Stories from the home front: fires, floods and love enduring

Climate of Hope

Apr 16

Home is a funny notion. It can be an embrace, a place or even a time. As ephemeral as a scent on an afternoon breeze or as solid as a building or tract of land.

I spent much of my young years in what for a child can only be described as idyllic surrounds. Sun, sand and water — everywhere. But as I grew the lure of the city took hold and now that seaside idyll remains that — a precious memory. As we know time moves on and change with it.

Our little seaside village is now a township. Those tiny pines my mum planted can now be seen from the next headland. Old gravel paths sport tar and even roundabouts!

But for all the change it is still my old home.

And throughout the change, nature’s bounty still shone through — in the vast blue skies, the beautiful beaches, the delightful squeals of children kicking their way through the tailings of waves on the beaches outer edge.

I know intellectually that it is now threatened. I hear the scientists’ warnings. I see the ice caps melting, the fish kills, the coral bleaching. But it is the threat to home — to that sense of rootedness and connection — that makes this very personal. Very real.

I know these places where climate havoc is being wreaked. I know the small villages ringed by fire and water. I know the beaches being washed away. I know the farmer whose livelihood has taken a king hit. I know the family that lost a beloved sister.

We hear about the damage bill from these weather events. The numbers have many noughts. But it is the personal costs – the tangible and intangible – that hurt most. And somewhere in the reckoning is the inestimable loss of innocence and security.

As for many Australians, the fires and floods of recent times have shaken something deep within. While hardening the resolve to act against the fossil fuel stranglehold over our planet, it has also reminded us of the need to notice. Notice and take note of the small, the personal, the seemingly insubstantial; to truly understand what is at stake and who ultimately bears the cost of climate inaction.

The bushfires of 2019 hit our country hard.

Burnt bush along Old Bar Road (Louise Tarrant)

Numbers tell one story: how many lives ended or scarred, how many animals killed and species threatened, how much bush and forest burnt. The numbers are big, almost incomprehensible.

But we lost so much else as well, including the pleasurable anticipation summer used to herald.

As a kid growing up summer meant long wonderful months where school was forgotten as the beach beckoned, rock pools mesmerised, sand dunes delighted and cliffs challenged. Daylight savings made every long evening magical as the sky softened to multi-coloured hues.

Nature was a place of beauty, rest, exploration and fun.

Ah, the magic of summer.

Then by the end of spring 2019 a Johns River local and old school friend, Daintry Gerrand, began to notice changes in the forest around her: surface water disappearing, water tables dropping, the understory of cheese trees, she-oaks and geebungs dropping their leaves. As she presciently put it, “Everything becoming flammable.”

Indeed, summer 2019 became consumed by a ball of fire.

That mid north coast region of NSW, that idyllic seaside home, was caught in the epicentre of a maelstrom.

For those of us not in the thick of it the fires and smoke still invaded our skies, our lungs and our loungerooms. But beyond the intensity of the flames it can be easy to move on. Crisis over, next crisis in view.

But what of the impacts? What of the stories that too often go untold? The harm that lingers?

From the exhibition Packed, Lost, Found.

It’s summer 2020 and I’m back home, touring a small, whitewashed room of the Manning Regional Art Gallery. It’s exactly one year on from the 2019 bushfires and there’s a local exhibition, appropriately named “Packed, Lost, Found” showcasing endurance and survival. From every wall I see the faces of locals. Some I know well, others simply feel familiar.

Theirs are the one-year-on faces. Theirs are the stories of lives and memories of summer indelibly rewritten. The people who experienced the terror and loss of a bushfire summer like no other.

Like no other… yet guaranteed to be repeated.

The exhibition was put together by writer Tessa Kerbel and photographer Julie Slavin, and made by possible with support from the Midcoast Council. Here are a few excerpts:

“Terry, a Wiradjuri man and Kim, a Kamilaroi woman, barely had time to get themsleves and their dogs out the door. Terry managed to grab just one of his carvings, a didgeridoo engraved with a land spirit and a water spirit: the lyre bird and the shark. Everything else went.”

“John from Nabiac …used to find claw marks on the trunks of trees around his property. Since the fire, he hasn’t found any marks at all…. He got back with just enough time to pack his car and go. Along with his camera and all his photos, he packed a teddy he’s had since he was two…”

“For Captain Rob of the Rainbow Flat RFS, it’s not the loss of their equipment, or even the station itself, that bothers… it’s the loss of their history: 37 years of medals, trophies, records and photos, undigitized.”

