This is a personal story. It’s a project that will change and morph and may never be complete. It’s about climate trauma. And who it affects. And bushfires and floods and roadkill and what humans do to the earth and one another in the name of power and greed. And hubris. Especially hubris. But at its heart, it’s about Phoenix’s and hope and how we all have the ability to recreate ourselves and our world for the better.
It’s about how we can’t stay silent and watch the abuses of innocent people, animals and our planet anymore. Its an ongoing, free-range journey using the weapons I was given as a child. Words, drawings, photography. They will describe and entertain. I hope they will make you think. But most of all I believe they bring us all to a place of understanding and hope. And the realization that kindness is the best weapon of all.
Australia has long been known to be the driest continent on earth. And just before the “Black Summer” bushfires of 2020 it was also officially declared the hottest continent on earth. It had, long before European occupation, its own rhythm’s and rules, obeyed and guarded by its very own people who have understood the country, nurtured and maintained it since this continent was born. The maintenance of country is of paramount importance for the First People of Australia. All of the landscape and its unique animals and plants are as much a part of Aboriginal people as their DNA. If you don’t look after the country you don’t look after its people. Donootch Dancers perform at NAIDOC celebrations in Jindabyne.
Simone Davison, whose Aboriginal tribal lands are those of the Ngarigo people, revels in the falling snow in her home country in the Alpine region of Australia. Ngarigo occupation of the Snowy Mountains dates back to 60,000 years before the British Colonial Navy invasion. Photographed at my home, ‘The Hut” at Ingebryah in 2018, before bushfires decimated an area known for its marshlands.
We call it the “shimmering” up here. A wave of luxuriant, knee-deep grasses, gently stroked by the breeze, shimmering green and silver as it reacts to the wind. Like a silk sheet thrown over a bed of feather down. You could drown in its softness. For the first time in two years the Arcadian view from my window seemed almost normal, the climate at The Hut felt almost right and the terror of running out of water at the beginning of a new bushfire season was almost assuaged. We had some rain in the area. And I had a new water tank by the house. I even felt I could watch the ABC TV’s series on weather events without my heart palpitating and without the same anxious out of body feeling taking a grip of my soul the minute I saw smoke. Up until yesterday, that is… Up until the weather forecasters started predicting record hot temperatures to sweep the country. And then that old feeling, that the monster at my doorstep had arisen once more. It suffocated and engulfed me.
It is estimated that billions of Indigenous Eucalyptus trees and native Australian animals were incinerated in the bushfires of “Black Summer 2020”. In some cases, this represents the extinction of the genetic diversity of some strains of Alpine Ash. Taoist believers holds that humans and animals should live in balance with the Tao, or the universe. Taoists believe in spiritual immortality, where the spirit of the body joins the universe after death. One wonders what they would make of such a calamity as these bushfires.
There’s a monster on my doorstep... it’s the night before Christmas Eve 2019 and there is an uncanny silence inside The Hut... the valley is filled with heavy bushfire smoke, my eyes are stinging and every time a breath of wind lifts the dry and dying branches of one of my favourite gum trees I feel my heart race. I am in the Snowy Mountains and just on the other side of the NSW and Victorian border lies another monster fire. It’s burnt 28000 hectares and I feel it is stalking the mountain tops, eyeing off how it can feed its giant hunger. It is a dragon that is only normally seen in these parts in February. That’s the name of a book by Colin Thiele by the way “February Dragon” but it’s come early and bigger and more voracious than it has ever been before. This monster which has laid waste to nearly 3 million hectares of land and has swallowed whole towns will not abate. It is coming for Kosciuszko National Park which has been spectacularly mismanaged by so many government bureaucrats interested only in the money they can generate to pay themselves… the monster will devour it all. Pity the poor trees and animals who are screaming out in the dryness... this land was once a marsh. Now it’s almost a desert.
There is a monster on my doorstep... and it’s Christmas Eve 2019... I thought in keeping with the Prime Minister of Australia, Scott Morrison (Scummo to his friends) all I would be getting in my Christmas stocking was a lump of coal... because according to Scummo that’s the future of Australia. There is a monster on my doorstep and it’s Christmas Eve. I saw the red-eye of Sauron tonight peaking through the trees. It reminds me of Mordor. The fires in Victoria have slowly and inexorably increased in size. And in the Snowy Mountains we are waiting for the monster to arrive.
There’s a monster on my doorstep... and it looks like the scene of a murder... on Christmas Day 2019 I went to visit friends and came back to thick, dark smoke blanketing The Hut and surrounds. There were no signs of bird or animal life. Just the hush of being smothered by the weight of smoke that contains a million million trees and vast swathes of indigenous animals being incinerated across Australia. The smoke in the Snowy Mountains, the country of the Ngarigo comes from fires burning 70kms south of me and some 160 kms north. With temperatures were predicted to rise again that weekend a single spark could cause a conflagration of immense size in Kosciuszko National Park, known for its Alpine snow coverage rather than drought and fire.
