is not to be underestimated. I put something about this up in another location yesterday but I want to say it again here. I had to do some essential shopping yesterday. In the shopping centre I saw someone I know and we gave each other a brief hug. As we did so I heard a very quiet voice behind me ask, "Can I have a hug too." The voice belonged to a complete stranger, a woman of about my own age. She was looking very, very stressed. If I believed in things like auras then this woman would probably have had one which was fiery red with black patches. Now I do not go around hugging people I don't know but this woman had asked and I sensed she needed a hug. Someone needed to give her a hug. So - I hugged her. I held her more tightly than I would have any other stranger and she clung to me. She was shaking slightly. When she loosened her grip I let go and looked at her and asked, "Is there something else I can do?" She shook her head and burst into tears. I could guess why because there was that faint, smoky smell around her even though her clothes were clean. She and her husband had lost everything in the fires we have here. All she wanted right then was a hug from a stranger, to have someone else who cared enough to give her one. I like to think I have some ability to imagine things but I am finding it very, very hard to comprehend "losing everything". What does it really mean? This woman has not "lost everything" of course. She still has her family but right now she must feel so numb and confused. It was absolutely clear that she wasn't functioning properly. People don't normally ask complete strangers for a hug when they are simply going about their daily business. My job is about disasters, about people in need, often about helping people who have lost everything - sometimes even their families. I thought I knew something about this. There have been times when stories and situations have kept me awake long after I should have been exhausted. It happens even though I try to distance myself enough to function properly and actually do something to help. But, yesterday I was faced with the reality. I knew all over again why it is that people who have experienced such horrendous things cannot function normally. I have told people over and over again that people sometimes cannot help themselves even when they have the physical capacity to do it. They don't have the capacity to make the decisions, to plan and more. Their minds won't let them move and do things. They need help - and sometimes they need the smallest of things like a hug.
is something that many people enthusiastically embrace - until they discover what volunteering actually means. Yesterday one of the local men was complaining to me that they had turned down his offer to "volunteer". I asked him what he thought he would be able to do. "I don't know but they must have things I could do." No mate, they don't. That isn't how volunteering works. I wonder whether your will work it out this morning when you see the grim faces of farmers from other areas who have volunteered to go in and face the truly horrific task of shooting animals to put them out of their misery. It is something you need to know how to do and it isn't one I would wish on anyone. You also need to know how to fight fires. When my brother and his partner moved out of the city to a smaller rural community last year my brother did the responsible thing. He joined the local rural fire service. He had just finished his initial training when the fires hit. He had not passed the essential certification. Trained? Yes. Certified? No. They can't use him even though they needed all the help they could get. He could volunteer to do other things though and they could use him to help neighbours prepare their properties because he knew what to do. The man complaining to me would have no idea. He can't care for animals either. His wife might be able to help. She trained as a nurse - but she has her hands full dealing with young humans who aren't coping well with the smoke haze here. There are all sorts of other help which is needed but this man can't provide any of it. The only useful thing he could do is provide a donation . I know a couple who were going to go on holiday but they have offered their caravan to people who have lost their home. That's practical help that was welcomed. I know a retired vet who has gone back to work because someone called him and asked for advice. He went to look at the problem and they asked him to stay - more practical help that was needed and welcomed. Volunteering is about giving help that is needed. It is not about getting in the way or thinking "I might be able to do something useful". It is about knowing you can do something specific that is even more specifically needed. I will spend time today helping someone work their way through a maze of paperwork. It's the sort of thing I do in my working life and I know I can but I wouldn't offer to work in a situation which demanded skills I don't have.
