On of the interesting things listening to the cricket on the radio are the regular interruptions to update on the status of the scattered bushfires around the state. The cultured voice of the ABC presenter will read out a list of place names to enable awareness for the people living in those areas of the potential dangers. This is not a news bulletin - it is very specifically a community service designed to promote awareness and to avoid any rude shocks. Most of the announcements will be routine - fires are burning but under control, no immediate threat to property, etc. Occasionally there will be an 'alert', signifying something a bit more sinister - a new fire perhaps, or perhaps a fire that has jumped containment lines.In any case it's intended recipients are warned to be on the lookout.
Listening to this at 1 and 2am in the dead of night seems very strange. You are suddenly made aware that fires are still burning out there - they don't take a break with the night - and that out there fighting them still are the CFA firefighters.
Among other things it made me realise what a perilous country we really do live in.
Often in my travels I am asked where I am from. When I tell them Australia it is almost always received with a certain kind of pleasure. My words are greeted wiith a big smile and a nod of the head, as if I am one of the lucky. Australians seem to be popular, but there is more to it than that. The country - wide, brown, distant - seems both alluring and mysterious, like an exotic outpost at the end of the world. How many times am I looked at in pleased wonder that I would journey so far to visit their country? Within that mystery are more basic beliefs, of a pleasant lifestyle, the beach, the sun, the sport, of an affluent society that in many places can only be imagined at.
Very often my answer prompts conventional exclamations on the beauty of the country, and it's bounty. I am always quick to agree, yes, it is beautiful; yes, we are lucky. Occasionally these comments are followed by more alarmist talk about the perils of living downunder - the snakes and spiders, the sharks and crocodiles and other deadly creatures in the ocean. Then there are the floods and fires and cyclones, not to mention deadly bone dry deserts, that seem to so vividly capture the imagination. I am always quick to scoff at that. I live here after all, look at me. I live without fear, really none of that is terribly real.
And yet as I listened to these reports last night it occurred to me that perhaps I have taken things for granted. I have grown up in this environment and think little of it, mostly. Last night I was made to consider in listening to these matter of fact reports that go to something very real. Out there somewhere firefighters did their thing while families hear and there listened and sought guidance: should I stay or should I go? While I listened in bed before turning over.
Floods in FNQ, and in Victoria the scattered fires ring Melbourne, our worst ever natural disaster. Since Christmas there have been a spate of shark attacks. Everyday someone gets bitten by a snake, or must watch out for blue ring octopus. The first drought on record continues unabated. And so on.
Civilisation is all around, a very cosmopolitan civilisation with every taste and inclination catered for, but the richness of that should not obscure the fact that we live in a rugged environment we have adapted to but never conquered. This is an age old land, and perhaps in reality we are an exotic outpost. More accurately I think, we are islanders, surrounded by sea on the edges, and inside by the harsh and unforgiving interior.


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