There’s a Monster on my doorstep…and its snapping at my heels…These choppers carrying buckets flew directly over the top of The Hut to a fire a mere 10kms from the property. The feelings of anxiety were intensifying…my friend and a journalist I have worked with in the past is in the Rural Fire Service and said they were on standby for this fire. They sent a bulldozer down the road as well, I guess to make firebreaks. Shooting the 2009 bushfires in Victoria at Marysville and Kinglake where 179 people were killed has given me more than a healthy respect for what can happen if you are in the path of a fire. Now instead of someone else’s house, animals and community that was threatened…it was mine.
There is a monster on my doorstep... On Dec 30th 2019 this was a pyrocumulus cloud from one of the fires south of me by about 40kms... the Snowy Mountains had massive fires in 2003... I wanted to move my horses to Jindabyne but I couldn’t seem to find anyone with a yard or a paddock ... these were very frightening times. The fires from the west were the ones to watch. Fourteen hours after this photo was taken the fire front had swept through from the western side of the main range from Corryong and travelled 60kms in a few hours. The Hut was directly in the path of the monster.
There is a monster at my doorstep… and it has swallowed the friendly faces of the trees and animals right in front of me…this is a linocut animation
It was 5am on New Years Eve and the sky was black. Impenetrable black. Not black because there were no stars or moon out, but the kind of black that suffocates the senses. The sort of black that can’t allow the light in. Within the next twenty four hours, I had stopped breathing, witnessed the sky burn and drunk three bottles of champagne. We all knew they were coming… the bushfires I mean. I guess I should say almost all of us knew, except for the Prime Minister, but all the rest of us had seen them creeping further and further south. Down the coastal strip. Devouring every single dry twig and evaporating every single living organism’s breath and perspiration, drying everything out so that all that was left was empty cellulose and the bitter smell of burnt. We lived on tenterhooks, knowing that a single spit of spark could bring down an incendiary bomb of the likes we had not seen before. The anxiety was real, every moment was like borrowed time.
The fire zone map from January 3rd 2020
After evacuating The Hut I left Jindabyne in search of refuge. We had three massive fire fronts bearing down on us in the mountains. I had gone to where I think it would be safe with my animals but I just don’t know. They evacuated Thredbo. I had’t heard what was happening with Jindabyne. But it seems they have told everyone to leave. These fires appeared unstoppable. I just prayed my house and my horses and cat will be safe. I wasn’t sure any of would be. SBS found me as soon as I got to the Cooma Evacuation center on the Friday. I of course had a fair bit to say.
Scenes from Cooma Evacuation Center on January 3rd 2020. The Cooma Showground served as a place of refuge for residents from all over the south-east of New South Wales. It was smothered in smoke for almost all of the time I was camped there in my truck with my two horses and cat. This image was taken the evening before the gigantic fire fronts that encircled Cooma and Jindabyne were fanned by ferocious winds which pushed the fire onto Adaminaby.
On the morning of January 4th 2020, the dry westerly winds began to blow. Sucking the life from every living thing the monster that had teased us for so long arrived.
The professional Fire and Rescue Squad from Warringah in Sydney appeared at Cooma Evacuation Center on the morning of January 4rh 2020. They warned us to put extra buckets of water around the stables.
The temperatures were incredible on January 4th 2020 in Cooma. In the Snowy Mountains, we were unused to such heat. Up until months later it felt like the climate was never going to return to normal. Willsy my cat, who was staying in my truck with me of a night time had to be placed in the care of the local Council rangers on that day. She would not have survived the heat on my truck.
Erni and Bubba in the growing haze of smoke from the encroaching fires.
People had arrived with their horses from all over the region.
Bubba and Erni in the increasing smoke haze
Rosemary Beeton had evacuated some of her livestock from nearby Adaminaby. Her neighbour had bought a large block of land opposite her and in the manner of the National Parks had refused to do any kind of fire maintenance. Rosemary believes that the neighbours are irresponsible and she was living next door to a ticking time bomb.
My truck with the hired horse float as the sky became increasingly dark. It was 3.03pm in the afternoon.
The sky over Cooma Evacuation Center at 3.20pm in the afternoon of January 4th, 2020.
At 5pm the sky was pitch black the local police had tried to remove us
After the pyrocumulus event
Ten centimetres of ash from the fallout of the pyrocumulus cloud that formed over the Snowy Monaro region on January 4th 2020, had to be washed from cars and buildings. In the unprecedented ‘Black Summer’ bushfires of 2020, billions of trees and animals were consumed. The heat from the fires extended into the troposphere causing clouds of the remains of carbonised animals and trees to form. This then dropped onto the earth with whatever little moisture was in the air. Property owners who relied on water tanks for drinking and irrigation water had to empty them, even though bushfires still continued to rage in the area, for fear of being poisoned.
Smoke haze was a continuous feature in the Snowy Monaro region for months during the ‘Black Summer’ bushfires. The impact on humans and animals is inestimable. As the smoke haze sat eerily and heavy on the landscape it filled the lungs of all living creatures causing on-going damage that may affect entire generations of Australians.
