Fire and Dust

Epic is an overused word in this part of the world. Baz Luhrman wrote and directed “Australia”, a weepy big budget movie that could easily double as a Qantas advertisement. Baz uses the word ‘Epic” when flogging his film in reference mainly to the country after which the movie is called. He talks about its vast deserts, towering mountains and raging rivers (when not in drought). But you can’t help feeling that Baz is overusing the word in an attempt to have his own movie thought of in that vein.

However, “Epic” is the only word that can describe Australia this week. Queensland has just gone through three cyclones in a fortnight resulting in torrents of water, while down in South Australia, they baked through a week of 40c plus days with not a drop of water to be seen.

Here in Victoria, we’ve had our own record weather to deal with. God teased us with a week of hot days and steamy nights towards the end of January. The mercury stayed above 40 for four days in a row that drove the citizens of Melbourne to light headedness and caused thousands of them to sit in the murky waters of Port Phillip Bay at midnight in a desperate attempt to stay cool.

Melbourne houses are not built to manage hot weather, because seemingly these high temperatures are a relatively modern development. It is as though we are seeing global warming through a magnifying glass in this part of the world. So it was with some trepidation that the City braced itself for Saturday February 7th. The meteorologists warned that records would be broken. None of us realised how awfully accurate that statement would become.

On the day itself, temperatures reached a new official record for Melbourne of 46.6c, although in parts of the City it reached 49c. It’s hard to describe how hot that feels. I walked 100 meters from my air-conditioned car to an air-conditioned cinema and it was like a trek through Dante’s Inferno. The first thing you notice is a tingling on your lips as the moisture sizzles and evaporates. You don’t sweat because your body somehow recognises how futile that would be. You simply bake in an oppressive heat and scamper for whatever cover you can find.

We were lucky in that we found a movie that was both enjoyable and lengthy and were able to escape the heat of the afternoon in a pleasantly chilled cinema. The cool change had been forecast for late afternoon. This is a weather feature that seems unique to Victoria. The hot winds that swirl down from the Central Deserts bring scorching weather to South East Australia. They are met by cooler winds coming from Antarctica and eventually these cool winds push through. When this happens temperatures can fall by twenty degrees in twenty minutes. On one occasion I was chased up Bourke Street by a cool change on my way back from lunch and a very pleasant experience it was too.

Melbournians look forward to the cool change in the way six year olds look forward to Christmas. On hot days, the expected time of arrival of the change is the main subject of conversation at work, particularly at this time of year when there is no AFL football to talk about.

As we left the cinema on February 7th, the smiles on the faces of people in the foyer told us that the cool change had arrived. On this occasion, the temperature had only dropped by 10 degrees to a still extreme 36c, but to us it felt like we’d been dipped in ice cream and we lingered on our stroll back to the car.

So the City survived its hottest day since records began and we settled in on that Saturday evening to prepare the stories we would tell our workmates about how we got through the big heat. In country Victoria however, a tragedy was emerging that would make our stories of discomfort simply ridiculous.

Nature gives us the beauty that this world possesses and also the bounty to enjoy it. Many Australians choose to live in the bush, or forest as we Europeans call it. It gives them a feeling of peace and solitude and also an escape from the stifling heat of the City. To many it is the true Australia, the place where Koalas and Kangaroos live, people drive Utes with a large sheepdog in the back and all the pubs serve homemade pies.

On February 7th, Australia’s love affair with the bush died.

Its hard to imagine the horror those poor people felt on that day from hell. To be surrounded by fire roaring as loudly as a jet engine is too frightening to even contemplate. The stories of their struggles are starting to emerge with each new tale more horrific than the last.

Now that the dust is settling (both literally and figuratively), the search for explanations has begun. There seems to be a need to find a culprit, as though Mother Nature herself could not be so cruel to her off-spring. Stories of potential arsonists lead the evening news, although it’s clear that only a small proportion of fires were started this way. Faulty power cables are also talked about frantically as they appear to have caused the largest fire. This would point the blame at negligent people and give the community a focus upon which they can direct their anger.

Nobody wants to face the awful truth. Last Saturday was a spectacularly hot day and the wind that whipped down from the deserts reached speeds of 100kph. Add that to the tinder dry vegetation that ten years of drought have created and you have a powder keg just waiting to explode. A piece of broken glass or a lightening strike would have been enough to set it off. And the scary thing is that all these elements are likely to repeat themselves in this climate change condemned country.

The fact that people choose to live in areas at high risk of fire is the real issue that needs to be addressed. If people lived on the cusp of live volcanoes, we’d consider them mad. But people want to live in the middle of forests in an area that will burn regularly. It is the Australian way and a symbol of the freedom that people in this country so desperately crave. Three hundred people have paid the ultimate price for that freedom.