Lies Paijmans

Bushfire Survivor, Tathra, NSW

Sunday the 18th of March 2018 in Tathra started as a typical beautiful autumn day, clear, calm and cool. I admired my beautiful garden before heading to Bermagui with a friend. While there, a ferocious, hot Westerly suddenly blew in, and I remember saying it would be a bad day for a bush fire. Then a phone call from Melbourne to say there was a fire near Tathra. By the time we got back the fire was well and truly raging, bearing down on Tathra, and I just had time to get my car and my laptop - I did not believe that I would lose my house. Tathra has never had a bushfire, and certainly not so long after Summer. But the weather has become warmer and windier due to higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, and fires are burning more intensely and spreading faster. Three hours after the fire started, my house had caught fire and burned to the ground, taking with it all that I owned and the garden I had nurtured for 14 years.

These climactic events are not just traumatic for those most directly affected, but also for those who are close to them and for all those who witness and experience the reverberations of that trauma through the community.