Guides to a fiery future – it was only a matter of time

It was only a matter of time. It seems such a long time ago that we moved from bushfires to pandemic and watched as a wave of disease and stupidity swept the world and the country. Now the bushfires are back – the stupidity as well. Did we ever think they wouldn’t be?

Fires and floods and wars (luckily the last haven’t reached Australia – yet) and other disasters inevitably make you think what should I keep, what should I take? Amongst such disaster I include the death of loved ones and the culling of loved things, like libraries. Sorting the belongings of those who have gone, the only criterion can be ‘does it mean something?’ With belongings, once you bravely discard an item of a certain level of significance, it’s open slather on all other items of that level – that way went many of my books.

Crowds at Coogee Beach indulging in one of the most popular Australian outdoor activities – contracting skin cancer.

‘It was only a matter of time. It seems such a long time ago that we moved from bushfires to pandemic and watched as a wave of disease and stupidity swept the world and the country. Now the bushfires are back – the stupidity as well.’

Sheep graziers warning replaced by heat wave alert – reading books, drinking tea and reading tea leaves

Yesterday I popped out to get coffee and to visit the library, which just reopened after the break. They are the only things that would tempt me out of the apartment in this weather. Instead of the normal sheep graziers alert we get in Canberra, this week we have a heat wave alert. Yesterday was 33 degrees, then today is 35 degrees, the next three days will each reach 38 degrees. Originally there were going to be three days in a row where the temperatures reached 39, so I’m thankful that’s changed. I feel as though I am living in Adelaide again, but it’s probably even hotter there.

It’s quite clear that our overlapping layers of weather protection – curtains, blinds, tinting, heavy duty insect screens and plants – have substantially reduced the heat that gets into our apartment. The other day, sliding the windows in my study along to fertilise the window boxes, I saw how dark the overlapping tinted glass is.

It’s a pleasure to have a terrace that is as expansive as a courtyard, our very own garden of Eden, like the fabled Islamic paradise gardens Monty Don talks about, or as I sometimes refer to it - the hanging gardens of babble on.

To date, while we have had a few scattered hot days, we’ve not really had either very hot days or a continuous stretch of them. While I’m not looking forward to a string of hot days finally appearing, I am looking forward to seeing how the apartment will respond. We will add the two remaining defensive components we have – fans and air-conditioning – and see how we fare.

Lurching to a halt at the end of the year

For some reason Christmas reminds me of a play by Jean-Paul Sartre called ‘Huis Clos’, named after the French equivalent of an in camera trial or closed courtroom. It’s about three people who have died, locked together awaiting judgement in a crowded room for eternity. It’s the origin of Sartre’s famous line ‘hell is other people’.

The world suddenly lurches to a halt
But it’s not the idea of hell that Christmas reminds me of (though possibly I could say that about a few distant Christmases in my past – it’s true that Christmas can be one of the most stressful times of the year). It’s the fact that at Christmas, especially on Boxing Day, the world suddenly lurches to a halt and stops still at the doorway of the approaching year. 

Let's make the world great again.

A different universe lapped by waves

The little city that serves Australia as a capital is far from any coastline, even though in a strange historical quirk it actually has a coastline at Jervis Bay. Yet to reach the South Coast of New South Wales, below the swollen city where Australia’s official European history began, takes hardly any time at all. It’s much more drawn out heading down the coast from Sydney, through the great Sydney sprawl past Wollongong and beyond.

My favourite coffee cart on the beachfront at Malua Bay.

A different universe
The South Coast is an entirely different universe to the capital, tucked up as it is in the mountains and removed from the insulated world of well-paid industry lobbyists and variable quality politicians. It would also be removed from the rest of the population who live and work in Canberra except that an inordinately high proportion of them have holiday homes at the coast or retire there. Those who don’t do either, visit anyway.

Walking with ghosts

Increasingly people I have known for a long time seem to be dying. In fact my generation is steadily starting to disappear. Who is replacing them? We shuffle along in a world that is unravelling, a world – that for both good and bad – our generation gave birth to. We are teetering in a strange balance between building on the achievements of the past and desperately trying to dismantle them. In many countries, the current generation is poorer than the previous one, upending generations of dreams by working class parents and migrants for a better life for their children. In this time of upheaval – both welcome and unwelcome – creativity is needed like never before.

As long as we remember them, they are still with us

A few weeks ago I flew to Adelaide, where I spent my years as a young adult, to celebrate the life of a friend and mentor who died earlier in the year. It was busy, catching up with everyone I knew from years ago, and there were some scheduling issues. It reminded me of an old friend from my days playing in a short-lived but thoroughly enjoyable band there. He missed an appointment we had made and I asked him,‘don’t you write it in your diary?’ He replied that he did, but that he then forgot to look at it.

On the rails again

I'm on the road again – well, on the rails again at least. On Monday I caught the slow train from Canberra to Sydney, and today I’ve woken up in Surry Hills. I’m enjoying my days in Sydney – after all, I did live here for twelve and a half years. I’m mainly here to see the Yolngu Power exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW, which finishes next week, but I’m also using the trip to see to other business.

It started badly when on the morning I left I tried to set the combination on the brand new suitcases I’d bought on sale and never used. The reset was a bit sluggish and I managed to lock the suitcase with everything inside it. Despite manually trying every one of the 999 possible combinations on the four hour train trip, I had no success.

Welcome to Yirrkala – a sculptural installation inside the entrance of the exhibition.

When I arrived in Sydney I walked to a tiny down-at-heel hole in the wall called the Suitcase Repair Centre which was stacked with dilapidated suitcases of every variety. There they took five minutes to pick the lock by feeling when the tumblers clicked into place. They didn’t even charge me. I was hugely relieved – but it doesn’t make you confident about the security of your luggage.

Looking down on dire predictions

I see the latest report on looming climate change has some pretty dire predictions – like a future of four times lengthier heatwaves, up to five times as many deaths due to extreme heat, a massive drag on productivity, 1.5 million Australians at risk of coastal flooding and a potential half trillion dollar hit to property values by 20250 – and that’s just the good news.

But wait, there’s more. Add to that bushfires becoming too uncontrollable to be fought and coastal areas abandoned and all those climate change sceptics are going to be looking pretty sheepish, if not soggy. It will be bad for those who live near a coast – any coast – or in a low-lying part of Australia.

View over Canberra from four storeys up on a high hill, with Black Mountain Tower and Parliament House in the distance. I’m waiting for the (eventual) water views.

Unfortunately those swamped by the rising waters, with their houses collapsing into the sea or rivers will include both those who heeded the climate message, but couldn’t afford to move and those who scoffed at it and decided it was all rubbish, and they were staying where they were with their expensive (increasingly close up) water views.