Nobody in this region is unaffected; roads, services, shops, landslips, mold, mental health, businesses, jobs lost.
Georgica, NSW
In the past five years in the Northern Rivers, we’ve had: Cyclone Debbie (historic flooding), severe drought (driest November on record, 2019, driest winter on record, 2021), bush fires (rain forest burnt) that burnt so long in every direction that our skies were filled with smoke from every wind direction, for over 3 months.
Fun breathing that all in just before Covid. Lungs, anyone?
Then last year we had (after the driest winter) an unseasonably wet spring with violent storms in early December and it rained, virtually non-stop, for nearly 5 months. Lismore flooded twice in a month, with the biggest flood causing so much damage to infrastructure that we are still living, months later, in a disaster zone.
I have only just been able to shop at my usual shops for food, four months after the fact. Before that I was sourcing from shops in all directions, driving up to 50km to other towns to get my needs. Landslides have closed roads, doubling journey times and lengths.
Nobody in this region is unaffected; roads, services, shops, landslips, mold, mental health, businesses, jobs lost…. all after a very intense 5 years, plus covid. Nearly all of my vegetables died from saturation, my garden is only just now starting to produce again. The pecans didn’t fruit this year – too much rain at the wrong time, and the bees couldn’t pollinate them.
Our town/area had no fuel for over a week because the highway was blocked by flood waters – we couldn’t work for two weeks because we didn’t have enough fuel to risk getting to the petrol station and them having run out already when the fuel finally did get through. There was no food arriving either. So much has been damaged and lost.
We’ve had summers recording 46 degrees when the long term average sits around 33. We are impacted on a daily basis. The mental health of people overall is suffering. I had to take anti-depressants after the flood; the long term effect on my mood at witnessing and working around the damage was heart breaking and bleak.
There is so much more – and I am one of the lucky ones in all of this.
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I happen to have been born with an active imagination. A gift? I’ve regretted it many times over the past thirty years. Unlike the majority in my own country, I cottoned on to the climate drama in the early ’90’s after experiencing 5 or so years of drought where I was living. It was hot, it was dry, the trees were dying, it felt very threatening and very sad. Tt came to me then: THIS COULD BE THE FUTURE. . I watched how Nature’s always-taken-for-granted beauty and magnificent design could be trashed by simple absence of water delivered from the sky. What if it never came back to my garden, my land, because fossil fuel pollution was changing major climate patterns that determined rainfall? I couldn’t share this with anyone and it preyed on my mind. I had nightmares about the future. I worried about what my grandchildren were thinking. Then I got angry with everyone who was denying the danger. Climate action started to happen, I joined The Climate Emergency and tried to talk about it but wasn’t supported by many. I became a full-on activist. I worked in an environmental education centre, full- time. I wrote thousands of letters – actual paper in envelopes – as well as emails, I signed thousands of petitions, took part in dozens of actions. At 60, 65 years of age, I found it gruelling, exhausting. And still the pitiful, blind, dishonest and perverse response by the people vested with protection and leadership “No, it’s not happening”. The years went by; I watched the heartbreaking sight of Pacific Islanders up to their knees in water in their food gardens, about to lose their homelands. Heatwaves became more extreme in my region and I thought about what it would be like for me if thing got steadily worse as I was getting steadily older. Living in an air-conditioned dome in a wasteland? Madmen were talking about colonising Mars. This threat of destruction for what? To preserve a system that had become worse and worse at serving the overall well-being of the world’s people and was in fact steadily obliterating the rightful patrimony of every child of every generation: the wonderful, beautiful, planet we live on. Finally, I’ve realised that my old age will be tainted by the fear, resentment and loss of quality of life people everywhere are now living with. God help the children. God bless the Uncles.
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