Extract from The Guardian
The drought, the fires and the floods have nearly broken us, but the government keeps playing games on climate action
Last modified on Mon 1 Nov 2021 06.29 AEDT
My husband has left the farm we have worked so hard on since 2007. He says, “I can’t do it any more.” He needs time to rest and heal. I don’t know what that means for my marriage or if I can run this farm alone. Will he want to sell the only stable home I have ever known – my heart’s rest, my lifelong dream and the oasis I bought as a single 40-year-old?
My husband has worked away most weeks, roaming across New South Wales for our solar business, so we have been cramming seven days of farm work into two at the weekends. We are just one of thousands of small-scale farmers growing beef for the domestic market, artisanal alpaca yarn for crafters, honey for local shops and small goods made from our garlic, honey and chillies. Our main farm income is from the farm stay – reconnecting city folk with country, river, platypus and free-range happy herds.
The drought crept up on us – ground getting harder, air dryer. Predicted rains in August 2019 never came and by then it was too late. Cattle lost condition overnight in September despite hand feeding and then they started falling like flies. There’s a special kind of stress when a beloved cow goes down and can’t get up. Propping them up on their knees so they can rest and digest, carrying feed and water, and hoping for a miracle.
We had to sell what we could rather than watch them die too. For pennies. The herd we had spent 12 years growing organically, year on year from our foundation cow, Daisy, was decimated.
Then came the fires, roaring towards us like a freight train. The air was filled with smoke for months. Some days you could barely see 50 metres in front of you. We were choking on our fears, tears, smoke and dust. Our once lush pastures were dry and bare; all of us haunted, hungry, lean, bewildered.
The farm stay closed for lack of water, smoke and dust. Feed prices escalated while income dwindled. The sky was orange as if the end of the world was nigh. And finally our day of reckoning in the wrath of flame arrived. We were lucky – we had two days to prepare. Putting sprinklers on every building, water tank, using precious drops profligately to avert disaster. And then we left, as friends pitched in to remove our most precious possessions.
You would think that the climate crisis and the world’s call for action is some sort of joke when you see the bonhomie and game playing by the government
We returned to find bush and paddocks on fire but infrastructure safe. Our fear of a crown fire reprieved by a wind change. Then our lactating, much-beloved bitch went missing when the puppies were three weeks old. My son’s dog, his all-consuming love. There was no room in our hearts for that grief. I still don’t think we have even started to process the loss of Goldie. The air was thick with the sweet stench of rotting flesh and pregnant with dust. It was so thick, you could taste it.
When it drizzled on Christmas Day, it was the miracle we all needed. Yes, we had been beleaguered and embattled but we would soldier on. That’s when the first news of disquiet trickled out of Wuhan and the long discussions with my British parents about whether to cancel their longed-for last ever trip to Australia began (they are in their 80s).
Pandemic stress is a different form of helplessness. With my husband travelling all the time, his fear of bringing home Covid was palpable. Finances became even leaner as my son and I locked down.
And then came the floods. We’ve lived through major floods before of course. But no one has ever seen anything like this. In the final peak, the river rose by 3 metres in 45 minutes – searing into our memories as we scurried to save what we could. I scoured the internet for pipes and a 45-tonne excavator to complement our little 15-tonner. We rebuilt our access bridge after weeks of wading through creek, belongings held aloft, and kayaking across raging torrents with diesel and supplies.
There’s a human cost to climate change. It has a worn face – lined from squinting into sunshine and runnelled with grief from weary eyes. And not from just the disasters, but also the creeping heat on the thermometer on the veranda. The wild storms, the tornados, the dry lightning strikes sparking fire or murdering solar power systems. Insurance premiums keep rising and damage from one disaster is still outstanding when the next hits, compounding grief upon grief, stress upon stress, fear upon fear.
You would think that the climate crisis and the world’s call for action is some sort of joke when you see the bonhomie and game playing by the government. Clearly they have never evacuated their home in terror, watched everything they love wither, stooped to start again with broken hearts and aching backs.
They are playing with our lives, with our future, with our children’s homes. Depression is treatable but the despair caused by their callous disregard for the real impact of their hubris can only be cured by a change of government, a change of heart.
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