A wind from the furnace of Hell

I am sad. People have been pouring out their hearts to me with stories about the Victorian fires and although I intended to come here to bring them freshness and cheer, I have been already been touched and by their sadness. I sense their need to release some sorrow and am therefore glad to be a shoulder for them to come to but I feel the weight. There is an atmosphere of dampened spirits and strain to my dear Melbourne friends as I listen and watch their ashen faces tell of how the tragedy has affected the whole state.

Flying in over the territory it was difficult to decipher obvious fire damage from above. The landscape appeared ochre as usual, a dry dust bowl without a blade of grass showing, drier than I remember it only a few months earlier but not scorched as I expected. The very distant hills were shrouded in a haze like the mists of Avalon, jagged outlines revealed in staggered gradients of colour as the hills appeared through the smoke.

I had been told that I might be able to smell lingering smoke even in the city but have not found that to be the case. Melbourne City, apart from the emotional damage, is untouched and life continues as normal despite a collective look of disbelief on the faces around the streets. My friends have described, each in their own words yet strikingly similar, what the 47 degree temperature of Black Sunday felt like. This was the day that melted power lines and started some of the fires. The wind that carried the waves of heat straight off the desert, directly up from Hell's furnace, was the agent required to spread the destruction. One friend talked about standing on Bourke Street that day with mouth open, and feeling a force that was like holding a hair drier in his mouth. I imagined a scene from a disaster movie where a wave of nuclear explosion rips through a city melting everything in its path. It might sound dramatic but this it becoming the reality of the global climates.

Today Victoria is a desert environment. The state and the city, has been in drought for ten years with no sign that it will change any time soon yet everyone still prays for rain as if it is their only saviour. In reality the inhabitants are adapting as humans do to their new environment. A new coping mechanism appears, regulatory SMS are sent to 5 million cell phones, warning of strong winds that will further fan the lingering flames and dangers to avoid. The fears do not eventuate, instead a slight overnight rain brings a degree of relief and the collective held breath is released with a sigh. The city is eerily calm when reports are coming in of strong wind in the suburbs congesting roads. Panic is imagined rather than real but how much more tension can people take?

The answer? Life goes on. In reality the inhabitants are adapting as humans do, to their new environment and already the recovery is happening with charity concerts being orgainsed to raise money to help the victims of the fires and plans to rebuild smarter houses that will cope with the next fires because...no one believes that this is the end, only the beginning of a new landscape. And still they pray for rain.