Victoria's bushfires: A reality check and some inspiration

Sydney, 12 February 2009

As people look back and reflect on the terrible suffering in Victoria in February this year, Being Australian says it's wise to remember the observation of Dr. Germaine Greer, whose article published in The Times newspaper contains the following sage warning:
 
'...The cause of these disasters is not global warming; still less is it arson. It is the failure to recognise that fire is an intrinsic feature of eucalypt bushland. It cannot be prevented but it can and should be managed. Unless there is a fundamental change of policy across all levels of government in Australia, there will be more and worse fires and more deaths.'
 
Germaine Greer, The Times, 9 February 2009
 


 
Meanwhile, the poetry of Dorothea McKellar provides a beautiful if haunting reminder of the many wonderful reasons why being Australian in Australia is a privilege in spite of the trauma visited upon us who live here.
 


 
In 1904, McKellar wrote:
 
The love of field and coppice, of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance, brown streams and soft, dim skies-
I know but cannot share it, my love is otherwise.
 
I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror- the wide brown land for me!
 
The stark white ring-barked forests, all tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains, the hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops, and ferns the warm dark soil.
 
Core of my heart, my country! Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us we see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather, and we can bless again
The drumming of an army, the steady soaking rain.
 
Core of my heart, my country! Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine she pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks, watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness that thickens as we gaze.
 
An opal-hearted country, a wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her, you will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours, wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country my homing thoughts will fly.
 
Your comments...
 
Being Australian remembers the victims of the February 2009 fires