It is impossible to weep.
I cannot weep because this is only the beginning. Logs smoulder on our ridges, a tide of injured wildlife is sweeping down into our refuge. I have been living out of a suitcase for most of the past six weeks, evacuated twice, sleeping in many different places and accepting generosity too great to count. I need to clean the pink sludge from the fridge (hint: remove watermelon from fridge before evacuating), keep putting out food and water stations, cope as desperately injured wildlife emerges from the flames, and help others in every possible way I can.
Focus on what you can do. Don’t cry for what you can’t.
Inspired by NSW’s Southern Tablelands bush: Jackie French in her Araluen Valley garden in 2013.Credit:Janie Barrett
I also cannot weep because I dare not even imagine yet all that we’ve lost. Friends have lost their houses and towns, entire communities have been displaced, the social links that make us who we are, as social beings, turned to smoke. Tourist towns have no tourists – or the heritage buildings that made them tourist towns. Businesses are bankrupt. Evacuees like me have lost months of paid work, with more lost months to come. I am OK. Many are not.
The carefully planted local Indigenous ‘food larder’ landscape I have loved and depended upon most of my life, and that has survived 200 years of colonisation, cannot survive fires like these. Farms and vast areas of bush already teetered on a knife-edge in the worst drought in history. Now they are ash. The Araluen Valley, south-east of Braidwood in New South Wales' Southern Tablelands, has lost much of its remaining peach orchards. Will the orchardists replant? We don’t know.
I do know our community will support them. And that I have never been prouder of my nation.
Leaderless, leaders emerged; the magnificent firies, but also those who defended their houses and others with nothing but hoses and determination. Our neighbour, Robyn, singlehandedly waited to defend her farm while checking on the properties of those who had evacuated, knowing that with age or injury we would now be a hindrance, not a help, on the fire front.
I have never been prouder of my nation. Leaderless, leaders emerged … [And] this is the comfort we must give our children: in the past weeks, Australia has been a truly great nation. We must remain one. We must not forget.
Friends in their 70s and 80s, who would not want to be called old men, have been out for days or nights for three months with the tankers. I have seen a man, dying in great pain, still struggle towards the flames to give his wisdom on where the fire might go; I have seen wombats share their holes with snakes, quolls, possums and a nervous swamp wallaby; a fridge on the highway kept constantly stocked with cold drinks for those defending us; six firies leaning against the hospital wall, too exhausted to stagger inside for first aid. The next day they went out again.
In better times … Jackie French has lived in the Araluen Valley for 46 years.Credit:Marina Neil
Last term, a local school was asked how many of their students were suffering bushfire trauma. Their answer? All of them. Every child had either watched fire rage and flicker round their house or has a best friend who is still white-faced and silent. The teachers spent the final weeks of the school year creating joy: a school rain dance, a book give-away, an ‘Academy Awards’ ceremony far more hilarious than any real one. When kids look back in 20 years, I hope they will remember community fun and kindness, not the terror.
Bryan and I have been offered rooms, clothes, help with tending the wildlife, cups of tea, smiles. And the smiles meant a lot. I’m part of a daily network asking by text and email: are you OK? Do you need help? How is Carol? Have you heard from Harry?
Jackie French has established a conservation area to feed and protect wildlife in drought, storm and fire.Credit:Jackie French
Peter Marshall, who lent us the evacuation room where I began this article, has faced the flames every night for the past week, as well as for months before that. He described how the "fire came screaming at us out of Monga Forest like 10,000 B29s on full throttle". Eucalypts exploded in the heat. And then the fire reached his farm, and stopped. For 30 years he slowly created a landscape that stops fire. Yes, it can be done, just as we can – and must – now build homes that are fire, flood and windproof. This is just the beginning.
What do we need?
DO NOT FORGET. This is most Australians’ first taste of climate change. But we are the descendants of those who have faced Ice Ages, plagues, wars, famine. Most humans died. Our ancestors did not. When times are hardest, humans are capable of the greatest kindness and innovation. The best way to survive the decades to come is by forging strong community links, because when disaster strikes, those links will stand strong.
DO NOT FORGET. Because those who make vast sums of money from businesses that, as a side effect, destroy our planet, put vast sums into PR or political campaigns so that laws are never made to hinder their actions. The politicians who denied climate change, the need for disaster planning and firefighting equipment, and who cut fire budgets by 30-40 per cent this year alone – despite warnings from their own experts that we faced catastrophes this year – will use political spin … let’s just call it lying … to try to make you forget before the next election.
DO NOT FORGET. Because the federal fire aid has only been offered now because of the rage of ‘quiet Australians'. You and I and every Australian who expressed contempt has achieved this. We must keep demanding what is needed. Unless we keep up the rage, the passion and compassion, our children and our children’s children will die in more climatic disasters, from winds to cyclones, floods, tornadoes, bushfires and storm surges: the ‘new normal’ of the Anthropocene.
DO NOT FORGET. Because long after these flames are doused, there will be traumatised kids, fireys who collapse when the adrenalin seeps away, businesses destroyed, half a billion wildlife killed, with just as many injured, starving, needing food and water stations if their species is to survive.
DO NOT FORGET. How we have worked together, fighting disaster without political leadership, leaders emerging in their own communities, from those who fought the flames to those who offered rooms, diverted traffic amidst red smoke, raised funds or simply offered all the smiles they could find. Do not forget that when we acted together we achieved miracles.
This is the comfort we must give our children: in the past weeks, Australia has been a truly great nation. We must remain one.
We must not forget.
Jackie French was the 2015 Senior Australian of the Year and the 2014-2015 Children's Laureate. The author of more than 200 books for children and adults, she has lived in the Araluen Valley, west of Batemans Bay, for 46 years, an area now under attack from the Charleys Forest Fire. Jackie French's fee for this article will be donated to buy books for schools that have lost their libraries.
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