So this is what it looks like. All the warnings from scientists about an increased likelihood of natural disasters, they are no longer abstract. They can no longer be dismissed, forgotten about. They have a face, they are real, they are here, and they are seemingly unstoppable.
I think most people around southern Australia have been touched by the fires by now, in some way or another. We are pretty fortunate in Canberra to have so far avoided any fire.
Even so, the last month has been uncomfortable, oppressive, visceral. We honestly have not had a clear blue sky in about a month. Some days have been mostly fine, with a lingering high smoke haze only preventing the sky from being completely blue. Other days have been incredibly, uncomfortably smoky.
View from Aranda bushland looking south towards
On New Years eve I drove out to a friend’s place at night and the smoke was so thick it felt like walking in a soup. Visibility on the roads was reduced to 50 meters. Street lamps cast out big, vague cones of light. The smoke wafted in to houses through vents and under doors, seemingly nowhere was safe. It seemed like a horribly appropriate way to end the past decade and start the new one.
There is something perversely fascinating about all the unprecedented things going on. The incredible dedication and mobilisation of fire fighters and police and defence forces to ensure the safety of the public. Mass evacuations of the whole south coast of NSW. The queues at grocery stores and fuel stations in fire affected areas. Canberra having the the worst air quality of any city in the world, multiple days in a row. As a result, its almost impossible to just go out and buy a P2 mask or an air purifier in Canberra at the moment.
I’m not even supposed to go to uni, as the ANU has told students and staff to stay home due to the poor air quality.
This part of the bushland had a planned burn in spring. It looks particularly eery at the moment.
Perhaps the hardest part about the whole thing for me, and all of my environmentally-minded friends, has been the sheer scale of burning. Whole national parks are being burnt out, and not just locally, but right around south-east Australia. It is incredibly hard to watch videos of koalas begging cyclists for water, or images of the charred remains of burnt kangaroos. Yet the worst will be unknown for many months and years to come. I have no doubt that whole species are being wiped out by the unprecedented scale of these fires. Just from my own experience - I visited a sub-alpine plain in the Tumbarumba region the week before Christmas, which is the only known home to two threatened species of leek orchid. I haven’t heard whether the property has been hit by fire or not, but based on fire maps it looks like it may have been. Have the orchids survived? Who knows, and like for many species of plants, insect, fungi and smaller animals, we probably won’t know for a while.
It has hard not to end up focusing on the negatives too much. Somehow, we need to find a way to absorb all the tragedy, to grieve all that has been destroyed, and to unleash our determination to continue protecting nature as best we can.
So far, this is what nature photography in 2020 looks like! Close fitting P2 masks can be very good at keeping out the smoke.