This time last year we left Melbourne, Victoria, to start a new life for our family in Dunedin, New Zealand.
At first it was planned as a temporary journey - a Sabbatical. But after only a few weeks in Dunedin, we wanted to stay forever, despite this meaning we had to leave behind friends, family, my career, and everything familiar in our own country.
It seemed the reasons we wanted to stay here in New Zealand were so small. It rains here. Things grow. We have mountains - majestic, white, snow-capped, beautiful. People seem to be less stressed.
And Dunedin is a smaller town. We've moved from a city of 3 1/2 million people to a city of 120,000. No traffic jams. Affordable housing. People who know you and stop in the street to say hello. A friendliness and a community which I've never known before, yet that I already know is precious.
And now, all I hear from my own country, from Australia, is the fires. You have to have seen bushfires and experienced them to understand the fear that they can cause in you. When you have to keep the windows closed because of the choking smoke, and you can't see the sun for the haze.
And when the sun finally is visible, it looks like a ball of faint fire from hell, all orange and red and tainted and totally alien. And no birds sing. And you wonder if the sky will ever be blue again.
Last year, my home town of Adelaide experienced a "1 in 3000 year weather event", with temperatures soaring into the forties - well past a hundred degrees in fahrenheit - for weeks on end. Air-conditioners broke down, and citizens were told that the fix-it guys wouldn't be able to fit them for months, due to the back log of work. My parents went for walks at five in the morning - the only time cool enough to go outside and bear the heat.
Me under the apricot trees, next to the pool, on the grass in the backyard of the house I grew up in. Now the pool is gone (water restrictions), as are the grass and apricot trees.As for gardens, for most people, everything is dead. When I was a child there were no water restrictions, and I used to lie on green grass under the apricot trees, gorging myself on fruit. Now the grass is gone, and tumbleweed blows across the roads. Different times, different planets. What was an oasis is now become a wasteland.
The streetscape where I grew up, modern view. Nothing much will grow here now, except hardy natives (photo from Google earth).
The corner, near our the house I grew up in. Everything dead except tough native trees. No grass or apricot trees any more. (Photo a snap from a google earth view.)And in Melbourne, the lavender I planted when we bought our old house died from the drought. I had to pull it out. The roots were shrivelled and bare. Nothing left. The earth was dust. I replaced rose bushes and flower gardens with desert plants and natives when
we overhauled the garden, but now I wonder if any of them have survived since we sold the house. It was
46 degrees (115 F) there a few days ago. Can any garden survive that?
Why did we move to New Zealand? Because I wanted to have hope for my children. Here our power is generated from hydro and wind instead of coal, our community is strong, our food is local, our water and air are clean, and our grass still grows. My children can run under the sprinklers on hot days. We have a few snow days in the winter, and they can toboggan on home-made sleds down the hills.
And it rains here. I still can't get over how plants grow here so magically - life is a miracle that is precious and blessed and I laugh inside for joy when I look at the wildflowers and even the weeds that spring up unhindered by the roadside.
I miss my family, and I miss my friends, but I am here, in a place of hope instead of fire and death. Now, more than ever, I am convinced that the decision to move here has been the right one, even while I grieve over the losses that have hit places I once knew and loved.
Is climate change real? Ask the trees that have died from "drought", and the lavender that I pulled out and tossed on the compost pile.
Is bushfire a threat? Ask the dead and the grieving.
Should we act now and change every aspect of our lives that needs changing, in this biggest challenge humanity has ever faced? Ask the thousands of dead native animals in Australia - the koalas, the kangaroos, the wallabies, the spiders, the snakes, the bats, the hopping mice, the possums. Except we can't ask them - they're gone.
Finally, if you've read this far, please donate some small change to the Red Cross Bushfire Appeal. Your generosity will help people and communities rebuild their lives. Here is the link:
Australian Red Cross Bushfire Appeal.
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