Tasmania is burning
Tasmania is that place that exists within and without Australia. That triangular bit off the bottom that the people who do TV maps sometimes forget, or put in the wrong place. It's seen both as a place of tremendous culture and natural beauty, and as the place where the people with two heads live, because every country has one of those. And now tens of thousands of hectares of it are on fire.
The other day it was 41.8 degrees (107F) in Hobart, which is 20 degrees above average and the hottest temperature ever recorded there. It was even hotter on the Tasman Peninsula, a place that usually has pretty much the same climate and weather as Canterbury, and is a soft Kentish green.
Now swathes of Tasmania are charcoal, and over a hundred properties have been razed. Ten or fifteen of these are up in Bicheno, near Coles Bay and Freycinet, where the most beautiful walking trails in the world snake through forests of tall eucalypts, past white sand beaches, and granite ranges where giant trees soar up above orchids so small that you will only see them if you walk slowly, and look down.
Now the towns, mostly reliant on tourism and niche products, like jam and venison, are filled with smoke as volunteers fight to save them. The weather has cooled over the weekend, but there is no rain, in a place where there is always rain, and every day and night the fire crews fight to keep the blaze from jumping their lines. Boats are at the ready in the bays. If the roads are cut, people will shelter on them should the town be lost.
On the Tasman Peninsula, the town of Dunalley is smouldering. Sixty-five homes have been lost there, and the school. People who did not get to their cars before the roads were cut off fled to the water, with mothers sheltering with their children under the jetty, and boats taking on as many people as they could before they started to sit too low in the water.
At the moment about 100 people are missing in the area. Most of these will be found alive: there are people sheltering in many parts of the peninsula and power is down, so communications have been patchy. The fire there moved quickly, so people fled with nothing, not even phones, and who carries numbers in their heads these days? The police are searching buildings, but it is slow, and they are sifting through ashes, so it will be a while before they know if anyone was caught. So far there have been no confirmed deaths, and because the Black Saturday fires in Victoria the other year have primed everyone to go as soon as the alert comes, perhaps this time luck will prevail and everyone will be found alive.
Over a thousand people sheltered at Port Arthur. It's a large historic site, that is haunted by its past as a penal colony, and as the site of Australia's worst mass-homicide, where 36 people were killed by a madman with powerful guns. His actions saw automatic and semi-automatic guns banned here, and since then – 1996 – there has not been a single mass-killing by a gunman. Out of something horrible, something good came.
And so it was again. In a place that has seen such anguish, this time there was hope, as emergency services held the roads open and the carparks filled with the vehicles of refugees: many locals with their treasures stuffed into the boot and pets on their laps, but also many tourists, who had expected a quiet camping holiday in the beautiful Tasmanian wilderness.
Tourist ferries ran every hour they could, evacuating all who wanted to go. In Hobart, which is safe, those who have nowhere else to go are camping in public halls. Locals are turning up with food, water, nappies, changes of clothing and toys. And money, because Dunalley is gone, and the sawmill is ash, and that was where most of the jobs were. A family of seven needed to catch a flight to Brisbane from an airport two hours north, and two Taswegians turned up with their cars, happy to be a free taxi service.
Back at Port Arthur, those who didn't want to leave are camping with the staff and locals. They have shelter, food and a place of safety for pets and stock they have brought with them. The children have games supplied, and generators are being shipped down, because the power may take a month to reconnect.
One man shakily said that he had filled the car: goats, dogs and the cat, and got them all out alive. Another, the owner of the sawmill, shook his head and said, 'That's six or seven million dollars gone. And fifty years of my bloody life.' Insurers will pay out, and the government will help, because this is a rich country, but Dunalley will still be a town that is mostly gaps.
Meanwhile, in Port Arthur, cars sit lonely in the carparks. Many of them are rentals. Several rental companies have told those who fled that they will charge them each day until the cars are returned.
On Tuesday, it will be 43 degrees in Sydney. Twenty fires are already burning in New South Wales, but volunteers from here and Victoria have still gone down to Tasmania to help put theirs out. They have family preparing to pick them up from the airport with their kit in the car should they need to do a quick turnaround. Around the country, fire bans are in place, and warning levels are creeping up: Severe, Extreme, Catastrophic.
People in rural and regional areas have made their plans, packed their Go Bags, prepared their stock and kept the pets close. Those of us safe in the cities can smell smoke on the air – hope it's from backburning – and make plans to put a bit of money into the Red Cross this month, and wish never again to have those days when the sky was an inferno and burned gum leaves fell on gardens in the inner city, 25km from the nearest blaze, but carried on heat-fed gales that dried jeans on the line to crispiness in minutes.
