A few hours or days without power might not sound so bad, but for elders who have oxygen or dialysis machines it can be life threatening.
Seisia, QLD
I’m Talei Elu – a proud Torres Strait Islander woman from the Seisia community in Cape York in Far North Queensland. My clan is the crocodile clan – Saibai Koedal – on my father’s side and on my mother’s side I’m Fijian.
My grandfather and his family left Saibai just after the war. He wouldn’t have called it climate migration, but a key reason for them leaving was that people’s gardens were starting to get inundated with salt water, making it harder to grow crops. He had the foresight to realise that if it got worse then Saibai wouldn’t be able to support us. People say ‘oh it was the 1940s’ but the Industrial Revolution was well underway and the climate was already changing.
My family has been away from Saibai for more than 70 years. It’s definitely had an impact on how we use our language and practice our culture. The young boys in Seisia often say ‘one day I’ll get to go to the homeland’ even though we’re only a few islands away.
We’re witnessing climate change happening here in Seisia now. We’re seeing more extreme weather and more intense storm surges. Elders say that it’s very different now to the old days. You can see the effects on the shape of the shoreline – the beach used to have a shallow gradient but storm surges and king tides have carved the sand into a steep slope.
Seisia is a remote community – the food and supplies we need to keep our community going come by ship from Cairns. During the wet season, the storms now get so intense and the waves so strong that the ship isn’t able to dock safely. You wouldn’t think climate change would impact our food security but if the ship is delayed for a day or two the supermarkets start running out of fresh food.
Whenever we get a severe storm everyone knows to keep candles around because the power is going to go out. Our electricity infrastructure is pretty basic and we’ve had several outages since the start of the year. A few hours or days without power might not sound so bad, but for elders who have oxygen or dialysis machines it can be life threatening. As soon as the power goes out we have to rush my auntie to the hospital because they have a generator there.
Seeing how climate change is affecting Seisia makes me worried for the future. I can’t imagine a world without Seisia. My granddad built his home and this community from the ground up so we’d have somewhere safe to live. We will defend and protect this place for as long as we can. But if climate change gets worse then how long will we be able to stay?
Hundreds of people from across the country are sharing their stories to send a clear message to the Australian government - it's time for real action on climate change.
Every story appears as a point on this map. Click around to read how climate change is affecting our communities, and add your own story to the map.
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.
Read my storyPeople all across Australia are being harmed by climate change. These are some of their stories.
We're reviewing your story now. As soon as it's up on the website we'll send you an email to let you know. We need as many people as possible to share their climate stories - so we can show the government that Australians need urgent climate action. Will you spread the word by sharing this campaign on social media?
Share on Instagram Share on Twitter Share on FacebookWill you stand with us and share your story of how climate change is affecting you, your family and your community?
It doesn't matter how big or small the impact you've felt - everyone's story is important.
Together we can show the government that taking real climate action is in everyone’s interest.
