Starting New Years Eve 2019 we had to evacuate 5 times from the threat of the massive bushfires.
Barragga Bay, NSW
Starting New Years Eve 2019 we had to evacuate 5 times from the threat of the massive bushfires. First to Bermagui for 3 days and then due to no fire dept or police or hospital in town we were told to go to Bega which is in a valley inland.
We left the coast for Bega and were then surrounded by fires for 3 days. Then the highway to Canberra opened up and cars did the 3 hour trip in 8 hours due to all the traffic congestion.
Canberra air quality was horrible so we drove up to Northern Rivers, which is where we had friends to stay with 1200KLM away. Not everyone has friends locally to bunk with.
We hope to never go through that again, but undoubtably we will.
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I had never seen an Australian forest die due to drought. In the summer of 2019, I thought the fires had already been through our land, but it was the brown of acres of dead eucalypts. Then the creeks and the dams dried up and the platypus and the birds disappeared. We have had some good rain since then, but it’s sporadic, from drought to flood to drought, and the platypus didn’t return, and neither did so many of the birds that used to breed here. In the first flush of rain in 2020, there was too much rain, then too much regrowth in the bush. The creeks and dams were filled with toxic algal blooms and the last signs of life on the waterways were gone. Now, we are waiting for the inevitable fires to follow. Every month, we are fire-free, and it feels like we won the lottery. Our fire season has been extended, too, so it is very hard to feel relaxed. We are on constant alert. The increase in temperature has obviously stressed the insects, too. When I was a child and even as a young adult, our cars would be covered in bugs if we drove at night. Now, having a bug on the car is rare, and we haven’t seen a bogong moth for years. We have also noticed so many more snakes in this extended hot weather, and they are not entering their brumation (hibernation period) at normal times. This year, we have had them out and visible for at least six weeks longer than usual. This will be upsetting so many systems in nature here. Apparently, snake catchers around Australia are working very hard right now. Snakes have never bothered us, but now many of them are coming around our house. I wonder if they are running out of their normal food in the bush. How can the birds and the rest of the food chain survive? It is obvious to anyone watching that there are multiple systems collapsing so fast.
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