The other day it was 41.8 degrees (107F) in Hobart, which is 20 degrees above average and the hottest temperature ever recorded there. It was even hotter on the Tasman Peninsula, a place that usually has pretty much the same climate and weather as Canterbury, and is a soft Kentish green.
Now swathes of Tasmania are charcoal, and over a hundred properties have been razed. Ten or fifteen of these are up in Bicheno, near Coles Bay and Freycinet, where the most beautiful walking trails in the world snake through forests of tall eucalypts, past white sand beaches, and granite ranges where giant trees soar up above orchids so small that you will only see them if you walk slowly, and look down.
Now the towns, mostly reliant on tourism and niche products, like jam and venison, are filled with smoke as volunteers fight to save them. The weather has cooled over the weekend, but there is no rain, in a place where there is always rain, and every day and night the fire crews fight to keep the blaze from jumping their lines. Boats are at the ready in the bays. If the roads are cut, people will shelter on them should the town be lost.
On the Tasman Peninsula, the town of Dunalley is smouldering. Sixty-five homes have been lost there, and the school. People who did not get to their cars before the roads were cut off fled to the water, with mothers sheltering with their children under the jetty, and boats taking on as many people as they could before they started to sit too low in the water.
At the moment about 100 people are missing in the area. Most of these will be found alive: there are people sheltering in many parts of the peninsula and power is down, so communications have been patchy. The fire there moved quickly, so people fled with nothing, not even phones, and who carries numbers in their heads these days? The police are searching buildings, but it is slow, and they are sifting through ashes, so it will be a while before they know if anyone was caught. So far there have been no confirmed deaths, and because the Black Saturday fires in Victoria the other year have primed everyone to go as soon as the alert comes, perhaps this time luck will prevail and everyone will be found alive.
Over a thousand people sheltered at Port Arthur. It's a large historic site, that is haunted by its past as a penal colony, and as the site of Australia's worst mass-homicide, where 36 people were killed by a madman with powerful guns. His actions saw automatic and semi-automatic guns banned here, and since then – 1996 – there has not been a single mass-killing by a gunman. Out of something horrible, something good came.
And so it was again. In a place that has seen such anguish, this time there was hope, as emergency services held the roads open and the carparks filled with the vehicles of refugees: many locals with their treasures stuffed into the boot and pets on their laps, but also many tourists, who had expected a quiet camping holiday in the beautiful Tasmanian wilderness.
Tourist ferries ran every hour they could, evacuating all who wanted to go. In Hobart, which is safe, those who have nowhere else to go are camping in public halls. Locals are turning up with food, water, nappies, changes of clothing and toys. And money, because Dunalley is gone, and the sawmill is ash, and that was where most of the jobs were. A family of seven needed to catch a flight to Brisbane from an airport two hours north, and two Taswegians turned up with their cars, happy to be a free taxi service.
Back at Port Arthur, those who didn't want to leave are camping with the staff and locals. They have shelter, food and a place of safety for pets and stock they have brought with them. The children have games supplied, and generators are being shipped down, because the power may take a month to reconnect.
One man shakily said that he had filled the car: goats, dogs and the cat, and got them all out alive. Another, the owner of the sawmill, shook his head and said, 'That's six or seven million dollars gone. And fifty years of my bloody life.' Insurers will pay out, and the government will help, because this is a rich country, but Dunalley will still be a town that is mostly gaps.
Meanwhile, in Port Arthur, cars sit lonely in the carparks. Many of them are rentals. Several rental companies have told those who fled that they will charge them each day until the cars are returned.
On Tuesday, it will be 43 degrees in Sydney. Twenty fires are already burning in New South Wales, but volunteers from here and Victoria have still gone down to Tasmania to help put theirs out. They have family preparing to pick them up from the airport with their kit in the car should they need to do a quick turnaround. Around the country, fire bans are in place, and warning levels are creeping up: Severe, Extreme, Catastrophic.
People in rural and regional areas have made their plans, packed their Go Bags, prepared their stock and kept the pets close. Those of us safe in the cities can smell smoke on the air – hope it's from backburning – and make plans to put a bit of money into the Red Cross this month, and wish never again to have those days when the sky was an inferno and burned gum leaves fell on gardens in the inner city, 25km from the nearest blaze, but carried on heat-fed gales that dried jeans on the line to crispiness in minutes.