In recent weeks over 60% of Queensland has been underwater due to flooding. That’s a huge area.
At the same time, in southern Australia there has been a heat wave that has seen temperatures rise to as much as 47 degrees C, or 116.2 degrees F. I was worried about my mother who lives in Adelaide, and rang to ask if she was ok. She was fine, she told me. I wanted to make sure that she had the air conditioner on. Only a few hours a day, in the afternoon, she said. She wanted to put as little strain on the electricity grids as possible, otherwise they might have black-outs. She wanted to allow for those who might be keeping their units on all the time.
Then, just over a week ago, the bushfires began to rage down south, in Victoria… It’s expected that the final number of those killed will be around 300. About 1,700 homes have been lost.
People have been generous. Over $100 million dollars donated in the first week, with more flowing in every day. North Queenslanders who have lost everything in the floods up north, have been donating their own flood relief payments to the bushfire appeal.
I’m proud of my country, and my countrymen. I love Australia. I’m grateful to live here. I’m grateful for the beauty and the freedom. I love the space, the far horizons, the bush and the sea. I love the sound of the kookaburras and the didgeridoo. I love the people: the self-deprecating humour, the resilience and resourcefulness, the courage and the hospitality.
I’ve been in mind all week of the following poem. It was written by a 19 year old Australian girl who was staying in England at the time of its first publication, in 1908. The second stanza is particularly well-loved.
I’m also copying in an article I enjoyed this week from the news on the net. If I can work out how to do it, I will add some photos too :)
My Country -
by Dorothea MackellarThe love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!
A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.
Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold -
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.
An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.
Grief on our minds, strength in our hearts February 10, 2009 - Tony Stephens.My people are a strong people. We pride ourselves on being practical survivors who get up and get on with the job. Every year we rebuild after cyclones and floods and fires wreak their havoc. We do this dry eyed, practically. But, as the horror weekend ended, an entire country cried today to look at the complete destruction of our country; an entire state burned with cities disappeared forever. Floods are destroying North Queensland. South
Australia has had souring heat for weeks now, New South Wales has fires of their own, and yet they (together with New Zealand) are sending fighters to Victoria where the inferno is still visible from outer space, and smoke and ash can be seen stretching as far away as New Zealand.
"Happiness is beneficial for the body," Marcel Proust said. "But it's grief that develops the powers of the mind."
Yesterday, people with aching hearts and numb brains picked in the ruins of their homes for precious tokens of the past, asking questions of the future. Yet most could face the flames with good hearts, look despair in the face and push it to one side.
Worldly possessions could be bought and sold, they were saying. People were priceless. "Don't worry about me, mate," a man from Kinglake told a TV reporter. "I've only lost my house. The bloke over the road has lost everything."
Another man from Kinglake, having escaped what he described as "a war zone", laughed on recalling that his girlfriend hadn't wanted to leave. Another, who escaped with his dog and nothing else, laughed when offered a pair of socks.
A father laughed and cried on hearing that his son had driven a little tractor to Chum Creek to rescue his daughter and others, including eight children, from a house engulfed in flames. The young woman had calmly told a radio station that the flames were about half a kilometre away, but closing fast. Minutes later, she couldn't see for smoke. Then her brother arrived.
The awful images were beyond belief: the aerial photo of Marysville, the town-that-was; the solitary body covered with a blanket in the smouldering bush; the burnt remains of the Australian flag, with only two stars left, at Wandong; the melted car at Bendigo.
Yet we still love this impossible land, even when appalling bushfires strike every few years, and when it is not drought it is flood; much of Queensland was still flooded yesterday, with crocodiles heading south. We love it even when, at times like this when fire demonstrates it has a mind of its own, the love is unrequited.
In the end, there was a growing sense of spiritual relief about this calamity yesterday, confirmation that Australia can come together to defend the common good.
The practical, no-nonsense willingness to lend a helping hand was most obvious in the bushfire fighters, who practised it to the point of exhaustion. Ageing men, with rivers of sweat running down deep lines on faces, fought alongside young men with earrings and young women with soot for make-up. Their character was more important than their pedigree.
The historian Don Watson says that while most Australians live in cities they still imagine Australia as a landscape. And, even though more people go to the beach than to the bush, the bush retains a pre-eminent place in the Australian ethos.
Russell Ward and other historians have said that the loneliness and hardships of outback life taught the value of co-operation and brought a more communitarian or collectivist outlook. The flag of mateship is unfurled at times like this, when confronting adversity becomes part of the national story.
People learn at times like this. They learn about the power of nature, for example. How could you outrun a brutish blaze that moved at 120 kmh?
They learn about their own strengths and weaknesses, and that it is all right to take a look at something that seems right now so inconsequential as cricket on television, because firemen fight fires, cricket followers follow cricket and each group keeps a respectful eye on the other.
They learn that human beings on the whole are resilient creatures and that the majority will get on with their lives, perhaps a little wiser.
They will build again what has been destroyed, mend what has been damaged, and nurse broken hearts and minds.
My people are a strong people.
