From The Heart

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.