Just remember to breathe.

It’s all so horrible.

The fires are all over the news here – although the headlines are about “wildfires” and not bushfires. I see people I know, politicians I have met (and who actually remember my name!), people I will never meet and flames and charcoal and devastation.

All on the little box in the corner of my room.

It’s all so far away and yet I feel I should go down the road to the emergency centre and volunteer or … something.

It’s painful – physically painful.

What people don’t understand is that fire is a living beast; it consumes everything in its path and breathes flame. It has a roar that rivals jet engines and yet it can sneak up unnoticed, unseen. It can barrel down on you at hundreds of kilometres an hour, whip up winds that rip trees out of the ground by their roots and dump them on the other side of the road, or it can send out sleeper cells.

Embers that waft through the air, pieces of bark that smoulder for hours and sometimes days, pieces of heat looking for somewhere to set root. Anywhere.

And they do. They hide in people’s roofs and light the insulation, they fly in open windows and spark the drapes, they linger in piles of non-decaying eucalyptus leaves that have been building for 20 years or more and smoulder. Then the wind changes and the world explodes, and that explosion lights its own sparks and so it goes on.

The irony is that the bush carries fewer scars than the animals that inhabit it – including us. In weeks, the trees will bud and green return, seed pods that have been waiting for fire for decades will have burst and germinated in the rich ash left behind by the holocaust. Some species will take longer than others to recover, but eventually they will return as well.

The animals aren’t usually so lucky. Snakes perish, birds fall out of the sky just from the radiant heat of the blaze, koalas burn, wallabies burn, possums burn, people burn.

It’s all so horrible.

S.

Memories of friendships lost.

The toll continues to rise in Victoria. It’s all so horrific – whole communities wiped out in a matter of minutes. Those who survived have managed to get away with the clothes on their backs and nothing more.

I have been reading The Complete Bushfire Safety Book for the past month or so as research for my novel. It’s been quite surreal to do so in the middle of winter.

However, I find myself looking at the footage of the fires and seeing where things could have been done differently and better. You can understand how a car under an open-sided carport could survive when a double brick house has not.

I recommend it to everyone in Australia.

You know, four years ago an old schoolfriend (I was her bridesmaid) imposed herself on me for a weekend. She was uninvited, but tagged herself onto a visit by another friend – which I had reluctantly agreed to as I was having an MS relapse at the time.

At one stage I took them both up to Black Mountain and the observation deck of the Telstra Tower. On the way, I told them that they would see the areas where the fires had struck. I carefully explained to them that there had been huge tracts of pine forest, planted as a screen against light pollution for nearby Mount Stromlo Observatory as well as for a cash crop for the Australian Capital Territory. These had gone up when sparks from nearby native trees ignited them.

I told them about the lives that were lost, the hundreds of homes destroyed and animals killed. The speed and ferocity of the firestorm, the shock and trauma experienced by the community – the absolute devastation of those who were directly affected.  All of it.

We got to the observation deck. I pointed out the obvious areas of destruction.

She then declared in loud, strident tones: “Serves them right. They should have planted native trees. I know you get straighter wood from pine trees, but they should have planted natives.”

You could have heard a pin drop on the deck. I was appalled and explained again and quietly that the neighbourhoods were planted with natives which had contributed to the losses.

She repeated, “Serves them right. They should have known better.”

I haven’t spoken to her since they left the next morning. However, I am pleased to report that revenge for the people of Canberra was had.

My cat piddled in her $800 gortex-lined, down-filled sleeping bag.

Good Kitty.

S.

Fire!

I’ve been watching the news from home and it’s all incredibly grim.

Here I am, camped out in a country where the biggest concern is lots of cold in conjuction with lots of cold wet stuff, looking back at my nation where heat is destroying entire swathes of the countryside.

In the time since I have been here, the temperature in southern Australia has been above 40 degrees celsius – I believe that is around 106 degrees Farenheit.

Train rails have buckled in the heat, the power grid has shut down in places from sheer demand and fires have been burning everywhere.

Today 108 people are dead in Victoria alone and entire towns have been reduced to ash. It’s truly awful.

It seems somehow worse that I am here trying to write a novel in which the main event is a raging bushfire. My first instinct is to stop immediately and come up with some other catastrophe – it all feels rather like I am exploiting someone else’s misery and misfortune.

This is despite the fact that Australia is a country designed to burn. Many of our native plant species have adapted so much to its incidence that they cannot germinate without fire. The trees have bark filled with flammable oils, bark designed to shed easily and blow away when alight to spark further fires many miles away.

Fire is part of the national profile and one that is going to become more common as climate change continues and our weather patterns become drier still.

Is it wrong to use this as part of a story line or is it realistic to do so? Am I being exploitative or simply facing facts?

Mind you, the story isn’t written yet and it’s hardly going to hurt anyone in that state, is it?

I live in a town which was hit badly by bushfire 5 years ago. In many ways it’s still in a state of shock.

I wish everyone back home well.

S.