make a frequent appearance in this house. There was a time when we all visited the local library on at least a weekly basis. It has changed now. The Black Cat (my youngest sister) was the first to stop going. She is the least interested in reading. I doubt she does much, if any, these days. Her spare daylight hours are mostly spent outside if the weather is good. Inside she pursues "messy" crafts or does jigsaw puzzles while watching television. Middle Cat always has a book "on the go" but watches more television. Her partner prefers television but he grew up in a household where there were no books at all and the only newspaper was written in Greek. They have two bookcases, mostly filled with books from when their boys were young or medical textbooks from Middle Cat's career. Brother Cat though is a different story. He will usually have two books he is actually reading, one fiction and one non-fiction. There will always be another pile of up to a dozen awaiting his attention. He knows his way around libraries. And then there is the Senior Cat. He has stopped visiting the library but only because of the difficulty of getting there. He still borrows books. It's simple. All he has to do is say, "I need more to read." When he does I take the little pile of books back to the library and I bring home another larger pile. He will look through them and choose three or four and I will take the other two or three back. The Senior Cat also has other reading matter. He is down to three jam-packed bookshelves - and piles of books by the bed, by both the chairs he sits in and in other places. This time last year there were seven bookshelves stuffed to capacity but he gave away his "magic" books - the books about conjuring - to someone who makes his living from it and who genuinely appreciates their value and a great many gardening and woodworking books to people he knew would use them. And that leaves me. The shelves are packed to capacity, double and triple stacked in places. There is my collection of dictionaries and books about linguistics and languages, my knitting and crochet books, a handful of cookery books, and my collection of children's literature which the local children use like a library. People keep telling me "you'll have to get rid of some of those". Yes, I know that - but not yet. And I still use the library - at least once a week.
is, for those of you in Upover, at the foot of the bit of Downunder that looks a bit like Italy. It is about 140km long and, at the widest point, about 55km wide. Overall it is about 4,500km square and home to a diverse range of flora and fauna, some of it unique to the island. The Senior Cat was once head of what was then a very large "area" school in the middle of the island which served the western end of the island. He was there in the mid-sixties and more than half a century on things have changed. The school is a third the size of what it once was. Farms have been consolidated. Tourism has become the main source of income for many of the residents. We haven't been back but we occasionally see people who still live there. It isn't as isolated as it was when we were there but it isn't easy. The strip of water known as "Backstairs Passage" is known as one of the roughest stretches of water in the world. There are times when it is impossible to cross it. There is an airport - and that has improved. (When the Senior Cat went there the airport consisted of a short runway and a tin shed.) And there are all the usual issues of whether there should be more tourists or fewer tourists and how they should be catered for in the modern world. In the mid-sixties that wasn't an issue. Only the hardiest and most intrepid tourists bothered to visit. But all this pales into insignificance right now because the fires are threatening to wipe out some of the wildlife. Wildlife matters everywhere but, if the worst happens on the island it will have catastrophic international implications. The island is home to the last known genetically pure population of Ligurian bees. They have been nurtured there since the 1880s. The bees are used not just to produce honey but for the purposes of scientific research designed to save the world's bee population - and that has implications for the world's food supply.
and it is time the media recognised that. The article below was written for the Sydney Morning Herald almost 11 years ago. I doubt it was popular at the time and I doubt it will be popular now. The Prime Minister at the time was one Kevin Rudd. He doesn't rate a mention in the article. Why? I am no lover of the present Prime Minister but the current hostile media coverage is not simply deliberately undermining and harming him but undermining and harming the fire fighting efforts. That makes me angry.
Green ideas must take blame for deaths
OPINION
It
wasn't climate change which killed as many as 300 people in Victoria
last weekend. It wasn't arsonists. It was the unstoppable intensity of a
bushfire, turbo-charged by huge quantities of ground fuel which had
been allowed to accumulate over years of drought. It was the power of
green ideology over government to oppose attempts to reduce fuel hazards
before a megafire erupts, and which prevents landholders from clearing
vegetation to protect themselves
So
many people need not have died so horribly. The warnings have been
there for a decade. If politicians are intent on whipping up a lynch mob
to divert attention from their own culpability, it is not arsonists who
should be hanging from lamp-posts but greenies.
