A Smoky Beginning
We have commenced 2020, and completed our road trip, in a very smoky Canberra courtesy of the bushfires. It has proved to be both a sober and sobering beginning to the year: the day we arrived was lovely and clear but the haze soon rolled in and got progressively worse so that by the evening of New Years Eve, the air was thick and heavy with bushfire smoke. We estimated that visibility was down to about 50m by about 8pm, the smoke was that thick. And it smelt like wood-fire smoke and seeped into every nook and cranny. Canberra had cancelled its fireworks and other celebrations as it was under a total fire ban and by the evening, the air quality was the worst in the world and everyone was told on the news to stay inside.
We opted to spend the day doing what we could indoors which included a visit to The Australian War Memorial - on a clear day, Canberra must be beautiful with its wide green avenues and open spaces. The War Memorial was stuffed with very interesting items including some confronting Nazi memorabilia and, my personal highlight, an enigma machine!
The very confronting evidence of what rural Australia is facing made it difficult to feel like celebrating so we opted for a night in with a quiet bottle of wine, a nice dinner and reflected on how lucky we were to be safe. Upon returning to Melbourne to find that also shrouded in smoke haze, we hope that this is a turning point for the government politicians of Australia to take care of our environment and climate seriously. There is a part of me that is glad for the inconvenience of the smoke haze: yes it’s confronting, yes it’s disruptive to the summer holiday’s and yes there are people for whom it is not good for their health. But the longer this impacts people in cities, the angrier they are getting with our federal government and if that can be sustained, surely the government has to take notice and has to do something.
So my hope for 2020, beyond my own personal goals and aspirations, is that this is the year the country we’ve chosen to live in finally does something meaningful about the impact it is having on our environment.