“Aside from the beautiful uninsured bush house he built himself, Tim’s greatest loss is his library of around 3000 books. When he and Junko evacuated, he just grabbed his dictionaries. ‘I figured all the words are in there,’ he says.”

“Kate’s find in the rubble was a tiny cat. He sat on her parents’ bookshelf when she was growing up and later her windowsill. He’s only changed colour slightly…
’I love him more than ever,’ she says. ‘To me, he means home.’”

“Just before they left, Daintry grabbed a carving knife and hacked two framed photos of her kids, taken by Julie, off the wall. Julie was her sister who lived up the road. Julie did not make it through the fire.”

In these one-year-on photos people’s loss can still be seen in the faces and bodies.

Just as the landscape continues to bear the scars that even the green shoots of recovery cannot hide. One-year-on and innocence has been lost — yes for the locals, plus many more. Now summer beckons us with trepidation as well as joy.

A metaphor perhaps for the future. One that beckons with both fear and possibility.

Now it’s autumn 2021

Shorter days and crisper evenings herald the change of season. Water, not fire, has become this season’s birthstone. It drenches relentlessly an already soggy-summer landscape.

In the midst of the deluge my 96-year-old mum falls and breaks her leg. Just hours before her village is cut off by floodwaters she is transported to Taree Base Hospital. And as the skies continue to pour and the rivers rise, the hospital becomes an isolated oasis of crisis and care magnified. Despite short staffing, tired-to-the-bone staff front for double shifts whilst literally at the foot of the hill the world floats by.

A small story among many.

Gradually the waters recede and amidst the mud and debris the reckoning begins. Lives and livelihoods impacted. Homes and mementos lost. Communities reeling.

Whilst visiting my mum I wander the banks of the usually beautiful and serene Manning River. Birds abound, raking over the freshly deposited mud. But what is most stark are the tress uprooted. The playgrounds silenced and taped off. The fitness circuit undermined. The picnic areas destroyed.

Small pieces of community damaged and lost.

I visit the local beach to see how it fared from the heavy seas and river run-off. In years past it would have been a chance to trawl the high tide mark for interesting flotsam. And indeed, I see some wonderful bonfire-ready wood sculptures. But I also see the tenuous hold of the sand dunes.

This area of foreshore has been slowly receding. Plantings, sand bagging and massive wood logs rammed into the dunes attest to frantic efforts by locals to maintain their foreshore and the homes nestled atop.

Orange hazard tape coddles an area of road washed away.

A seemingly small loss but one that must keep the locals awake at night.

In the clean-up and rebuilding stories abound of neighbourly heroism, communities coming together and even those who have lost much still helping others. Who knew that piece of soggy carpet the devastated homeowner removes would be so welcomed by the local dairy farmer looking to help their cows navigate the still sodden paths!

People clean up, clean out, and if they can, rebuild. The rivers return to their banks. Life goes on.

But a price has been paid. Things are not the same.

Severe weather events are not simply swirls on a weather map, an exciting news time interlude or a contested political narrative.

When politicians argue over the costs of an effective climate response, they fail to understand we already carry the cost of inaction.

Millions of small stories, intimate and local — causing harm, bringing loss and imposing costs... seen and unseen.

I can’t stop thinking about the stories from the exhibition, a reminder to remember as well as to act.

“It took people a long time to feel safe again,’ Aspen from Elands says. ‘Not until it rained.’
She evacuated when Willow, five, started showing signs of distress…
I comment on how badly burnt the road up is. Aspen nods.
‘We drove through fire, basically.’
With three kids in the car, there wasn’t a lot of room left over, but Aspen packed a few items her mum gave her before she died…
I ask if now is the time to talk about climate change.
‘Yes,’ she says.”

“On November 11 Fiona and Aaron from Warrawillah went to Sydney and poured a bucket of ashes, the remains of their home, onto NSW Parliament steps. They [too] said it was time to talk about climate change. ”

LOUISE TARRANT

Louise Tarrant is a lifelong unionist and spent many years with United Voice (including as National Secretary). Louise is passionate about dismantling the concentration of power and wealth that undermines our national sense of a fair go and fair play, that hollows out our democracy and puts business interests ahead of our environment. Louise is currently on the Board of Greenpeace Asia Pacific and the Climate Action Network (CANA) and is the current Chair of the Australia reMADE Secretariat.

Other blogs by Louise: What if we centred radical love at the heart of our politics?