The Year We Ran Out of Time

Posted on 2 January, 2020

“The extraordinary is not extraordinary anymore. And that’s terrifying. Looking at the ‘Fires Near Me’ app, it looks like the whole country is burning … This is the year we ran out of time.”

Yesterday morning my sister posted on Facebook, “Welcome to 2020–the year we ran out of time”.

How have I been using my time on the first days of the new year? Like many of you, I’ve been obsessive-compulsively down a social media rabbit hole watching footage of fires down the coast and ensuring everyone I know who’s down there is safe. I’ve been reposting stuff on Facebook. It’s only making me more anxious.

The images from the coast, Victoria, and elsewhere in Australia are apocalyptic. The stories frightening. The frustration, anger, and outrage at denial of links to climate change and government inaction echo in the apparently soundproof corridors of power. I think the best term to apply here is ‘wilful blindness’, or maybe ‘shameful wilful blindness’.

We don’t have time for wilful blindness now.

We are out of time.

For me, and I’m sure many others around Australia who have been affected by fires in the past, the unfolding disaster has triggered memories we’d rather forget.

We got trapped in our home in the 2003 Canberra bushfires and were very, very lucky to escape. Trust me, it’s not something you ever want to experience. No home or property is worth risking your life for. If you have the chance, get out early. But I know, like us, many people in the path of fire didn’t have time to make that choice.

For years, I’ve been on the journos’ list of ‘bushfire survivors to interview’ and I’ve done interviews when dredging up the experience was the last thing I felt like doing. I certainly don’t feel like writing about bushfires today (if I’m truthful, all I want to do is escape to somewhere with clean air and blue skies). But I always felt that if I could share our story maybe what happened to us wouldn’t happen to anyone else. How incredibly naïve.

We were told the Canberra bushfires were a ‘once in 100 years’ event. An event so intense it wasn’t called a bushfire, it was called a ‘firestorm’ because it generated its own winds and was so unusual.

Then in 2009 came the Black Saturday fires in Victoria.  Meteorological researchers from the University of Melbourne and Monash University have studied what fire agencies and the general public reported as ‘extraordinary fire behaviour’ that led to the loss of 173 lives and 2133 homes, plus the loss of hundreds and hundreds of pets and livestock. A prolonged period of no rainfall and high temperatures fuelled by hot, dry winds, then a cool change, led to atmospheric phenomena that contributed to the catastrophic fires.

But sadly, the extraordinary is not extraordinary anymore. And that’s terrifying.

Looking at the ‘Fires Near Me’ app, it looks like the whole country is burning.

We are out of time.

Today, we have been housebound in Canberra. On the first day of 2020, we had the honour of having the worst air quality in the world at 20 times the ‘hazardous’ level. Again today we are tucking damp towels under doors, our extractor fans are on as there is smoke in our homes, and people are taping around their windows desperate to keep the smoke out.

There are videos doing the rounds on social media of the smoke rolling into Canberra on New Year’s Eve like a malevolent creature subsuming all in its path.

But we are reluctantly accustomed to this toxic beast now.  It has been visiting for weeks.

Normally in summer, the southerly late afternoon/early evening breeze rolls in bringing slightly salty cool air from the coast, and we sigh and open up our windows and doors to embrace the sweet relief from the heat of the day.

There is no relief these days. You can’t open your windows and doors and embrace cooling air that brings smoke that burns your throat, stings your eyes, and chokes your lungs.

This isn’t just smoke. It’s smoke that carries fear, anger, and heartache. It carries the ash of charred bush, dead animals, birds, reptiles, and insects lost in an annihilation. It carries the loss of homes and businesses, of livelihoods. It carries the confusion and distress of children. It carries the stress and trauma of people, creatures, and land in desperation. But saddest and most tragic of all, it carries the deep grief of lives lost.

We are out of time.

The hope I hold is that we will come together. That we will not let the politics of division split us. That we will find common ground—things we all want—and find a way to work towards it together. With kindness. With compassion. With cooperation.

‘Yes’ to having a voice and using it. March. Protest. Advocate. Loudly.

But also, yes to doing whatever you feel compelled to do that will nurture your soul. Garden. Sing. Dance. Make things. In that creative space, you could be surprised by what emerges…powerful advocacy has many forms.

And yes to whatever you can do, no matter how small it seems, to make a difference. Put out water containers for birds and animals. Grow your own herbs. Don’t flush unless it’s ‘number two’. Those things make a difference. They build a collective consciousness for change.

Call me Pollyanna, but this is the hope that is holding me together at the moment.

Because we are out of time.