Governments
appeasing the green beast have ignored numerous state and federal
bushfire inquiries over the past decade, almost all of which have
recommended increasing the practice of "prescribed burning". Also known
as "hazard reduction", it is a methodical regime of burning off
flammable ground cover in cooler months, in a controlled fashion, so it
does not fuel the inevitable summer bushfires.
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In
July 2007 Scott Gentle, the Victorian manager of Timber Communities
Australia, who lives in Healesville where two fires were still burning
yesterday, gave testimony to a Victorian parliamentary bushfire inquiry
so prescient it sends a chill down your spine.
"Living in an area
like Healesville, whether because of dumb luck or whatever, we have not
experienced a fire … since … about 1963. God help us if we ever do,
because it will make Ash Wednesday look like a picnic." God help him, he
was right.
Gentle
complained of obstruction from green local government authorities of
any type of fire mitigation strategies. He told of green interference at
Kinglake - at the epicentre of Saturday's disaster, where at least 147
people died - during a smaller fire there in 2007.
"The
contractors were out working on the fire lines. They put in containment
lines and cleared off some of the fire trails. Two weeks later that fire
broke out, but unfortunately those trails had been blocked up again [by
greens] to turn it back to its natural state … Instances like that are
just too numerous to mention. Governments … have been in too much of a
rush to appease green idealism … This thing about locking up forests is
just not working."
The Kinglake area was a nature-loving community
of tree-changers, organic farmers and artists to the north of
Melbourne. A council committed to reducing carbon emissions dominates
the Nillumbik shire, a so-called "green wedge" area, where restrictions
on removing vegetation around houses reportedly added to the dangers. In
nearby St Andrews, where more than 20 people are believed to have died,
surviving residents have spoken angrily of "greenies" who prevented
them from cutting back trees near their property, including in one case,
a tea tree that went "whoomp". Dr Phil Cheney, the former head of the
CSIRO's bushfire research unit and one of the pioneers of prescribed
burning, said yesterday if the fire-ravaged Victorian areas had been
hazard-reduced, the flames would not have been as intense.
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Kinglake
and Maryville, now crime scenes, are built among tall forests of
messmate stringy bark trees which pose a special fire hazard, with
peeling bark creating firebrands that carry fire five kilometres out.
"The only way to reduce the flammability of the bark is by prescribed
burning" every five to seven years, Cheney said. He estimates between 35
and 50 tonnes a hectare of dry fuel were waiting to be gobbled up by
Saturday's inferno.
Fuel loads above about eight tonnes a hectare
are considered a fire hazard. A federal parliamentary inquiry into
bushfires in 2003 heard that a fourfold increase in ground fuel leads to
a 13-fold increase in the heat generated by a fire.
Things
are no better in NSW, although we don't quite have Victoria's perfect
storm of winds and forest types. Near Dubbo two years ago, as a bushfire
raged through the Goonoo Community Conservation Area, volunteer
firefighters bulldozing a control line were obstructed by National Parks
and Wildlife Service employees who had driven from Sydney to stop
vegetation being damaged.
The poor management of national parks
and state forests in Victoria is highlighted by the interactive fire map
on the website of the Department of Sustainability and Environment.
Yesterday it showed that, of 148 fires started since mid-January, 120
started in state forests, national parks, or other public land, and just
21 on private property.
Only seven months ago, the Victorian
Parliament's Environment and Natural Resources Committee tabled its
report into the impact of public land management on bushfires, with five
recommendations to enhance prescribed burning. This included tripling
the amount of land to be hazard-reduced from 130,000 to 385,000 hectares
a year. There has been little but lip service from the Government in
response. Teary politicians might pepper their talking points with
opportunistic intimations of "climate change" and "unprecedented"
weather, but they are only diverting the blame. With yes-minister
fudging and craven inclusion of green lobbyists in decision-making, they
have greatly exacerbated this tragedy.
