Robert Gardiner

Volunteer Firefighter, Limestone, Victoria

In 2009, the Black Saturday bushfires erupted over the entire district in which I live.

The local fire brigades could not hope to manage any of the fires, which came during record high temperatures and prolonged drought and in some cases with deliberately lit fires that caused mayhem across the region.

At the time of the fires, 173 people died in the immediate aftermath of the fires, many more succumbed later to their acquired injuries, others committed suicide in the following years and many people simply moved away from the district.

In the weeks and months following the Black Saturday fires, I helped many of my community members clean up their destroyed farms, fences and bury their animals. The permeating ash in my skin, the smell of charred and burnt flesh and the silence of the incinerated forests were forever present every time I walked through the Toolangi Forests (where the Leadbeaters Possum struggles to survive).

For a considerable time after the fires, I became intolerant of listening to the stories of the many who had directly suffered in the fires. I no longer wanted to hear anything about the fires or to talk about the endless impacts of the catastrophic inferno. I simply wanted to get on with my own life and deal with my own concerns.

Continuing to live the in same community, I am subtly aware that the legacy of those fires remained as a tangible and chronic illness that permeated the community's collective spirit and ethos. Every time I drive to Melbourne, I have to cross the Great Dividing Range; I see the forests trying to recover. I see how slow the process is, with lingering droughts and increasing temperatures, the dew point is slowly lifting and with that subtle increase in air temperature and lowering of humidity, the life giving and cool rain that allows the forests to renew and grow back is becoming rarer and almost imperceptibly finer with each season.

I am tired and sick of being conscious of my personal anxiety of yet another seasonal threat of fire. Each year that I have lived in Murrindindi that feeling has increased and now permeates discussions of summer holidays. Gone is the idle chat of BBQs and Christmas fun or holidays away from home, now the talk is of fire preparations and 'what if' and 'maybe if', 'should we not travel away' and in some cases 'why bother at all….let’s run away.

It seems to me that many people (and in particular our elected representatives) have conveniently taken on a convenient facade of the accepting and never complaining (too much) silent type that simply takes what comes and does nothing more. Australian's need positive and definitive leadership that is all encompassing and inspiring. I fear that many Australians are waiting to be told what to do, what to think and how to act when it comes to tackling the universal threat of climate change.

All Australian Commonwealth politicians and appointed senior public servants must show their mettle and ‘leadership’ and take bold and immediate steps to reduce Australia's reliance on fossil fuels and coal, in particular by cancelling and permanently stopping the proposed development of the Adani Mine Project.

I believe that Australia’s politicians and our senior public servants must realise that they and the populace of Australia has become myopic to the reality of human induced Climate Change and it's effects on our collective safety with increased occurrences of prolonged droughts, increased temperatures across all of Australia and hence the increased impacts of bush fire hazards on our collective safety and prosperity.