Australia 2019-2020: "I have never been prouder of my nation. Leaderless, leaders emerged ... "

This is author Jackie French:

Jackie and her husband Bryan live in the Araluen valley, a deep valley on the edge of the Deua wilderness area. Most of their property is now a Conservation Refuge for the many rare and endangered species of the area. They live in a home made stone house, with a waterwheel Bryan made as well as solar panels to power their house, with an experimental orchard of over 800 fruit trees and more than 272 kinds of fruit that show how farming can coexist with wildlife. Jackie writes columns for the Canberra Times, Australian Women’s Weekly, Earthgarden Magazine, Australian Wellbeing and Gardening Australia. Her garden rambles over about 4 hectares, and there is never a time when there aren't basketsful of many kinds of fruit to pick.

The opinion piece below was penned by French.....

The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 January 2020: 

It is impossible to weep. 

I cannot weep because this is only the beginning. Logs smoulder on our ridges, a tide of injured wildlife is sweeping down into our refuge. I have been living out of a suitcase for most of the past six weeks, evacuated twice, sleeping in many different places and accepting generosity too great to count. I need to clean the pink sludge from the fridge (hint: remove watermelon from fridge before evacuating), keep putting out food and water stations, cope as desperately injured wildlife emerges from the flames, and help others in every possible way I can. 

Focus on what you can do. Don’t cry for what you can’t. 

I also cannot weep because I dare not even imagine yet all that we’ve lost. Friends have lost their houses and towns, entire communities have been displaced, the social links that make us who we are, as social beings, turned to smoke. Tourist towns have no tourists – or the heritage buildings that made them tourist towns. Businesses are bankrupt. Evacuees like me have lost months of paid work, with more lost months to come. I am OK. Many are not. 

The carefully planted local Indigenous "food larder" landscape I have loved and depended upon most of my life, and that has survived 200 years of colonisation, cannot survive fires like these. Farms and vast areas of bush already teetered on a knife-edge in the worst drought in history. Now they are ash. The Araluen Valley, south-east of Braidwood in New South Wales' Southern Tablelands, has lost much of its remaining peach orchards. Will the orchardists replant? We don’t know. 

I do know our community will support them. And that I have never been prouder of my nation.  

Leaderless, leaders emerged; the magnificent firies, but also those who defended their houses and others with nothing but hoses and determination. Our neighbour, Robyn, singlehandedly waited to defend her farm while checking on the properties of those who had evacuated, knowing that with age or injury we would now be a hindrance, not a help, on the fire front. 

I have never been prouder of my nation. Leaderless, leaders emerged ... [And] this is the comfort we must give our children: in the past weeks, Australia has been a truly great nation. We must remain one. We must not forget. 

Friends in their 70s and 80s, who would not want to be called old men, have been out for days or nights for three months with the tankers. I have seen a man, dying in great pain, still struggle towards the flames to give his wisdom on where the fire might go; I have seen wombats share their holes with snakes, quolls, possums and a nervous swamp wallaby; a fridge on the highway kept constantly stocked with cold drinks for those defending us; six firies leaning against the hospital wall, too exhausted to stagger inside for first aid. The next day they went out again..... 

Please read the full article here with its acute observations and well thought through suggestions.

NSW Rural Fire Service creates first Indigenous Mitigation Crews

ABC News, 13 January 2020:

For the first time in the state's history, the NSW Rural Fire Service has created two all-Indigenous firefighting crews. 

Eight men, from Bourke and Brewarrina in far western New South Wales, have been handpicked by their elders to care for their country. 

The crews, called Indigenous Mitigation Crews, are charged with protecting sacred sites, caring for kin on reserves, and fighting remote fires. 

The opportunity has given Dale Barker a platform to change lives. 

"I just love helping the community out and seeing some of the younger Aboriginal kids watching us work and maybe thinking, oh yeah, I want to do that one day," he said. 

Mr Barker used to be a shearer. The work was hard, the shifts sporadic, and the pay patchy. 

The chance to lead Bourke's Indigenous Mitigation Crew has enabled him to take better care of himself and his family. 

"The hours we work are 8am until 4pm so the majority of the time I'm home to get dinner started, so that's a big plus for my wife and two kids," he said.

