I'm really sick of people saying 'I know that there's nothing that Scott Morrison can do about the bushfires', there's plenty he can do in the short term, for starters don't ignore that problem at it's outset because it doesn't spin well for his climate policy vacuum. Stop being so sneaky. Sneaking off to Hawaii. Stop releasing self-promoting and partisan videos.
The Australian is still barely covering this unprecedented disaster...in the hope that people aren't noticing? What is going so nuts and wrong at the Australian?
Morrison can have the courage to say that his party has got it wrong on climate change policy and that things will be change rapidly. He can have the courage to spend some of the political capital that he received winning the unwinnable election in bringing the rogue right elements back to climate policy lead by science, not a policy first laid down by Howard 'instinctively' feeling that climate change doesn't exist. The glaring problem being that Morrison shares climate change denying, or at best, dubious views.
Scott Morrison can do plenty, starting with engendering hope that there's someone with some common sense in the wheelhouse. Morrison can lead and not sneak.
The PM is just tone deaf, to make those comments about Australia being the best place to live when people were literally submerging in water to keep themselves safe from fire??
He has had SO many opportunities. To show some empathy, to show some leadership, to talk about - like you said, a fire plan - and he has failed every single time. And failed miserably - comparing his trip to Hawaii to that of a plumber taking in an extra job; forcing the RFS volunteer to shake his hand after he explicitly said that he doesn’t want to; smiling in photo ops in fire damaged zones; hosting the tea with the cricketers while the NSW south coast and VIC were crying for help - I could go in.
He must be a sociopath on some level, I can’t think of any other explanation for his apathy and lack of interest.
Yes, they were voted in, but I think this lack of leadership is next level and no-one expected this.