for the current bush fire situation in Downunder, indeed they must take a good deal of responsibility for the situation. I know the Greens are supposed to be the wonderful party which protects the environment. They aren't. The Senior Cat and I had a visitor yesterday - my aunt. I have to explain here that my aunt is only six years older than I am. For years she and my uncle, my mother's brother, lived on a rural property. Some people would have called it a "hobby farm" but it was much more than that. It was a research project for my uncle. One of the things that he needed to do was, as far as possible, "fire-proof" the property. He had to do that in conjunction with a tree planting program. The CFS - Country Fire Service - was also involved in the project. My uncle and aunt worked closely with senior people from there to set up a model that would, as far as possible protect properties from fire while still preserving the natural environment. My uncle, who had retired, did a lot of the work himself. My aunt, who was still working, put in a lot of weekend and night work helping with the planting and the fencing and more. By doing most of the hard physical work themselves they were able to afford it. Over the years the CFS took thousands of people through
to show them what should be done. It involved both planting and clearing
and, because it was a rural area, water supply and industrial spraying. What the project showed was that, if you put the work in, you could have "natural" surroundings but still do a great deal to make those surroundings as safe as possible. My uncle wrote it up and it was used by the CFS. It has not been used by the Greens. They were aware of the project but they ignored it. It was of no interest to them. Nothing could persuade them that it wasn't interfering with the natural landscape. As such it had to be condemned. That was forty years ago. Nothing has changed. The Greens still advocate for what they see as the "natural" landscape. Those party members I know, and I know more than a few, don't support basics like "back burning" - something designed to prevent fire from spreading. They claim it destroys animal habitat. It might but big fires destroy far more. When back burning occurs the fires are usually small enough for wildlife to move - with help if necessary. I know Greens who refuse to remove naturally fallen timber and other vegetation from their land. It's a fire hazard but it is "what nature intends". No, it isn't what nature intends. The first residents knew about the need to back burn. They knew about the need to remove undergrowth. Many of their descendants have forgotten these things. The Greens have never managed to learn these things. So what has happened is that far too many local government areas have used the Greens philosophy of "leave it natural" as an excuse not to do, or demand that others do, the necessary maintenance of the landscape. The fuel load in the regions with the worse fires has been unacceptably high. It should have been cleared. If it had been cleared we would still have had some fires. There will always be lightning strikes, arsonists and idiots who do the wrong thing. What we would not have had is fires of the same severity. They would have been much easier to control because the fuel load would have been far less. We need to stop listening to the Greens and listen to those who really know. The CFS and other fire services understand the importance of these things. They aren't opposed to tree planting or the maintenance of green. They actually want these things but they want them in a way which works. It can be done - if we put the work in.
is something I suspect most people value. I know I do. Middle Cat says I am a "very private" person. Maybe or maybe not. I do know there are things I don't want the entire world to know. It irritates me no end when Middle Cat tells people things I do not want them to know. It irritates me when she tries to organise my life. I know she does this to everyone but... Yesterday was one of those days. She was on the phone at, for her, an unusually early hour. She was full of suggestions. I told her "no" and "no" and "no". I refused to listen to the "you're no fun" and "I'm only trying to help". "J....is coming to spend the morning here," I told her eventually - something I hadn't really wanted her to know until afterwards. I was worried Middle Cat might want to come and give J... well meant but unwanted advice. "Well, afternoon..." Phew! "No, there are things which must be done...like get milk and go to the chemist and the bank for the Senior Cat...and the post office to send off something to a friend in the US." I didn't tell her I was going to the library as well. I wanted to pick up a book and return seven the Senior Cat and I had finished with. We left it with her threatening, "I'll be around later." J... came and helped me sort out a very tangled skein of yarn. We talked about knitting. She talked to the Senior Cat and made him laugh. That was good. And I did, with planning, manage to get other things done. It was New Year's Eve busy in the shops - as if they would be closed for a week, not just a day. Middle Cat appeared as I was getting the Senior Cat's evening snack ready. She was still full of things I should be doing. I ignored them. The Senior Cat ignored them. My New Year resolution is to try and ignore Middle Cat's suggestions some, perhaps most, of the time. I don't want everyone to know what I am doing.
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