Bushfire ash & debris as well as drought now killing fish in NSW coastal and inland rivers

"Fish kills are defined as a sudden mass mortality of wild fish. In NSW we are likely to see further severe fish kills across coastal and inland catchments during the summer of 2019/20....Fish can be directly impacted during fires through extreme high temperatures, loss of habitat, or be threatened from rapid declines in water quality if rainfall occurs in recently burnt areas. Run-off from rainfall events can wash large amounts of ash and sediment into rivers following fires, causing rapid drops in oxygen levels and threatening the survival of fish populations." [NSW Dept of Primary Industries]

The upper reaches of the Clarence River have been badly stressed by low water flows since 2018, so when bushfires began to eat their way through the severely drought affected Clarence Valley in mid-2019 it was obvious that the rolling impacts wouldn't stop when the fires diminished or when rain fell.

There has been a fish kill at Big Fish Flat, an area known for the protected eastern freshwater cod now only found in parts of this river system and commonly known as Clarence River Cod.

The most likely cause of this kill is bushfire ash entering a river which has all but ceased to flow - turning what water there is into a toxic brew.

At Baryulgil on the Clarence est. 1,000 fish died due to low dissolved oxygen within an isolated pool receiving minimal inflows due to drought conditions.

There was also a fish kill on the Mann River, a major tributary of the Clarence which reportedly coincided with ash in the water.

Two fish kills were experienced to the north at Emigrant Creek at Tintenbar in the Ballina Shire and the Brunswick River near Byron Bay - possibly due to low dissolved oxygen within an isolated pool and minimal freshwater inflows. 

Another fish kill occurred to the south on an 8km stretch of the Macleay River where locals describe the bushfire ash and burned debris turning that river's water into a thick sludge killing hundreds of thousands including Australian Bass, Bull Trout, Freshwater Mullet, Eel-tailed Catfish and Eels.

The Guardian, 17 January 2020: Results of a fish kill in the Macleay River in northern New South Wales, which locals said was like ‘cake mix’. Photograph: Larry Newberry

Similarly bushfire affected water ways in the NSW-Qld Border Rivers system appear to have been similarly affected by run-off from the fire grounds and reported fish kills there are being investigated.

All in all a total of 23 coastal and 17 inland NSW waterways have experienced small to large fish kills to date during the 2019-20 bushfire season.

Associated Press published a comparative scale of the largest wildfires since 2018 when the world began to burn

And the drought continues across New South Wales....

There is no land in NSW which is not affected by drought.

CDI = Combined Drought Indicator. RI = Rainfall Index. SWI = Soil Water Index. PGI = Pasture Growth Index. DDI = Drought Direction Index

Data current to 11/1/2020 (AEDT)

Australian Council of Social Service calls on Morrison to increase "seriously inadequate" emergency payments to bushfire victims

The Guardian, 13 January 2020:

Australia’s peak welfare body is calling on the federal government to immediately boost emergency payments for those affected by bushfires, saying it is concerned the current amount is “seriously inadequate”.

The Australian Council of Social Service chief executive, Cassandra Goldie, has written to the prime minister, Scott Morrison, with a range of recommendations the organisation says are urgently needed to help provide relief to those affected by the bushfire crisis that has destroyed more than 2,000 homes.

“It is vital that the federal government continues to play its role providing adequate support to the thousands of people so badly affected,” Goldie said.

“Acoss is very concerned that the current Disaster Recovery Payment is seriously inadequate, particularly for people on lower incomes and with fewer assets, family and friends to secure transport, alternative housing options and immediate recovery resources.”

The group is calling for the payment, which has not increased since 2006, to be boosted from $1,000 to $3,000, and from $400 per child to $1,000 per child. 

Other recommendations include increasing the Disaster Recovery Allowance, which is paid at the same rate as Newstart, which the organisation said was inadequate to cover basic living costs, and providing additional relief for people on low incomes who could not afford insurance.....

Less in response to this ACOSS call and more as pushback against his poor numbers in the 12 January 2020 Newspoll which showed Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese as the preferred prime minister with a lead of 4 points, Prime Minister Morrison has announced an increase in the Disaster Recovery Payment for children to a total of $800 per child from 20 January 2020.

Families who have already received payments for children will automatically be paid an additional $400 according to media reports.

Clarence Valley Council receives $1 million in bushfire recovery funding

The NSW Berejiklian Government has received its state share of the $2 billion in bushfire recovery funding from the federal government and, has informed Clarence Valley Council to expect to have an extra $1 million in its coffers this week.

This money is in addition to grants already received from the NSW Government to assist with repair of certain road infrastructure damaged by the bushfires.

Council expects to use this $1 million grant to rebuild community assets such as sporting facilities and community halls, as well as creating infrastructure which will increase resilience in times of disaster.

The million dollar grant is welcome, however the financial cost of these devastating fires will be a strain on council and local communities for some time to come.