A
northeasterly swell is rolling into our local beach but the sea
itself is almost oily calm, and the air, even at 8 am, hot, still,
suffocatingly heavy feeling under a dull metal sky. We’ve come out
early to paddle west into Batemans Bay as far as the new cement
bridge over the Clyde River. Strong winds are forecast, along with a
rising swell – four metres off-shore if the forecasts are correct –
thunderstorms, damaging winds, a large and powerful swell. The only
warning the Bureau of Meteorology has not issued is for boils,
plagues, and pestilence. Although, since the strong westerlies the
flies are approaching pestilence levels.
The last couple of days have felt eerily like 2019 when the entire
east coast of Australia burned. A lot of people are on edge. People
who lost homes, or had friends and acquaintances lose homes, people
who fled the coastal communities in the middle of the busy summer
school holiday season. I remember waking up on New Years Eve and
walking out into the back yard which, at 6 am was like walking into a
furnace. Hot, dry air driven by strong westerly winds, flecks of ash
in the air, the smoke chokingly thick, and a pall of red-brown cloud
spreading across the sky from the west.
All through that summer we had the house closed up as the air was
so putrid with smoke from the fires that it was better to suffer the
claustrophic heat in the house rather than breathe the air. This led
to a strange dissociation with what was happening outside and what we
experienced indoors. We did, however, listen with a mixture of equal
incredulity and horror, as the mayor of Eurobodalla (since voted out)
encouraged holiday makers to keep coming to our seaside towns and
villages.
At that time, the Currowan fire had only to jump the Clyde River –
barely a couple of hundred metres wide in some parts - to enable the
fire front to march inexorably, like a conquering army, through the
state forests and national parks that border the thin strip of
populated coastline. This avaricious desire to bring tourist dollars
to the community without regard for potential catastrophe cemented in
my psyche the belief that we are governed by idiots. Nothing since
that time has altered my opinion.
I remember, a few days before New Years Eve, walking down to our
local bay, past the caravan park where families had come to camp in
tents and trailers. The air was brown with smoke and you could
barely see across the bay. A young woman pushed a baby in a
stroller, still one of my most prophetic memories of the entire
summer. She could have been in Iraq in the middle of the first Gulf
war.
Early morning New Years Eve we walked out into the yard and knew
that the time had come to pack anything we wanted to save from the
fire and prepare to leave town. Our friend Mike, who had some of his
kayaks stored in our yard, came down from Nelligen, and we checked
things over, made sure we had done what we could, got ready to leave.
Doug and I hooked up the caravan, loaded with only those
irreplaceable mementos of which a life is remembered – mostly
photos and slides – put the kayaks on the roof, the paddling gear
in the car.
My memory about what happened next is confused. The wind was so
strong, the sky so dark with smoke, the air acrid. Maybe we heard an
explosion, maybe we saw flames, I don’t remember, but I do
remember, we got in the car and began to drive towards the evacuation
centre. Predictably, there was a traffic jam. Mike, after years in
the fire service said “I’m not getting incinerated in a line of
cars,” so we parked by Caseys Beach, a scant five minutes from our
house, and unloaded the boats from the cars onto the beach. The sky
to the west was black, smoke billowed, people were everywhere, some
were calm and complacent, others panicked. I remember one bloke
telling me “The fire will never come down to the beach,” and yet,
the next day we would hear that Rosedale, a small community with
houses right on the beach, had been devastated. Houses within metres
of the sand raised to the ground, horses, dogs, people, all
sheltering in the water as the wind blew, the fire front leapt,
terror reigned.
We decided we would paddle out into the Bay, the caravan might
burn, the car might burn, but we would survive. We launched the
boats into the windiest conditions I’ve ever paddled in. Our goal
was to get to Snapper Island. We would be far enough off-shore to
shelter, but not so far as to become a victim of the 40 knot
off-shore winds. On our first attempt we made it only as far a tiny
bit of sand uncovered by the tide below Observation Point. It was so
windy we could not make any progress. If we could not make Snapper
Island, perhaps we could paddle west around Observation Point to
Corrigans Beach and the evacuation centre.
With a struggle, we got to Observation Point but flames were
leaping up along the shore at Corrigans Beach, was the evacuation
centre on fire? We pointed the boats to Snapper Island, only half a
kilometre away. This time we made it, pulling up in the lee of the
island on the eastern side. We sat in our boats as close as we dared
to the rocks, waiting for the wind to change. On either side of our
resting place we could see wind waves built almost to the height of
an ocean swell streaming east.
A tiny bird landed on my open palm. It felt feather light,
insubstantial as a piece of ash itself. I could see it’s heart
pounding in its chest, it’s beak held open, seemingly gasping for
air. I sat as still as I could, willing this small but precious
piece of life to hang on, not give up, not die in this piece of
paradise become war zone that I called home. All around was noise
and wind and confusion. Airplanes and helicopters flew overhead,
sirens wailed, the sound of explosions – I never found out what
they were – and, overlaying the sound of busy humanity, the wind,
roaring and pulsing, a rabid beast hungry to devour anything,
everything. The sky went completely dark. The aircraft stopped,
there was no visibility to fly, the sirens stopped, the bird
fluttered away, and the wind changed, roaring up the south coast, and
of a sudden, we were in danger from another quadrant, the southerly
wind.
Paddling around to the north, we landed on Snapper Island.
Snapper Island is a wildlife refuge, little penguins live there and,
under normal conditions, I would never set foot on the island.
Humans have trod far enough, there should be some places where we do
not go, but, on New Years Eve 2019, when we wondered if our lives
would be irrevocably altered, we landed on the island.
It was near 6:00 pm when we left the island. The southerly wind
saved so many houses that day even as the westerly wind had destroyed
so many. The north side of Batemans Bay, where residents had felt
under seige for months was spared. The beautiful forests of
Murramarang National Park where the spotted gums grow tall and spread
wide, and burrawangs fill in the understory escaped the fires as far
north as Durras. Beyond Durras, the fire had already burnt over
Point Upright and north up the coast. Months later, we would visit
favorite areas of the coast, Snake Bay, Clear Point, the rocky
headlands, the sand beaches, all burnt. I wept many times. The
forest, the land, the animals, this place to which I felt such a
connection, a spiritual connection not unique to Aboriginals but felt
by all Australians who love this land, gone, all gone, in a summer of
drought, thunder, lightening, fires starting and spreading, a summer
of madness.
With a bucket of vegetables I would go out, as did many local
people, up to the forests charred and desolate, and scatter sweet
potato, carrots, greens, along with buckets of water in the hope that
any animals that had survived might survive a bit longer, until the
rains came and the land greened again. But the sticks, the trunks,
the stems left standing were quiet, too quiet. No screech of cocky,
no scratching of lyre bird, no thump of macropod. Only silence and
the sound of weeping.
One day, early in 2020, our south coast squad paddled north from
Mossy Point, past the burnt out silhouette of Burrewarra Point and
north along Rosedale Beach, McKenzies Beach, Malua Bay. Burnt out
houses, black soot on the water, floating debris washed down the
river after the fires, the smell of burning still in the air, or
maybe just in our nostrils forever. We stopped for lunch at Guerilla
Bay. Everyone was shell-shocked. Everyone had a story. Some had
lost houses, others outbuildings, all of us our innocence. In the
aftermath we knew that life can never be fully safe, that we should
hold all of our friends and even our enemies close to our hearts for
we are all one under the burning sun of an Australian summer sky.
Black fella, white fella, we all feel a connection to the land, the
animals, the spirit of this country we call home. We are more alike
than different. Vote with your heart.
