So far away, so close…

From the moment I first saw the news of the bushfires I have felt a strange tightness in my chest, not unlike an asthma attack. That was how the impressions of the bushfire hit me. It is strange because here I am, half the world away and I feel a sense of dread and fear and sadness. The media here gives the fires a cursory fifteen seconds of coverage so I find myself glued to the internet, constantly hitting the refresh button to see if there are any update. The internet is a blessing because I can get a real sense of where the fires are burning and friends and family can sent me updates, but then I find myself waking in the middle of the night and going to the computer at 2am, at 3.30 am at 6 am to see if things are any better or worse. Hewie has sent me a letter that had been forwarded by email from another teacher who he had worked with and was in a town that had been decimated. It was heartbreaking to read a letter, from a complete stranger, talking of the kids in a town that they knew were dead. Nandini has kept a stream of bulletins on the state of fires and posted links to the ABC website and Mum kept me up to date on the family that were close to the hotspots. I know that my nephew Cleon was heading towards Alexandra and that my auntie’s house in Warragul had been in the path of the fire and the embers had been falling onto the roof. While the media here in the US has hardly made mention of the fires, De’s mother rang from Rio de Janeiro. Everything was okay there, she told De, but that she was worried about my family in Australia. Then De’s friend Ni, who hardly ever uses the internet, sent a message asking whether the fires were near my family and De’s nephew, Daniel, sent an email asking the same thing.

It was only in 2007 that I was in Australia and the fires were burning through California and threatening San Diego, so much that the University was shut down and people who I work with had to leave their homes and be evacuated to the local sports stadium. There wasn’t the same sense of dread, however, once I knew that De was safe and not in the path of the fires. The images were scary but the names of the places that burned didn’t resonate. This was different – it was the names of towns where I had friends and family. There was a notice on the La Trobe mail server that acknowledged that many staff and their families were in the areas that were burning. Whittlesea is on the doorstep of La Trobe, Flowerdale is where my friends Kate and Charlie have a place, Churchill is where I lived for a time, Warragul is where I have family. And there was Marysville…where I didn’t know anyone but it is etched in my memory for the weekend that De and I visited, taking photo after photo of the snow around Lake Mountain and of the parrots that congregated on the porch of the b & b we were staying in. Now Marysville is gone. It is just beyond comprehension. The scenes of the aftermath of the fire are so apocalyptic, like a war zone. So I watch the footage of people sifting through their burned homes, and so often it seems as though their past and their future, their dreams, are all in ashes. It is impossible to comprehend. I shudder at the images of burned out cars where people haven’t managed to make it out. For all my talk in the past of what it is to be away from Australia it is now I have a sense of the country, the people. Here in the US there is so much investment in the American sense of nationhood, with the flag and jingoistic patriotism. But it is here and now when I see the Australian character– without the need for elaborate pageant or overstated pomp – that I am struck with by an overwhelming sense of belonging and pride in the people who are there in the midst of the bushfires. There are the exhausted firefighters, covered in soot or hobbling from burns and the resilience of the people who have lost everything yet refuse to give in. All this is playing out against the images of a countryside that I love but is scarcely recognizable. I don’t pretend that I would be doing anything different if I were in Australia. I would be on the internet or watching the news in the same way, but for some reason I just feel at this moment that I am so far, far away from home and yet so close.