Mourning a Disappearing World as Australia Burns

‘A month ago, scorched leaves began to fall from the sky. All week, the light had been vividly orange, as dust from the northern fires travelled down the coast, diffusing through the air over our small town in New South Wales, Australia. A friend of my son’s found a black crescent of eucalyptus. “Take a photo of this!” he demanded, waving it under my nose.

By nightfall, the sirens were blaring, and bathtubs and laundry sinks were full. Every 20 minutes, my husband patrolled the perimeter of the house, making sure that falling embers didn’t set the garden alight. After months of drought, the whole town was a tinderbox. Now we watched and waited, while the fire front moved closer, hosing down the outside of our homes and checking the Fires Near Me app and the town’s Facebook page compulsively.

The old-timers were out in force, yarning in their front gardens with anyone walking by.

“I haven’t seen one as bad as this since ’53,” one man told me, head craning up from his wheelchair, “but don’t worry, love, nothing’s ever come into town proper before.”

The town where I live, Braidwood, is ringed with cleared land, old growth destroyed for grazing, and the flat dry paddocks form a sturdy firebreak. Still, the air was thick with haze, and the schoolchildren had been kept inside through recess and lunch. The asthmatic children looked wan. Three hours north, in Sydney, the air quality was worse than in Jakarta.

The town hall, a tiny quaint historical theatre, had been turned into an evacuation centre, a place for residents on the outskirts and in nearby hamlets to seek shelter. I stuck my head in on the walk home from school. The volunteers told me to come back later to see what was needed, and I made a mental list of things I could quickly and easily provide: toothpaste, warm socks, pyjamas, coloured pencils and paper for bored, tired children. When I got home, I packed my own bag and got the woollen blankets out.’

A bushfire dispatch published in The Globe and Mail, here.